Via Stoat, I see a nice story in USA Today about an interesting new analysis by some clever folk* on the history of the old “global cooling” canard:
The supposed “global cooling” consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can’t make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.
The ’70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
* For full disclosures, read last paragraph of USA Today article.
Don;’t be so subtly modest. I look forward to the real article.
Cool! 🙂
From the story itself, I see that some of those associated with the article aren’t satisified with having written or authored it, but greedily insist on both at once: “Along with Peterson, the study was also authored written by William Connolly of the British Antarctic Survey and John Fleck of The Albuquerque Journal.” Plus USA Today misspelled the Stoat’s monicker! But maybe they were just distracted by the imminent prospect of having to spell Albuquerque.
It is worth noting that the “real” spelling of Albuquerque is “Alburquerque,” but someone accidentally dropped the extra R in the 19th century. I live in a misspelling.
Oh, grrreat. Now we’re going to have to put up with ‘Fleckian Hockey sticks’ in analysis of news stories. Just great.
;o)
Well done sir.
Best,
D