« Why is Heinz Ketchup still so popular in Pittsburgh? | Main | Department of Unintended Consequences »
Strange Trip
Yesterday I chaperoned a group of ten year-olds to the Smithsonian. As the bus rolled by, I pointed out the Federal Reserve to my kid and one of the other boys his eyes all aglow said "ooohh, that's where Ben Bernanke works!" Even taking into account the possible uber-nerdiness of the group, this was a surprise.
On another note, five years ago (!) I pointed to a sign at the Smithsonian warning of another ice age and recent global cooling - well the sign (or something like it) is still there only now it does have a little placard above saying that this exhibit will soon be changed to reflect more recent science.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on April 22, 2009 at 07:32 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Global temperatures peaked in 1998. Current Arctic sea ice coverage is the largest it's been in 7 years. Antarctic ice coverage is well above the 1979-2000 mean. Lake Superior froze over this past winter for the second time in 6 years, an event that historically happens only once every 20. Sunspot activity is at an almost 100 year low. I would say global cooling does, in fact, reflect the latest trend.
Posted by: Shaun at Apr 22, 2009 7:49:13 AM
WE DID IT! Way to go Kyoto!
Posted by: josh at Apr 22, 2009 8:16:07 AM
Where did you find such nerdy ten year olds?
Posted by: Daniel at Apr 22, 2009 8:42:17 AM
Another ice age? Has all the ice on Antartctica and the artic circle disappeared? Technically we are still in glacial retreat within an ice age.
Posted by: Joe at Apr 22, 2009 8:56:58 AM
That Ben Bernanke story made my morning and possibly my day. For some reason I get lots of joy knowin that some kid somewhere gives a crap about stuff besides the Jonas Brothers.
Posted by: Emily at Apr 22, 2009 10:14:46 AM
@Shaun: Henceforth, may we be agreed to offer citations with our selective presentation of environmental factoids which confirm our bias?
There's too many 'talking points' floating about these days, and if the dismal Republican performance the last three months has demonstrated anything, it's the danger of 'talking points'.
Posted by: sleepy_commentator at Apr 22, 2009 10:20:03 AM
CO2 is the mostly deadly poison known to man. Humans who exhale it need to be taxed for their crimes against Gaia. Soon the useless
eaters will be eliminatyed and we can all enjoy our green collar jobs in while living in true freedom.
Posted by: Cosmotarian Overlord at Apr 22, 2009 10:31:21 AM
The "new ice age" thing was never the opposite of the greenhouse effect. It was one of the suite of predictions in "How does the Earth respond *after* the average surface temperature rises by 2C?" One of those possible responses is that ultracold, ultradry places (Antarctica, central Canada) turn into less-ultracold (but still below freezing) places with massive, massive amounts of snowfall. Hence: warming *can* lead to more snow in some places and less in others.
Posted by: Ben M at Apr 22, 2009 11:05:39 AM
Ben, I do not think you are right. I too heard the "new ice age" theory and it had nothing to do with global warming, it had to do with a long-term global cooling trend independent of any human action or cause.
Posted by: Cliff at Apr 22, 2009 11:53:01 AM
After yesterdays insane supreme court ruling, I wonder how many more smart little kids will get
strip searched in the government run education facilities.
Posted by: Gabe at Apr 22, 2009 12:42:56 PM
The "new ice age" thing was never the opposite of the greenhouse effect. It was one of the suite of predictions in "How does the Earth respond *after* the average surface temperature rises by 2C?" One of those possible responses is that ultracold, ultradry places (Antarctica, central Canada) turn into less-ultracold (but still below freezing) places with massive, massive amounts of snowfall. Hence: warming *can* lead to more snow in some places and less in others.
If you were correct we would not have had people suggesting to preemptively work to warm the planet. We did.
Which is not to say it was ever a position most or many scientists in related fields took (I've got no idea), but merely that such people and beliefs did exist.
Posted by: Careless at Apr 22, 2009 1:04:28 PM
I've heard two distinct global cooling claims. The first is that we're on the verge of the next ice age (this is what the Smithsonian was talking about). The second is that global warming will melt the ice caps, which will dilute the salinity of the oceans and somehow shut off the Gulf Stream. Without the Gulf Stream, Europe and eastern North America would be much colder than they are now (The Day After Tomorrow was based on a particularly ridiculous interpretation of this theory). Neither of these theories is exactly mainstream today.
Posted by: Sean P. at Apr 22, 2009 1:17:40 PM
My own proposal for people exhaling CO2 is to require everybody
to wear chlorophyll masks. Why have not climate activists picked
up on this yet?
Regarding this business of global cooling, I do not know what or
where that sign in the Smithsonian is, and therefore what it is
based on. However, it is a fact that in the 1970s there was concern
about possible global cooling. If one goes back and reads carefully,
one finds careful climatologists speaking about two competing, human-
induced elements affecting global climate that went in opposite directions.
One was CO2, leading to warming. The other was aerosols, or particulates,
particularly those laden with SO2, which led to global cooling.
