BMI Special Report — Fire and Ice — FYI.
It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of “geologists.” Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming – it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age.
The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be “wiped out” or lower crop yields would mean “billions will die.”
Just as the weather has changed over time, so has the reporting – blowing hot or cold with short-term changes in temperature.
Following the ice age threats from the late 1800s, fears of an imminent and icy catastrophe were compounded in the 1920s by Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan and an obsession with the news of his polar expedition. As the Times put it on Feb. 24, 1895, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.”
Yes, but this time its different 🙂
And just what is the average temperature of the universe? I’d be more worried about a new Ice Age than people surfing in Seattle.
I guess the loss of ice in the Arctic and Greenland is just imaginary.
Does it matter?
For one, global warming can actually jumpstart an ice-age. Look it up.
Moreover, what’s the downside? Use less energy, create less pollution, stop releasing so much carbon that had been frozen in the earth into the atmosphere… The world can only be better, right?
Finally, what if we pass the point of no return. If there’s at least a chance we may be contributing to any type of condition that’s gonna be bad for humanity (i.e. your kids), it’s better to take action sooner than later.
If I smell fire, I don’t just say “oh yeah, my wife burnt a pot the other day”. I’ll get off my arse and check if something is on fire around the house or outside…
Big difference between reports from the media – and media covering scientific evidence uniformly agreed to, peer reviewed, etc..
But, then you all know the difference. Right?
Yeah and they’re doing it now too. The media reports on the IPCC reports are way off.
*yawn* wake me up when the thermostat is back to “normal”
Science loses out to politics. James Watson had to resign his position, with other scientists saying that his hypotheses on race and IQ were beyond the range of acceptable debate. We also hear from many left-wingers talk of global warming ‘deniers,’ and such, wanting to shut off all skeptical scientific inquiry.
#9 see #4
If continuing the debate doesn’t delay serious action than I’m all for it.
The problem is that there are people who have a stake in the status quo that will delay action as long as they possibly can and will use the fact that there isn’t 100% consensus to drag their feet.
Just like the tobacco companies continued to deny that cigarettes were linked with some very serious health problems long after most people considered the evidence as irrefutable.
No matter how overwhelming the evidence becomes you will always be able to find someone who will say that it’s part of some natural phenomenon and that man-made green house gas emissions are not the cause.
10–Tom==you have it quite right.
“How do you know what you know and how do you change your mind?”
Given that NONE OF US actually know anything about Global Warming, we only know what is reported and what we can google?
Logic does play a role. “We” pump green house gases into the atmosphere for 150 years and then want to claim that it should have NO effect??? Does that make sense??
I used to be 100% Human Caused global warming based on 150years of burning coal/gas. But==it is very telling that we have had hot and cold periods in the past==ie, the Sun.
So, again logically, people and the Sun both play a role in the climate we have. Question then is what do humans affect and what can we rationally do? I would look to those experts who recognize the dual enfluence and try to juggle both elements. Lomberg does a good job of this.
With China and India aiming to create new oil based economies rather than leapfrogging the technology for solar and hydrogen==yes, we are all doomed. Atleast the 70% (?) of folks that live within 10 feet of sea level and the balance of folks that will have to put up with their migration?
Love to be around when that happends.
Yet those same peer reviewed journals now are shutting down and setting limits on the debate, as we have seen with regards to Mr. Watson.
By the way, can someone please ask Paul Erlich, what happened to those famines that he predicted?
#13…..your right…but then who is having a scientific debate? Since the *correct* scientists simply accuse those with ANY view other than their preferred view(human causation, no matter what, ignore history) of being not qualified or *denier’s* and belittle them along with the help of their friends in the media and politics.
Debate is a discussion of peer’s on the merits of facts, the global warming Taliban (IPCCand others) have decreed it *human caused* and thats that.
They did and outstanding job at averting an Ice Age.
#13 – I stopped reading your post at your lame reference to “Fox News”.
Anyway, can someone tell me in what year the Earth’s temperature was at its supposed optimum?
18–Frank==that would be 1997 just before drought conditions set in at 5-6 places in this globe of ours.
But “generically” the optimal termperature is whatever it is when you discover humans are causing the changes. Hotter, colder, drier, wetter==doesn’t matter. Status quo is good. Change is bad. All because of the changes impact on population/food/ production, infrastructure distribution.
Now stop being difficult.
The dinosaurs, with all their fiery flatulance, caused a spot of global warming, and look what it got them.
NEWS=(equals)
someone SAID something, DID Something, or shot a cop.
