{"id":113529,"date":"2009-12-27T12:02:39","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T17:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nw0.eu\/2009\/12\/27\/an-old-failed-prediction-of-global-warming.html"},"modified":"2009-12-27T12:02:39","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T17:02:39","slug":"an-old-failed-prediction-of-global-warming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/113529","title":{"rendered":"An Old Failed Prediction of Global Warming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Migrant Mind<\/a>
\nSaturday, Dec 26th, 2009<\/p>\n

In 1976 Stephen Schneider published a book called The Genesis
\nStrategy. It is about how near term cooling of the earth\u2019s
\nclimate would cause famines around the world. Schneider, at that time
\nthe Deputy Head of the Climate Project ant NCAR, proposed storing food
\nto avoid mass starvation.<\/div>\n

Climate skeptics have taken some of the passages in this book to
\nindicate that climatologists were predicting a coming ice age. That is
\nnot entirely true. Global warming advocates chose passages that show
\nthat he was aware that CO2 could warm the planet and claim that
\nskeptics are simply wrong.<\/p>\n

This is not the post to get into that but I was interested in one of the predictions this guy made<\/p>\n

Schneider wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are various estimates of the response of globally
\naveraged surface temperatures to a doubling of CO2 from a out 300 ppm
\nto six hundred ppm by volume \u2013 a value projected to occur by
\nabout the years 2025 to 2040. State-of-the-art climate models
\nunequivocally predict that such a doubling of CO2 would raise the
\nsurface temperature of the earth. Although these predictions vary
\nconsiderably, probably the best order of magnitude estimate that can be
\nmade today is for a surface warming by some 1.5 to 3oK globally and
\nthat the temperature increase in the polar regions might well be
\namplified severalfold. But there is far less agreement over the
\nmagnitude and location of tghe warming than over the fact that CO2 will
\nwarm. Projection of the CO2 increase, granted the continuation of
\npresent trends to the year 2000, suggests, as said earlier, an increase
\nin CO2 concentrations of about 20 to 25 percent, a change corresponding
\nto an approximately 1 deg K global surface temperature rise (plus the
\nassumed amplification at the poles.\u201d<\/em> Stephen Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), p. 180
\nNow, we have continued to put out CO2 as he was worried about, but his
\nprediction of an additional 1 deg C change by 2000. This has not
\nhappened. The trend has gone up about a third of what he predicted and
\neven the most beneficial interpretation says that he was wrong by half.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

His book was also about the famine from droughts that would happen in the next 2 decades from when he wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it is possible that technology could provide for
\nbasic human needs for all humanity in fifty or one hundred years, the
\nimmediate fear is that serious threats to major portions of the human
\nspecies will occur in the present decade or the next one; the threats
\nwill come if the production of essential goods and services continues
\nto be so closely balanced with absolute need that only the slightest
\nimbalance\u2013whether produced inadvertently by the collapse of an
\novertaxed ecosystem, or deliberately by political removal of a
\ntechnological prop\u2013could mean death or extreme deprivation for
\nmillions.\u201d <\/em>Stephen Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), p. 17-18<\/p>\n

The famines never arrived. How sad for Schneider but good for the world.<\/p>\n

And of course, he played God pondering whether or not it was good to
\nlet people starve in the 1970s so that people in the 1990s could live.
\nBut the famine he predicted, didn\u2019t come to pass. Strike two<\/p>\n

\u201d An evaluation of whether it is \u201cbetter\u201d to
\nlet people starve now, even though food may be available, to prevent
\npossible greater suffering later presents a moral problem of immense
\ndimensions. I return to this issue shortly.\u201d<\/em> Stephen Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), p. 33<\/p>\n

Who put him in charge?<\/p>\n

He did say in a 1971 Science article that man would put so many aerosols into the air that we would trigger an ice age.<\/p>\n

However, it is projected that man\u2019s potential to pollute
\nwill increase six- to eightfold in the next 50 years. If this increased
\nrate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise
\nthe present global background opacity by a factor of 4, our
\ncalculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as
\n3.5\u00b0K. Such a large decrease in the average surface temperature of
\nEarth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient
\nto trigger an ice age.<\/em>S.
\nI. Rasool and S. H. Schneider, \u201cAtmospheric Carbon Dioxide and
\nAerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate,\u201d Science
\n173(1971), p. 141<\/p>\n

Even with China pouring billions of tons of aerosols into the atmosphere, we have yet to trigger the ice age.<\/p>\n

False prophets of doom should not be allowed to remain prophets of doom with records like this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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