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OLDEN WARMING

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Via Anthony Watts, whose readers discover a great wealth of ye olde warmening in the NYT archives:

1923:

Glaciers have disappeared and land once covered with field ice is bare.

1924:

Glaciers are moving from their age-old beds, pouring greater quantities of ice into the sea than recorded history has known. Broad areas of land are sinking to new levels. A number of islands have disappeared.

1930:

The Alpine glaciers are in full retreat. Out of 102 glaciers observed by Professor P.L. Mercanton of the University of Lausanne and his associates more than twothirds have been found to be shrinking.

1935:

The great glaciers of the West, last remnants of the Ice Age on continental United States, have been retreating from their strongholds in the mountains at double time since last year.

1947:

A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today.

Of course, the same archives also yield collosal climate coldness concerns:

1895:

The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.

1961:

Winters Since ‘40 Found Colder In Studies by Weather Bureau; Data Indicate, a Reversal of a Warming Trend That Began in 1881

1961:

After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.

1975:

Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable

1978:

An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

Thus nature, and the NYT, balances itself. The paper really should return to the Grandfather Index of climate judgment:

1934:

America is believed by Weather Bureau scientists to be on the verge of a change of climate, with a return to increasing rains and deeper snows and the colder Winters of grandfather’s day.

1936:

The recent severely cold weather, following, in the main, many mild Winters, has caused people throughout the country to ask: “Does this portend a return to the reputed cold Winters of ‘granddad’s day’ years ago?"

Yep; all over the US, that’s exactly what people were asking. But listen to folks from the actual Granddad’s Day era and they’ll tell you the real cold was earlier still:

1890:

Is our climate changing? ... The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young ...

Also, there are fewer mastodons. Last word to the ominously-named, but perfectly sensible, Mr Scarr:

1924:

Some People Always Think the Climate Is Changing, But Mr. Scarr Says There Is Nothing in His Records to Justify the Notion

UPDATE. Mister Ifft and Mister Scarr: a Lyle Thriller.

Posted by Tim B. on 03/18/2008 at 02:22 AM
  1. Unlike a lot of people, I have a pretty good memory of things that happened more than a week ago. At the moment I’m explaining, to anyone who will listen, how the current cool wet summer and autumn, with all those storms, reminds me of the kind of weather that I commonly experienced when I was a kid. That would coincide with the “coolening” pre-1978.

    But you tell the kids that today, and they won’t believe you!

    Posted by AlburyShifton on 2008 03 18 at 02:51 AM • permalink

  2. Gee whillikers! They must have had a lot of Earth Hours in olden times.

    Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 03 18 at 02:55 AM • permalink

  3. Possibly one of the best posts ever Tim! :)

    Posted by Baron on 2008 03 18 at 03:00 AM • permalink

  4. #2

    Ah, The Olden Days

    Posted by Pickles on 2008 03 18 at 03:04 AM • permalink

  5. False mustaches, enough for everyone!

    Posted by bondo on 2008 03 18 at 03:38 AM • permalink

  6. Ah, but this time it’s different.
    This time it’s caused by our profligate use of fossil fuels and the resulting CO2 emissions.

    Posted by chrisgo on 2008 03 18 at 03:59 AM • permalink

  7. Beautiful stuff, Tim.

    If Adolf H. was alive today, he would be amazed, I tell you!

    Posted by Kaboom on 2008 03 18 at 04:10 AM • permalink

  8. You all just stop this propagandising right this minute. I happen to know that Al Gore invented global warming in 2005.
    This stuff is just forgery.
    It’s preforgery. Ya that’s the ticket.
    Aldolf is a preplagerous old preforger!

    Posted by papertiger on 2008 03 18 at 04:19 AM • permalink

  9. brrr@gore ... loved this post!

    Posted by American Interests on 2008 03 18 at 04:41 AM • permalink

  10. Nicely gathered, Tim!

    I too remember the olden days of monsoonal weather in Brisbane and surrounds.

    Weird weather, indeed!

