Natural History Museum Pushing Global Cooling
Back in the spring of 2007, I went with my little brother to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum and was surprised to see this outdated panel pushing concern about global cooling based on some highly speculative 1970s-era science:
In the 70s the study of earth’s climate was in its infancy. There was some data, that now turns out to be a very short-term trend, that pointed toward cooling. Other data pointing toward a warming trend. More research was done, and we now understand that there’s been a long-term warming trend throughout the industrial era, caused largely by growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and that the trend has been intensifying as emissions levels continue to rise.
Over two years ago, this display was flagged with a small sign warning that the exhibit in question was being updated to reflect current science. But I went back to the museum yesterday, and it’s still there! A number of other displays in the museum do reflect an accurate understanding of the climate change situation, so it’s not as if the people running the museum don’t know what’s going on. So I don’t understand why they can’t change this.
26 Responses to “Natural History Museum Pushing Global Cooling”
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September 8th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Don’t worry, we’re not global warming denialists, we’re just lazy.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:43 am
There was never any serious credance given to this in the scientific community, even in the 70s. There were a few loud people who couldn’t get their work published in any scientific journals, so they went to Newsweek or some other venue.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Climate ’science’ is still in it’s infancy.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am
If climate science was in its infancy in the 1970s, it would seem kind of like a pre-teen right now. Lots of acne, sweating, awkward silences, etc.
Sounds about right.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Totally off topic, but it’s amazing to me that Obama would name a manufacturing czar who’s never been involved in manufacturing anything except labor contracts
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26824.html
September 8th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
This info-poster may be from the ’70s, and yes I know global warming is real, but a story in last Friday’s (9/4) NYT states that recent studies show that global warming is stalling a slow trend towards cooler temperatures in the polar regions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/science/earth/04arctic.html
David S. Kaufman, the lead author and a climate specialist at Northern Arizona University, said the biggest surprise was the strength of the shift from cooling to warming, which started in 1900 and intensified after 1950.
“The slow cooling trend is trivial compared to the warming that’s been happening and that’s in the pipeline,” Dr. Kaufman said.[...]
The last ice age ended 11,000 years ago and the next one, according to recent research, could be 20,000 or 30,000 years off discounting any influence by humans. The last ice age buried much of the Northern Hemisphere under a mile or more of ice.
With humans’ clear and growing ability to alter the climate, Dr. Overpeck said, “we could easily skip the next opportunity altogether.”
September 8th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
You don’t know enough about the work of Harm de Blij and the whole ‘conveyor belt’ analysis of the impact global warming could have on the way the earth regulates temperature.
The gist (as I understand it, which ain’t necessarily complete) is that for as long as anybody can measure, warm water from the equator moves north and sinks below cold water from the Arctic, because the warmer water is denser (faster evaporation) — thus, the oceans have a kind of conveyor belt that moves warm water north and cold water south. This is the primary mechanism by which the world’s climate is stabilized — which, strictly speaking, is geography rather than ‘climate science’.
But as glaciers melt, that adds fresh water to the surface of the oceans in the north (south, too, just in a different way cuz of geography — de Blij is a geographer). The analysis goes that fresh water, being much less dense than sea water, will tend to stay on top of the Arctic currents flowing south. Being pressed down already, colder Arctic waters will then begin to serve as a barrier to the denser, warmer waters that have been flowing north since the last Ice Age, rather than to slide over them as has been going on for the past umpteen thousands of millenia.
If warmer tropical currents of denser water stop flowing all the way north, THAT’S what will trigger a new Ice Age — thus, de Blij’s theory.
So don’t be so quick to dismiss a geographer’s take — it might well be a more acute understanding of how this works, to take a longer view. The end result of global warming is just as likely to be the return of the Ice as it is to be a new warmer global equilibrium.
As somebody said, all we really know is that climate is a dangerous, angry beast — and we’ve been poking it with sharp sticks.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
“Ice Age” has 2 meanings. A technical-scientific one and a popular one. (From memory) We’re in an Ice Age now but the glaciers have temporarily retreated. Once the Tibetan plateau is ground down to sand many millions of years from now, we’ll be out of the current Ice Age. Or something.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Maybe Inhofe won’t let ‘em take it down?
September 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Yes Campesino that is totally off topic.
Re the Times story on stalling of cooling arctic temperatures due to human activity: the paragraphs under the url are from the Times article; I hit the Submit button prematurely, my apologies.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
AGW isn’t in its infancy. Svante Arrhenius proposed the basic mechanics of it in the 19th century. The belief in AGW was put into abeyance because of the theory that the absorption bands of the atmosphere were saturated at the pertinent bandwidths. Once that was shown not to be the case the physics behind AGW followed pretty quickly.
How can you tell a denialist? They never discuss the basic science.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
How can you tell an alarmist? They don’t understand the basic science.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
’splain it to us, Cat.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I’m not sure what is supposed to be wrong with this sign. Global warming, by all accounts, is a short-term trend, induced by human behavior in the last few centuries. But some long-term trend obviously has to be responsible for the climate changes that brought about (and ended) ice ages. Global warming induced by human behavior may simply be so strong that it has reversed this long-term trend towards cooling for the time being. But there’s little doubt that there will be another ice age, at some point.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Smarter than the Smithsonian. Really, is there any subject that little Mattie is not a global authority on?
September 8th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Squint real hard, maybe get out a magnifying glass. That big mountain pass to the left, see it? It’s Jesus, riding a dinosaur! Wow!!
September 8th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Being in an ice age is not inconsistent with global warming.
From wikipedia (Ice Age):
“Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres;[1] by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).”
September 8th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
[...] climate change, global warming consequences, global warming effects | TreeHugger | Photo via Yglesias The Smithsonian boasts one of the nation’s most respected, most visited, and most famous group of [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[...] Photo via Yglesias [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mysteriously, the human evolution portion of Natty History isn’t quite up to date either. That’s weird.
As for Ice Age, that Sid the Sloth is hi-larious.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
If you look at the Earth’s climate history over tens of millions of years then it’s quite true that we are still in an Ice Age– and eventually the glaciers will return. Global warming will delay but not prevent that day. Gobal warming may have unpleasant, even catastrophic, effects on human civilization, but as far as the Earth goes it’s just a slight blip on the thermometer. There have been eras when the whole planet was one big ball of ice, and others when tropical swamps were found well into the polar regions.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
So Global Warming could forestall a coming ice age. Good.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
[...] Photo via Yglesias [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
[...] the museum this weekend and noticed that despite the definitive evidence that the earth is warming, the exhibit is still up: Over two years ago, this display was flagged with a small sign warning that the exhibit in [...]
September 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
[...] the museum this weekend and noticed that despite the definitive evidence that the earth is warming, the exhibit is still up: Over two years ago, this display was flagged with a small sign warning that the exhibit in [...]
September 9th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
So Global Warming could forestall a coming ice age. Good.
Only if it were scheduled within 1000 years. By that time, human contributed CO2 will be out of the atmosphere. Warmth will come from the heated curses of our few descendants over us squandering all the carbon energy.