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The part I quoted isn't about Mitchell, and the article doesn't even quote Mitchell at all. It just reports what one of his studies concludes about temperature

The part I quoted isn't about Mitchell, and the article doesn't even quote Mitchell at all. It just reports what one of his studies concludes about temperature trends. I think you've yourself been misled. Mitchell accepted global cooling was really happening and the world was indeed cooling since 1940. See for yourself, here's one of his papers published in 1975: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1729-9_12 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1729-9_... "In balance, the net thermal impact of all global-scale pollution (including thermal pollution) is likely to be one of warming, perhaps increasingly so after 2000 A.D. It is concluded that the cooling of climate since 1940, apparently still in progress, is a natural phenomenon plausibly related to an enhanced stratospheric loading by volcanic dust in the period" The fact that the world got colder between 1940 and 1975(ish) was never really in dispute up until climatologists realized that they couldn't explain the contradiction between that and the greenhouse gas nature of CO2. At that point they started re-calculating old temperatures to make the cooling trend disappear, and telling people that all the stories published about their agreement in the 60s and 70s were just awful terrible journalists somehow getting what they were saying entirely backwards. To finish it off they claim that anyone who points out that this isn't true is an immoral denier who should be silenced. It's very much 1984 in real life.

random314 4y ago
> In balance, the net thermal impact of all global-scale pollution (including thermal pollution) is likely to be one of warming, perhaps increasingly so after 2000 A.D So Mitchell was right all along! What is this so called "contradiction" that you are talking about?
- origin_path 4y ago
  The contradiction appears there, in the abstract of his paper. He realized that greenhouse gas physics should trap warmth and CO2 was going up, but accepted that the world had actually been cooling for decades. So how could he explain this contradiction? He presented a hypothesis that maybe it was a volcano-related natural phenomenon, in which cooling caused by volcano exhaust was offsetting the warming effects of CO2, and that over time CO2 would overpower volcano cooling to create rising temperatures. But it was just a guess. The main reason this is important is for the meta-level issue of what claims about consensus really mean. Newsweek didn't really care if the world got colder or warmer, they just wanted to sell papers. Mitchell wasn't misrepresented by the article nor me, as defrost claims. The article doesn't even quote him, it simply cites temperature data from one of his studies as a way to establish what trends existed at the time. Newsweek does so accurately because that's exactly what Mitchell's data did show, as my citation of his paper establishes. By Mitchell's own words, in 1975 the world had not only been cooling for decades but was still cooling! Now defrost might argue that the Newsweek article was deceptive because, in fact, there was at least one scientist who rejected the "ice age doom is imminent" consensus as irresponsible. Indeed, claims about consensus are always very dubious for that exact reason, it's so rarely true. By 1975 there were certainly more than just Mitchell! But a Newsweek reader of the time couldn't have known that. They were being told that scientists in general believed in global cooling. Indeed nobody could deny the world was cooling, as that's clearly what the facts showed, so you'd have been a cooling denier if you'd said otherwise. If anyone had objected by raising Mitchell as a counter-example they'd have been told he was fringe, that his theories were outside the mainstream, that he was delaying action to prepare for the ice age and that even he accepted long term global cooling was real! It can all be very confusing because to learn anything from this, you have to learn to doubt what you "know" is right based on what a handful of people have told you other people believe. Which is hard! But there's an even more confusing meta-level issue. Look at modern graphs of temperature: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ Look at the period between 1940 and 1975. The cooling Mitchell was writing about, that Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, that so many academics researched and reported on, that governments funded investigations into, that people proposed covering the Arctic with coal dust to fight - it's gone. The graph is flat. According to modern climatologists the cooling trend Mitchell was trying to explain with volcanos never existed at all ... and anyone who says otherwise is a malicious liar.
  - random314 4y ago
    > According to modern climatologists the cooling trend Mitchell was trying to explain with volcanos never existed at all ... and anyone who says otherwise is a malicious liar Who are the modern climatologists that are saying that the data recorded and reported by Mitchell does not exist? Are you saying that the NASA data graph is false for 1940-1975? I couldn't find any graph in Mitchell's paper.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      Yes, it's been changed. Mitchell's paper doesn't have a graph but there are plenty that do. On mobile now but if you research this topic (don't use Google) you can find graphs that show the per year deltas from older data sources to newer. It's not a secret they do this, they admit it when people find out, but it's never brought up by those who are pushing doom for obvious reasons (+the edits specifically created a simple warming trend). In this case you don't actually need a graph anyway, because the editing in that period is so extreme. Just look at his abstract. He says the world was cooling since 1940 and still is in 1975. Obviously that statement makes no sense if you look at modern databases during the period. To understand why he said that you have to look at older graphs, before climatology became so corrupted. They do indeed show a step and decades long fall in temperatures.
      - random314 4y ago
        Can you please cite these older "non-falsified" graphs directly instead of providing vague instructions like "don't use Google "? I don't care about engaging in debates about editorial language. I would also like to see some citations about these modern climatologists claiming that the data from 1940-75 are malicious lies.