    Posted by kae on 2008 03 18 at 04:46 AM • permalink

  11. ’A Gorebal Warning?’ doco recently on the Oz History channel was a bit pro-UN, IMHO.

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 03 18 at 05:02 AM • permalink

  12. I reckon Summers are getting hotter!

    Of course, I’ve been whining that Winters are getting colder too. Maybe because I’m getting older and everything seems worse to a cranky old bastard like me :-p

    Actually, the last 3 Summers have definitely been on the mild side, and that’s quite a pronouncement for someone who’s as heat intolerant as I am!

    Posted by Brian on 2008 03 18 at 05:02 AM • permalink

  13. #4 pickles
    Fond memories of Gov. Frontbottom, Clenchybot ‘n all ...

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 03 18 at 05:25 AM • permalink

  14. "Some People Always Think the Climate Is Changing”

    According to all available data it is changing, always has been.

    Over the last 500,000 years atmospheric temperatures appear to have been cycling over a 10C range every 100,000 years (roughly). Unfortunately, for AGW devotees these changes don’t appear to be caused by human activity or by rising and falling levels of greenhouse gases...not that that will sway their faith any.

    Posted by Dave Surls on 2008 03 18 at 05:38 AM • permalink

  15. Dat would be Olden Warmening, by yimminy!
    (Note to ABC: re-read The Fortunes of Richard Mahony and Lucinda Brayford before you decide that long droughts are a new phenomenon, particularly in the Mallee.)

    Posted by blogstrop on 2008 03 18 at 05:59 AM • permalink

  16. Well boys and girls, admiral nelson believes in globinal wretching, so, apparently does mccain; in fact the only world leader who thinks the whole thing is utter, mind-lobotomising crap is Vaclav Klaus. The inmates are running the asylum; I’ll have to stop taking my sanity pills.

    Posted by cohenite on 2008 03 18 at 06:30 AM • permalink

  17. Gee, the NYT couldn’t be wrong.....could it?

    /naive leftie

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 03 18 at 07:13 AM • permalink

  18. Guys

    Someone on Jen Marohasy’s site linked to Tim’s post here and got this response from one of the kiddie posters. Check out the links for some REAL ‘intillgince’. It seems to be a chap or chappette named Luke who thinks he is a man of science whilst doning his cape mongrammed with a capital ‘GWC’ on the chest. (That’s Global Warming Crusader)

    ‘Interesting that revisiting the ol’ global cooling story is back in vogue.

    http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/02/study_debunks_global_cooling_c.php

    As for mockery - you have to laugh:
    http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2008/03/lesson-1.html
    and
    http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2008/03/lesson-2.html

    And that, my friends is the extent of rational argument the warmenistas keep throwing up in the face of some basic old common sense.

    Posted by mindfree on 2008 03 18 at 07:14 AM • permalink

  19. #4
    Not to forget Charlie the wonder dog and the pissweak kids

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 03 18 at 07:15 AM • permalink

  20. Tim, the post you put up is essential reading for all those idiot teachers putting the kids through all this BS

    Posted by mindfree on 2008 03 18 at 07:17 AM • permalink

  21. I forgot Stephen Harper of Canada, who said “Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth producing nations.” What a nice man.

    Posted by cohenite on 2008 03 18 at 08:12 AM • permalink

  22. Here are a few choice phrases lifted from Phatty Adams’ latest piece in the Australian defending a certain Democrat Governor by “putting things in perspective”.  The only one I think he missed is the “9/11 troof”.

    well-heeled corporate donors
    the great whorehouse of the White House
    military-industrial complex
    corporate polluters
    Monsanto heavies
    Halliburton
    Big Oil
    House of Bush’s relationship with the royal House of Saud
    (the US is) big on bombs, so light on brains
    Catholic cops creamed the profits from vice
    John McCain and his lobbyist girlfriend, a Ms Iseman

    Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2008 03 18 at 08:28 AM • permalink

  23. Colder, warmer, colder, warmer, colder then warmer… why, it’s almost as if it’s cyclical!  But then it wouldn’t be whitey’s fault, would it?

