Warmists Rewriting History Again!
By Paul Homewood
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2014/01/newsweek-global-cooling-reporter
We all know that warmists are good at rewriting history.
Now, it seems, they are trying to marginalise the concern about global cooling in the 1970’s. Apparently it was just a couple of magazine articles which managed to get things out of all proportion.
That would no doubt explain why the US Government was so concerned about changes to the climate, that the White House set up a special Sub Committee on Climate Change in 1974.
I have obtained copies from NOAA archives of some of the original correspondence and the Committee’s first report in December 1974.
First, the letter from Rogers Morton, Secretary of the Interior, to the Commerce Secretary.
And Fred’s reply!
This was the membership of the Committee – pretty high powered!
The report I mentioned, “A United States Climate Program”, ran to 39 pages, with much of it devoted to budgets and organisational matters. To try and give the flavour of it, I will show the summary and the first two pages entitled “The Need For A Climate Program”.
And a quick look at the budget for the Climate Program. $80 million was allocated over 4 years – I would guess about $200 million at today’s prices. This was serious money.
Just think of all the money they could have saved, if they had realised it was just media hype!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The problem with the rewrite – and all of their “hidings” is that the world has learned to document. Some would say too much. Given that it does expose their lies, I think they are part of the ones that say too much.
Here is how the Guardian, based on CRU research, reported that the cooling was going to bring more droughts, storms and floods, on June 24 1974:
More storms and drought forecast
As farmers continued to plough in drought-stricken crops and water boards prepared to conserve stocks, Professor Hubert Lamb, a leading weather expect, said at the weekend that the recent conditions could be here to stay.
Instead of the plentiful but gentle rains we are used to in Britain, we could be faced with a successions of long dry periods, broken by violent storms.
Professor Lamb, of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, said in an interview that a drop in the frequency of westerly winds has shaped the weather.
…
Professor Lamb, whose unit is one of only two such centres in the Western World, said the average number of days each year with westerly winds, since records were first kept in 1861, had been 100.
Since 1968, though, the average had dropped to 70 with a high of 81 in any one year. This year, westerlies had been remarkably infrequent, blowing on only 31 days so far. The signs were that the trend would continue, which meant that longish dry periods, with occasional floods from heavy rains, could be expected. The spreading polar ice cap would also bring colder winters and drier but cooler summers.
More worrying news for farmers was that the growing season was becoming shorter…
@”Apparently it was just a couple of magazine articles which managed to get things out of all proportion.”
Other news media ran similar stories in the 1970s for example:
ˇ Science News, November 15, 1969 (The Earths Cooling Climate);
ˇ Washington Post, January 11 1970 (Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age);
ˇ Fortune, February 1974, pp. 90-95, (Ominous Changes in the Worlds Weather);
ˇ Time, June 24, 1974 (Another Ice Age?);
ˇ New York Times,. May 21 1975 (Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing: Major Cooling May Be Ahead);
ˇ Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974 (Earth Seems to be Cooling Off Again).
The New York Times already raised the subject in 1961 by reporting that: “Scientists agree world is colder; But Climate Experts meeting here fail to agree on reason for change”. (NYT, Walter Sullivan; January 30, 1961), and 50 years later Quirin Schiermeier (NATURE) regards:
”Three-tenths of a degree may seem a small dip but, for climate researchers, the discovery that a large patch of the ocean cooled by 0.3 °C within a few years around 1970 is a small sensation. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100922/full/467381a.html , titled:
__”When the North Atlantic caught a chill. Surface cooling could have pushed down temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere 40 years ago.” From: http://www.ocean-climate.com/g-global-cooling-from-1940-1970/
80 million $ not pounds.
Thanks, corrected.
I don’t see anywhere in the posted evidence that suggests the Committee was formed because of fears about global cooling. The term ‘climate change’ is all that’s used (so the term isn’t a recent invention to replace ‘global warming’ after all!)
The report specifies, heat waves in Russia, mild winters in the US, low rainfall and drought impacting on harvests both in the US and globally and increasing intensity of Pacific ocean circulation. It mentions a cooling trend in the Arctic, but there’s no suggestion, as far as I can see, that this was expected to impact globally.
Is a link to the entire report available?
What I think is significant was that they were seriously concerned about the sort of climatic changes that the Newsweek article and many others were highlighting. In turn, Hubert Lamb and others believed that these were the result of a cooler climate, certainly in the NH.
They did not regard these changes as mere “weather blips”, and were worried the changes could be long term.
I could not find the report online, David. NOAA kindly posted me a copy when I asked. Most of the rest of the report is about budgeting and organisation. (Remember this first report is about setting up the program. It would be interesting to see some of the follow up reports).
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
The extreme cold of the 1970’s and the 1980’s is well doucmented in the records as producing very harsh winters in the US. In fact winters 1976-1977, 1977-1978 and
1978-1979 were the 3 coldest consecutive winters in US history, at least for places east of the Rockies. The Januaries in particular were among the top ten coldest in many places.
In Waterloo, IA, they were the first, second and third coldest on record. During those winters, major cities like Chicago, Buffalo and Boston were snowbound for weeks.
Very cold winters and massive Arctic outbreaks continued through the 1980’s. Florida recieved more severe citrus freezes between 1977 and 1989 than the whole rest of the 20th Century combined. During an Arctic outbreak in Jaunary 1985, Raleigh, NC was -9, Atlanta, GA reached -9, Macon, GA reached -6 and Jacksonville +6.
RAND has reports back to 1965 investigating the global cooling. Go to rand.org and search for this author, noted below. You can look at the data cited in any of this guy’s papers on polar ice and global climate, and see who was coming up with this stuff. This concept was on the map in 1968.
In this report, abstract below, the idea of getting rid of the arctic ice cap, on purpose, in order to avoid the catastrophic man-made global cooling, was reviewed. Still available – act now! 20% web discount $18.80.
The Polar Ocean and World Climate. by J. O. Fletcher, 1968. Published by RAND.
“A review, with 24 charts, of the effect of the polar ice pack on world climate. About 10 percent of the northern hemisphere ocean area and 13 percent of the southern is covered in winter by floating ice of variable extent. As the ice pack recedes, storm tracks go farther north and midlatitude rainfall patterns shift eastward. Apparently changes in solar radiation intensity in Antarctica result in changes in the global circulation, which, in turn, affect the extent of the Arctic pack ice, especially during the northern summer. After examining the possible effects of removing the ice pack, and the possibilities of doing so, the study concludes that–however undesirable it may be politically, economically, or environmentally–we probably do have the technological ability to eliminate the ice, but far more research is needed before we can predict the consequences for the entire earth-atmosphere physical system. 60 pp. Bibliog.”
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
Warmists Trying To Cover Up Fact In 70s They Were Using Global Cooling Scare To Make People Believe Human Progress Is Responsible For Bad Climate
Bureaucrats are eager and dedicated whenever the prospect of a new SubCommittee, with a suitable and healthy budget and long-term mandate, which needs to be set up and staffed is in the offing.