Theory=(equals)
This is HOW I’ see it working…maybe…I think…
Let me edit that…It works THIS way IF”’
Nope, not right, EDIT…
If’ this works THIS way, and this does THAT’, and if the world is FLAT, then things should happen LIKE THIS”’…
OK, I got it this time….
If this equals THAT and THAT is doing this, then THAT will lead to something else, and something Else leads us to SOME conclusion, but the Some can only be created IF this and this and THIS happen over THERE’………….
And the Band plays on..
#4 – The downside is destroying the economy and giving up everything that makes life worthwhile, “just in case”.
Not to mention that one of the unproven assumptions here is the GW is bad.
#17, Angel… LOL.
#19,Change is bad. All because of the changes impact on population/food/ production, infrastructure distribution.”
Bobbo, not necessarily so. Veggie gardens are sprouting up along Greenland’s costal areas for the first time. Greenlanders are quite happy about it. Extrapolate that scenario for all (currently) cold climates.
Yeah it would seem that it’s all pretty darn complicated, huh?
Bjorn Lumberg (the “Skeptical Environmentalist”) was one who sounded the alarm about bogus global warming hysteria years ago. Today, he talks about possible positive effects of GW… for example approximately 20K people in Great Britain now die of winter cold per year. If it heated up as much as the Medieval Warm period (~1K yrs. ago), he says only 2K would die. Just so you know.
(nothing was mentioned about tropics/deserts overheating, though…)
What the end result of global warming will be is going to decided by what happens over the next five or ten centuries. One reason the Middle East is such a disaster area is that much of it is a desert nowadays because civilizations have risen and fallen like clockwork when they grow beyond the area’s carrying capacity. It actually was “The Fertile Crescent” before centuries of human occupation repeatedly laid waste to the ecosystem. There are numerous examples of cultures experiencing environmental disaster and going down the toilet. Some seem to be self inflicted. Industrial production of CO2, wholesale deforestation and desertification
may not in and of itself be sufficient to explain what the scientific community see as Global Warming, but it may be enough to jump start large scale climate change. We’re screwing with a VAST planetary machine that’s complicated WAY beyond our best minds current ability to fully understand, and it’s bound to have unforseeable results. Remember, on a cosmic scale, Easter Island and Planet Earth are pretty much on the same level. Which would you rather have , 12 billion people, most of whom are in squalor, misery and despair, or somewhere around a billion, who are almost ALL living a decent, healthy and sustainable existence? I know what I’d pick. Unless I were a Pharaoh, of course.
I will fix global warming if elected and I will fix any thing else that bothers you
How many votes do think that is worth?
Just practicing my corruption talk since I am in the game now
the previous statements were total sarcasm for those who tend to get their panties in knots easily
GetSmart –
Actually the “Fertile Crescent” only refers to a very small part of the Middle East – what is now Iraq (north of the Euphrates), northern and eastern Syria, and Israel and western Jordan.
The rest has pretty much always been desert.
Omar –
Actually most if not all of the major extinctions in the history of the Earth came during periods of falling temperatures, and surges of life came during periods of rising temperatures.
#29 – You are correct that the Fertile Crescent is the river areas in and around Iraq.
Some of us may have noticed that the scientific community is constantly stirred by a burble of claim and counter-claim over What Is Actually Happening, which is as it should be… (all is well!).
What I can gather from the debate is, whether we ourselves are causing the weather and/or climate patterns to change, or if it’s just another natural hiccup in a long series of them (and it certainly looks as though some sort of change is going on from here), we must nevertheless learn to deal with it, whatever it is.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to look into a crystal ball and see the historians of several hundred years from now, pondering our current situation:
“Boy, they really had their hands full… stupid wars, overpopulation, energy depletion… and then on top of it all the climate went haywire!
Oh well, at least they got their environmental act together.”
#23 and is it “proven” that the economy would be destroyed and everything “worthwhile” would have to be given up?
No.
In the nineties when companies spent hundreds of billions of dollars on averting the millenium bug, did that ruin the economy? As a I recall, the economy was booming.
#33 even billions of dollars spent on millennium bug was just fracture of a percent of worldwide economy. Insignificant amount.
What green zealots want to enforce upon all of us – i.e. Kyoto Protocol – will affect significantly economy of all countries worldwide.
There is nothing wrong with trying to make our planet cleaner and healthier for all of us, of course.
But forcing us to *pay* for polluting the environment doesn’t make it any cleaner or greener, does it? 🙂 Its just yet another way to screw the public and squeeze more money under some “environmental tax” name.
WE NEED ENERGY and we need more and more of it. Everyone knows that, yet since 1997 when Kyoto Protocol and Accords were signed, how many clean, cheap and effective nuclear power plants have been built in all those countries that signed it? LOL look it up, you’ll laugh too 😀