    Posted by Latino on 2008 03 18 at 09:37 AM • permalink

  24. #23 Latino..... I guess you missed the memo. Everything , I repeat , everything , is whitey’s fault.  Report to your commissar immediately for re-education .

    Posted by greene on 2008 03 18 at 10:22 AM • permalink

  25. And of course there’s this:

    “A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated… 2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and 80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years, entirely disappeared… The floods, which have the whole summer inundated all those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened …”

    In all fairness, that’s not from the NYT. It’s from letter from The Royal Society to the British Admiralty dated 1817.

    You have to wonder about the fate of the poor polar bears back then. Guess they went extinct due to mass drowning.

    Posted by Mikael on 2008 03 18 at 10:48 AM • permalink

  26. Please. Everyone knows that weather didn’t begin until the day after GWB became president. Until then for the first 4.5 billion years the Earth was exactly the same all year round.

    Posted by chrisbg99 on 2008 03 18 at 11:05 AM • permalink

  27. So, in the eyes of the popular media, it seems the sky has always been falling.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 18 at 11:18 AM • permalink

  28. #18 mindfree

    It seems to be a chap or chappette named Luke who thinks he is a man of science whilst doning his cape mongrammed with a capital ‘GWC’ on the chest.

    The Globular Warmening Crusaders remind me of the Scientologists…

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 18 at 11:22 AM • permalink

  29. Stop the Enturbulation!

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 18 at 11:39 AM • permalink

  30. Look, maybe the climate is warming, maybe it’s not.  But who should risk it?  No one I say.  Let’s just shut down all mfg in America and the West, transfer it all to China and other developing countries for a net change of zero in greenhouse gas generation, and shift utility power from coal and natural gas to solar and wind power.  That’s the safe road to take.

    Posted by wronwright on 2008 03 18 at 11:40 AM • permalink

  31. Wind power is now on the enviro’s “naughty list”, wronwright, as windmills have been classified as “bird blenders”. So that’s right out.

    Solar apparently is now the only approved source… just don’t mention the silicon tetrachloride the Chinese solar panel manufacturers are dumping into irrigation ditches.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 18 at 11:46 AM • permalink

  32. wronwright, that’s one of my personal favorites.
    Some believer in the global warming religion gets angry with me for calling it a religion and not science and then hits me with Pascal’s Wager.
    That’s just funny.

    Posted by Veeshir on 2008 03 18 at 12:35 PM • permalink

  33. "You humans are freaking idiots.  You don’t have the perceptive qualities of a rock.”

    /Spokesman for the polar bear marching and chowder society.

    Posted by yojimbo on 2008 03 18 at 12:40 PM • permalink

  34. I don’t know why you wouldn’t believe in something like climate change.  I look at it as the earth’s metabolism.  The metaphor might not be entirely correct, but it does explain why you have these cyclic patterns of climate throughout the centuries.

    Posted by yojimbo on 2008 03 18 at 01:07 PM • permalink

  35. Looks like the Doom Mongering Community is going to have to go back to the drawing board and come up with another Scary Apocalypse on the Horizon. 

    Sigh

    A mongerer’s work is never done.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2008 03 18 at 02:37 PM • permalink

  36. #32 Veeshir

    And a 16-ton block of irony didn’t fall on his head?

    That is funny.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 18 at 02:37 PM • permalink

  37. Mister Ifft?

    Doctor Hoel?

    Mister Scarr?

    Too easy. Just too damn easy.

    Posted by lyle on 2008 03 18 at 03:21 PM • permalink

  38. Irony.

    Oh, and can some one do me a favor and see what comment shows up here?  I’m just wondering if the comments displayed are consitent when viewing from diffent IP adresses (and it took them 4 days before they posted that comment).

    Posted by aaron_ on 2008 03 18 at 04:09 PM • permalink

  39. What’s the difference between a Climatologist and a Scientologist?

    Nothing.

    Posted by aaron_ on 2008 03 18 at 04:23 PM • permalink

  40. #34 to further your comment, while focusing on the word “cyclical”, Earth is currently experiencing menopause - going through periodic hot flashes. 
    yea, that will convince the damn hippies.

