Pre-1939 articles on a warming trend.

[Weather-history]

Here's a report on temperature trends from 1880 to 1937 by G. S. Callendar from August 1938

Here's a report on the warming Arctic from March 1938 by C.E.P. Brooks

[jethro]

Fascinating stuff Mr. D, wouldn't look out of place in a modern day publication.

Didn't we then go into a period of colder, snowier winters here? 1939/40 seeing the start of a cooler period or have I remembered those dates completely wrong?

[osmposm]

Absolutely fascinating, Mr D: I had no idea how long people had been investigating climate change in such detail.

On googling "G S Callendar", the man talking about CO2 driven global warming in 1938, I came across this extensive and very comprehensible (to an amateur) history of Man-made Global Climate Change research:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

I hope that this essay may help those who believe that pro-AGW science is all dishonesty, corruption and vested interest understand a little more - and in particular that many, many scientists laboured for many, many years with clearly absolutely no pro-AGW agenda to reach the conclusions held - rightly or wrongly - by the majority of researchers in the field today.

I've just seen that the homepage for these essays by Spencer Weart is on Shuggee's list in The Basics of Environment Change. I haven't read the others yet, but I cannot recommend this one too highly.

Ossie

Edited July 20, 2008 by osmposm

[johnholmes]

thanks very much for that link Osm - a huge amount of reading but the first couple of pages are fascinating, it also shows the side you quote about long before politics got involved and the somewhat unfair calls for or against AGW by both lobbies about scientists from each side.

I shall read the whole link with great interest.

thanks also to Mr D for making the first post.

Edited July 20, 2008 by johnholmes

[Gray-Wolf]

Were it not for Mr Hilter and his boys in brown we could have logged the dramatic onset of the period of global dimming.......oooooh, wasn't there a snowy winter after all that global chaos and munitions building???

Ho hum.

[johnholmes]

or even Mr Hitler!

[Chris Knight]

The experts were right then, they are right now. Then thirty years of cooling caused them to shelve CO₂ AGW in favour of an impending ice age. Everything comes full circle. Hang on, full circle, isn't that a cycle...

[Gray-Wolf]

or even Mr Hitler!

John my boy, you can't say that without invoking a certain ......... Law, which tends to stymie open debate

[Roger J Smith]

Well in all fairness all this shows is that the greenhouse gas hypothesis being advanced then may have been the same erroneous one being advanced today, a close fit between the slope of postulated warming from carbon dioxide and the slope of the natural variation underway. Given that the temperature peaks around 1988 to 1999 were no more spectacular (and in North America less spectacular) than the 1930s one could just as soundly argue that we are only seeing natural variations, or that the input of greenhouse gas has been over-estimated. I favour the latter, thinking that there must be a slight increase from the greenhouse gases, but that the majority of observed warming at any time since 1930 or 1890 or whenever, is related to natural variation.

As to global dimming, that theory was advanced to try to broaden the foundation of global warming, and is no more sound in my opinion than its bigger brother. I can't imagine that there was a much greater amount of coal dust suspended in the air in the 1940s than there had been in the 1920s and 1930s, or would be in the 1950s, but natural variations continued to drive temperatures through this period. The fact that there were so many cold winters around the Second World War to 1947 was no doubt due to some natural variation, quite possibly a rebound effect from the widespread ice melting in the arctic in the 1930s. This gives me hope that I might make a well-timed bet and live off Osmposm's substantial (I hope) pension, rather than my own meagre one.

Edited July 21, 2008 by Roger J Smith

[osmposm]

......This gives me hope that I might make a well-timed bet and live off Osmposm's substantial (I hope) pension, rather than my own meagre one.

Roger, you'll confuse everyone - that was in the other (1963 article) thread. Anyway, I'm afraid my pension is scarcely worth a bet - I've been an insufficiently employed actor for 35 years or so, and such money as I'll have in 8 years' time will have to come out of my (fortunately biggish London) house. And I ain't betting that - however sure I am of future snowfall in Cambridgeshire!

(It'll be just my luck if the weather does turn snowier in the next couple of decades: I'll be far too old to enjoy it.)

[Weather-history]

Not sure what people makes of this but here's a short article from 1928.

"The US coast guard ship Marion, which sailed from Boston on July 12th, on an oceanographical expedition to Baffin Bay and the west coast of Greenland returned to harbour in New London, Connecticut, on Sept 18th after a very successful voyage. The full scientific results are naturally not yet available, but such great progress has been made that it is already possible to indicate the main conclusions. The first is the discovery of abnormally warm water ----five degrees warmer than normal ----- 100 metres thick covering an area of 100,000 square miles. This great heat reservoir must have far-reaching climatic effects and supports the assertion frequently made that the Arctic climate has undergone a great temporary amelioration. Another interesting discovery is that the temp. and salintity of the bottom water in the trough between Greenland and Labrador ---------- 2.6C and 34.90 parts per 1000---- shows that the water cannot be derived from ice melting on the surface but suggests that is derived by creeping along the bottom of the Arctic......"

Edited October 14, 2008 by Mr_Data

[jethro]

Not sure what people makes of this but here's a short article from 1928.

"The US coast guard ship Marion, which sailed from Boston on July 12th, on an oceanographical expedition to Baffin Bay and the west coast of Greenland returned to harbour in New London, Connecticut, on Sept 18th after a very successful voyage. The full scientific results are naturally not yet available, but such great progress has been made that it is already possible to indicate the main conclusions. The first is the discovery of abnormally warm water ----five degrees warmer than normal ----- 100 metres thick covering an area of 100,000 square miles. This great heat reservoir must have far-reaching climatic effects and supports the assertion frequently made that the Arctic climate has undergone a great temporary amelioration. Another interesting discovery is that the temp. and salintity of the bottom water in the trough between Greenland and Labrador ---------- 2.6C and 34.90 parts per 1000---- shows that the water cannot be derived from ice melting on the surface but suggests that is derived by creeping along the bottom of the Arctic......"

Interesting stuff Mr D.

What I'd like to know is how come we've had such a hiatus in scientific knowledge? If we knew this back in 1928, presumably further studies were made in order to clarify the whys and hows of such findings. Where has that knowledge gone? Why has the enormous assumption been made that we are causing all these changes now, when studies show it happened before. Why wasn't this information referred to when studying today?

Could it possibly be that 2 and 2 were assumed to make 4 because that's what was being looked for? I believe so.