There is a non-trivial viewpoint held by some non-trivial observers that
says that the explanation of the last century or so of global temperature
was that we had a global warming trend in the early 20th century that then
got side-tracked by a massive expansion of coal-based industry around the
world without any pollution controls. Sulfur-laden aerosols surged, offsetting
the warming trend and inducing a cooling that occurred until into the 1970s.
Then we passed anti-SO2 and anti-particulates environmental legisltation in
the higher-income countries, and so began to cut back those items, allowing
the CO2 rise to again dominate.
Regarding the recent trends, the view of such a prominent "global warming
skeptic" as Patrick Michaels at Cato is that in fact the longer term trend
is to global warming due to CO2, although not as rapidly as many predict,
but that we are in a temporary downturn due to La Nina and other effects.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 22, 2009 1:17:59 PM
Barkley is correct. The sign from the Smithsonian is old, probably dating from the 1970s, when global cooling was under discussion. It is not pointing to local side-effects of global warming.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Apr 22, 2009 1:31:25 PM
Ben has it right
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16988-why-antarctic-ice-is-growing-despite-global-warming.html
"Satellite data shows that sea ice has shrunk west of the Antarctic Peninsula and grown in the Ross Sea. Because the increase in sea ice extent has been greater than the reduction around the Antarctic peninsula the net effect is that since the ozone hole appeared 30 years ago, Antarctic ice has grown. The researchers say their models suggest this is most likely a result of the ozone hole although they cannot rule out the possibility that natural variations in sea ice extent have also played a role."
Posted by: JSIS at Apr 22, 2009 1:39:16 PM
If the earth is cooling, it is because of climate change. If it is warming, it is because of climate change. If it is wetter, it is because of climate change. If it is drier, it is because of climate change. What a miraculous theory -- it must be true because it cannot be disproved.
Posted by: Borealis at Apr 22, 2009 1:47:48 PM
If the earth is cooling, it is because of climate change. If it is warming, it is because of climate change. If it is wetter, it is because of climate change. If it is drier, it is because of climate change. What a miraculous theory -- it must be true because it cannot be disproved.
Posted by: Borealis at Apr 22, 2009 1:48:13 PM
The earth is getting cooler because I am on it.
Posted by: josh at Apr 22, 2009 3:15:41 PM
JSIS,
Does that article say anything about the active volcano underneath the part of the ice shelf that is melting in Antarctica?
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Apr 22, 2009 3:34:39 PM
@sleepy_commentator:
My AGW skepticism has revealed your own selection biases. A: I'm not a Republican. B: I'm not even American. As for links, I thought MR readers clever enough to make use of Google. My bad.
Current Arctic Sea Ice Levels comparison:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Danish Meteorological Institute Ice Cover April 21, 2009:
Current Antarctic Sea Ice Levels comparison to 1979-2000 mean:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Cyrosphere Today
Sunspot Activity:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8009185.stm
BBC (if they're not satisfactory, I do recommend trying Google)
Satellite image of Frozen Lake Superior:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/mqt/Lake%20Superior%20ice%20Mar3_09tbig.jpg
NOAA
AGW and modern environmentalism show very similar characteristics of religions, and little in the way of fact based science. So if you want to discuss selection bias...
Posted by: Shaun at Apr 22, 2009 4:35:55 PM
@sleepy_commentator:
My AGW skepticism has revealed your own selection biases. A: I'm not a Republican. B: I'm not even American. AGW and modern environmentalism show very similar characteristics of religions, and little in the way of fact based science. So if you want to discuss the use of selection bias... As for links, I thought MR readers clever enough to make use of Google. My bad.
Current Arctic Sea Ice Levels comparison:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Danish Meteorological Institute Ice Cover April 21, 2009:
Current Antarctic Sea Ice Levels comparison to 1979-2000 mean:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Cyrosphere Today
Sunspot Activity:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8009185.stm
BBC April 21, 2009 (if they're not satisfactory, I do recommend trying Google)
Satellite image of Frozen Lake Superior:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/mqt/Lake%20Superior%20ice%20Mar3_09tbig.jpg
NOAA
Posted by: Shaun at Apr 22, 2009 4:39:26 PM
@Shaun: It takes time and effort to track down supporting information for unfamiliar claims, even using Google. For the sake of argument, let's say it would only take three minutes to find a citable source for each of your four claims, which I think is quite a low estimate. That means that every person who wanted to actually verify your claims would need to spend twelve minutes of productivity doing so. Most people will not choose to do so. In such an environment, anyone can claim just about anything, on the flimsiest of bases, and it will just add to the level of background noise.
On the other hand, if novel factual claims are accompanied by citations, the source can be quickly assessed if needed. One look at the sea ice graph, for instance, satisfied me that your argument was very weak, if not mendacious.
Posted by: sleepy_commentator at Apr 23, 2009 12:15:07 AM
The next great real-estate bubble: Alaska and/or Canada and/ or some Scandinavian country and/ or Siberia.
Dibs on Vancouver!
Posted by: ardyan at Apr 23, 2009 2:09:41 AM
Where did you find such nerdy ten year olds?
Posted by: SPECTEC Laptop Battery at May 18, 2009 10:14:38 AM
Beautiful site!
Posted by: Nike SB at Jul 6, 2009 5:17:34 AM