    Posted by missred on 2008 03 18 at 04:40 PM • permalink

  41. Tangentially on-topic (Gaia-rape): Rumor has it that NBC will be making an American version of Top Gear and are talking to my hero Adam Carolla about hosting it. He’s a perfect fit - a car nut with experience (via The Man Show) conceiving silly stunts. I’m giddy.

    Posted by Dave S. on 2008 03 18 at 04:51 PM • permalink

  42. I was in a diner last week and allowed, since we have had record snowfall here in Vermont, and it is still cold (11F this morning) and we are expecting 5 more inches tomorrow, but I digress, I allowed that this was a pretty good old fashioned winter. Despite the records, I was immediately hit with, “not like when I was a boy” by the old timers.

    Posted by moptop on 2008 03 18 at 06:11 PM • permalink

  43. "Ou sont les neiges d’antan” - Some old French Poet from the 15th century.

    Posted by moptop on 2008 03 18 at 06:14 PM • permalink

  44. One last, check out this picture from Vermont.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5621678.html

    But it’s “not like the old days.”

    Posted by moptop on 2008 03 18 at 06:18 PM • permalink

  45. Mister Ifft and Mister Scarr: a Thriller

    Said Mister Ifft to Mister Scarr:
    ‘I know the kind of man you are.’
    Said Mister Scarr to Mister Ifft:
    ‘I am a killer; it’s my gift.’

    Then Mister Ifft endarked his voice:
    ‘I care not if it’s gift or choice;
    Just meet a man, and play your role.
    That man is Doctor Adolf Hoel.’

    Said Mister Ifft to Doctor Hoel:
    ‘I asked you once - Is there a soul?’
    And Doctor Hoel, recalling, laughed:
    ‘I know you now – I called you daft.’

    Said Mister Ifft to Doctor Hoel:
    ‘Humiliation took its toll;
    So sensitive, young students are…
    Ah, here’s my colleague, Mister Scarr.’

    Said Doctor Hoel to Mister Scarr:
    ‘Please tell me what your interests are.’
    Said Mister Scarr to Doctor Hoel:
    ‘I have just one – Is there a soul?’

    Then Mister Ifft felt his smile fade;
    His mortal life drained down the blade.
    Said Mister Scarr to Mister Ifft:
    ‘You’ll have your answer – that’s my gift.’

    Posted by lyle on 2008 03 18 at 07:59 PM • permalink

  46. In Cut & Paste in todays Oz....

    Richard Littlejohn, in London’s Daily Mail, on why the Weather Channel founder wants to sue the ex-VP

    Even Al Gore deserves his day in court

    Posted by ozconservative on 2008 03 18 at 08:32 PM • permalink

  47. Dammit, Tim, just because things have happened before doesn’t mean there’s an historical precedent!

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 03 18 at 08:38 PM • permalink

  48. Completely O/T, but I found this gem on a News Ltd item about some ‘tard who obtained a bent medical cert so he could see Sheed’s last game, and was quite rightly given the arse for doing so.

    I agree with Hans Australians are now overworked and underpaid. Compared to other developed economies. Thats why we need a Greens government.

    Posted by: Daniel of Sydney 10:13am today
    Comment 91 of 117

    I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that The Greens were really a cargo cult, and here’s confirmation; I’m sure Bob Brown is impressed with the stunning intellect of his supporters, after all they show about the same level of economic understanding and sense of reality as

    Fearless Leader.

    Posted by Habib on 2008 03 18 at 08:51 PM • permalink

  49. Global warming is more than a scam. It is the greatest example of Blair’s law we will ever see.

    Communists such as the Labor left see it a way to bring down capitalism, the socialists such as the Labor right see it as a new tax measure and the extreme greens see it as the way to drag the world into a Pol Pot like agrarian utopia.

    The likes of Gore and Flannery and much of the scientific world see it as an endless gravy train.

    The EU sees it as a way of crippling the energy-rich US economy and if it can take out Australia and Canada, all the better.

