Posted on 03/03/2011 5:58:04 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Im old enough to remember when scientists issued alarms over a coming Ice Age that would wipe out life on Earth on a massive scale. Senator John Barrassos memory holds up pretty well, too, and he reminded everyone of the consensus in the 1970s that the climate had begun to cool so significantly that, er, the world needed massive government interventions in energy production and consumption to survive it. Barrasso quotes from Newsweek and Time articles of the period. Senator Tom Udall attempts to ride to EPW Chair Barbara Boxers rescue by introducing an article that claims the global-cooling consensus of the 1970s was a myth, and Boxer urges Udall to add it to the record. But thats just the set-up Jim Inhofe needed to complete this two-man demolition of consensus and to expose the main White House adviser on climate change as a chronic crank, as the Daily Caller reports:
The exchange started with Barrasso addressing the committees witness, Environmental Protection Agency Director Lisa Jackson.
Forty years ago, the same scientists that are predicting the end of the world now from global warming were predicting the end of the world from global cooling, said Barrasso. So if we had committed the same amount of taxpayer resources and government manpower that the administration now wants us to commit to prevent global warming if wed done that prevent global cooling, we wouldnt be the most prosperous nation on earth.
Still later, Inhofe got into the science debate by citing a 1971 study by Dr. John Holdren, who just so happens to be President Obamas advisor on science technology. In that study Holdren wrote, The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Holdren went on to write that the effects could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.
A visibly satisfied Inhofe then turned to Boxer, and stated, So even the presidents people are agreed with me, Madam Chairwoman!
The passage scanned at Zombietime is even more explicit about Holdrens hysteria over hypothermia, emphases Zombies:
It seems, however, that a competing effect has dominated the situation since 1940. This is the reduced transparency of the atmosphere to incoming light as a result of urban air pollution (smoke, aerosols), agricultural air pollution (dust), and volcanic ash. This screening phenomenon is said to be responsible for the present world cooling trenda total of about .2°C in the world mean surface temperature over the past quarter century. This number seems small until it is realized that a decrease of only 4°C would probably be sufficient to start another ice age.Moreover, other effects besides simple screening by air pollution threaten to move us in the same direction. In particular, a mere one percent increase in low cloud cover would decrease the surface temperature by .8°C. We may be in the process of providing just such a cloud increase, and more, by adding man-made condensation nuclei to the atmosphere in the form of jet exhausts and other suitable pollutants. A final push in the cooling direction comes from man-made changes in the direct reflectivity of the earths surface(albedo) through urbanization, deforestation, and the enlargement of deserts.
Remember Holdren is one of the leading voice in the US on global warming now. Hes also Obamas climate-change czar.
I havent seen that kind of a setup and payoff since Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made movies with Dorothy Lamour. That was during the period when American industry and economic expansion held the national consensus rather than Chicken Little hypotheses with chronically faulty models and contradictory results. Man, I guess I am getting old.
Update: Sen. Inhofes office wrote to correct the identification of Mark Udall in the video, which I got from the DC. Its actually Tom Udall, his brother.
Holdren’s fault.
ping for later...I need to make some popcorn for this one.
:-)
Bwahahahahahahaha! Priceless.
Anybody out there .....that remembers the Coming Ice Age scare in the 70’s?
I think there was a Time magazine cover and story devoted to the new ice age we were entering.
nice.
Yes, I remember it. Then they realized that they couldn’t destroy the economy if there were an ice age because that would be a good reason to drill, baby, drill.
So they switched to “global warming,” which gives them the opportunity to halt energy production here because who needs to heat anything if the whole world is getting warmer?
May God forgive me, I hate those lying dogs.
Heck yes...it snowed TWICE in Seattle in 1974....in DECEMBER!!!
mark (for stepdaughter)
ROTFLOL Boxer got her ears boxed.
Thanks!
LOL....Excellent!
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Don’t confuse Boxer (Ma’am) with facts. She’s too damn dumb to understand the argument.
Actually, in the seventies, it was getting cooler. The trend reversed in the eighties.
Then, in the nineties, it really did start to get warmer -- up until 2001, then it started getting cooler again.
Fact is, 1890's, the 'teens, the thirties, the fifties and the nineties were warming. The oughts, the twenties, the forties, the sixties, the seventies, eighties and the oughts were cooling.
Do you see a pattern here? And it has nothing to do with man.
Do you see a pattern here.
It’s fun to watch, but making Boxer look like an idiot is not really much of a challenge.
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