    Posted by Contrail on 2008 03 18 at 09:11 PM • permalink

  50. The more things change the more they stay the same?

    Posted by Penguin on 2008 03 18 at 09:24 PM • permalink

  51. The environment and the mystery surrounding it is a classic liberal temptation ... The U.S. and Climate Change: Toward a better understanding

    Posted by American Interests on 2008 03 18 at 09:26 PM • permalink

  52. #27 Spiny Norman.Just remember,bad news sells papers etc.whereas good news simply sucks.

    Posted by Lew on 2008 03 18 at 09:33 PM • permalink

  53. Do you notice the newspaper reports of potential coldening coincide with colder periods and the warmening reports coincide with warm periods?

    Nah, it’s just a coincidence, a little natural variability, while the warming trend continues - except when it doesn’t.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 18 at 10:26 PM • permalink

  54. #45, My God, lyle.  From Ogden Nash to Edgar Allen Poe.  You are versatile.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2008 03 18 at 10:34 PM • permalink

  55. Oh, come on peoples! They didn’t even have computers back then. Or, the algore.

    All that old timey warmening and coldening talk was just that...talk. How could they really know what was happening to their climate just by looking out a window or reading a thermometer?

    Posted by rinardman on 2008 03 18 at 10:47 PM • permalink

  56. #31 Spiny, the enviro-mentalists on energy are like the Pope on birth control. The Pope supports the rhythm method because it doesn’t work; the ‘mentalists are only in favour of energy generation schemes that will not work.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 18 at 10:56 PM • permalink

  57. Arthur C. Clark has died.

    HAL be missed!

    Posted by rinardman on 2008 03 18 at 10:58 PM • permalink

  58. $3 right here in my backyard, Moptop.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 18 at 10:59 PM • permalink

  59. Geez...Arthur C. Clarke.

    Sorry, it’s late.

    Posted by rinardman on 2008 03 18 at 11:00 PM • permalink

  60. #54

    Thanks, Becca.

    I just loved those names.

    Posted by lyle on 2008 03 18 at 11:42 PM • permalink

  61. awesome list.
    #6

    Ah, but this time it’s different.

    I hope you’re being ironic.

    Posted by daddy dave on 2008 03 19 at 12:03 AM • permalink

  62. #57 rinardman

    The great Triumvirate are all gone now:

    RIP, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 19 at 12:16 AM • permalink

  63. #62 yes it’s sad. the least heralded in the public these days is the one that was considered at the time to be the greatest: Heinlein.
    I suspect his strongly libertarian and pro-military views might have something to do with it.

    Posted by daddy dave on 2008 03 19 at 12:37 AM • permalink

  64. #63

    More than just libertarian, Heinlein was always a bit of an iconoclast. I suspect he didn’t much like it if too many people agreed with him.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 19 at 12:50 AM • permalink

  65. On the subject of Libertarian authors, I had the great fortune to have a card-carrying Libertarian as a modern history/modern literature/political science teacher in a high school, whose favorite authors were Mark Twain, Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. He was a genuinely facinating individual (Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters looks and sounds so much like him, it’s almost frightening), and was the reason I joined the Libertarian Party when I first registered to vote. I may not be a member anymore, but I still have an abiding contempt for collectivism and statism in all its forms.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 19 at 01:11 AM • permalink

  66. #65
    Sounds like my history teacher, he introduced us, running a library club in his spare time, to Mark Twain and R Heinlein amongst others.
    Can still recite passages of, Huck Finn. (not sure if it’s a good thing though)

    Best teacher I ever had.

    Posted by Orion on 2008 03 19 at 05:14 AM • permalink

  67. Hey, this article has just been linked by fark.com under the geek tag.

    Posted by Zonc on 2008 03 19 at 07:12 AM • permalink

  68. Lyle, that was a top piece of work.

    As for Arthur - I have a vision of him trying to get into heaven:

    "Open the Pearly Gates, Stanley!"

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 03 19 at 08:24 AM • permalink

  69. Yojimbo/Missred
    You could have included its name: the Al Gore Rhythm.

    Cheers

    Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2008 03 19 at 03:40 PM • permalink

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