random314 4y ago

> In balance, the net thermal impact of all global-scale pollution (including thermal pollution) is likely to be one of warming, perhaps increasingly so after 2000 A.D So Mitchell was right all along! What is this so called "contradiction" that you are talking about?

origin_path 4y ago
The contradiction appears there, in the abstract of his paper. He realized that greenhouse gas physics should trap warmth and CO2 was going up, but accepted that the world had actually been cooling for decades. So how could he explain this contradiction? He presented a hypothesis that maybe it was a volcano-related natural phenomenon, in which cooling caused by volcano exhaust was offsetting the warming effects of CO2, and that over time CO2 would overpower volcano cooling to create rising temperatures. But it was just a guess. The main reason this is important is for the meta-level issue of what claims about consensus really mean. Newsweek didn't really care if the world got colder or warmer, they just wanted to sell papers. Mitchell wasn't misrepresented by the article nor me, as defrost claims. The article doesn't even quote him, it simply cites temperature data from one of his studies as a way to establish what trends existed at the time. Newsweek does so accurately because that's exactly what Mitchell's data did show, as my citation of his paper establishes. By Mitchell's own words, in 1975 the world had not only been cooling for decades but was still cooling! Now defrost might argue that the Newsweek article was deceptive because, in fact, there was at least one scientist who rejected the "ice age doom is imminent" consensus as irresponsible. Indeed, claims about consensus are always very dubious for that exact reason, it's so rarely true. By 1975 there were certainly more than just Mitchell! But a Newsweek reader of the time couldn't have known that. They were being told that scientists in general believed in global cooling. Indeed nobody could deny the world was cooling, as that's clearly what the facts showed, so you'd have been a cooling denier if you'd said otherwise. If anyone had objected by raising Mitchell as a counter-example they'd have been told he was fringe, that his theories were outside the mainstream, that he was delaying action to prepare for the ice age and that even he accepted long term global cooling was real! It can all be very confusing because to learn anything from this, you have to learn to doubt what you "know" is right based on what a handful of people have told you other people believe. Which is hard! But there's an even more confusing meta-level issue. Look at modern graphs of temperature: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ Look at the period between 1940 and 1975. The cooling Mitchell was writing about, that Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, that so many academics researched and reported on, that governments funded investigations into, that people proposed covering the Arctic with coal dust to fight - it's gone. The graph is flat. According to modern climatologists the cooling trend Mitchell was trying to explain with volcanos never existed at all ... and anyone who says otherwise is a malicious liar.
- random314 4y ago
  > According to modern climatologists the cooling trend Mitchell was trying to explain with volcanos never existed at all ... and anyone who says otherwise is a malicious liar Who are the modern climatologists that are saying that the data recorded and reported by Mitchell does not exist? Are you saying that the NASA data graph is false for 1940-1975? I couldn't find any graph in Mitchell's paper.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Yes, it's been changed. Mitchell's paper doesn't have a graph but there are plenty that do. On mobile now but if you research this topic (don't use Google) you can find graphs that show the per year deltas from older data sources to newer. It's not a secret they do this, they admit it when people find out, but it's never brought up by those who are pushing doom for obvious reasons (+the edits specifically created a simple warming trend). In this case you don't actually need a graph anyway, because the editing in that period is so extreme. Just look at his abstract. He says the world was cooling since 1940 and still is in 1975. Obviously that statement makes no sense if you look at modern databases during the period. To understand why he said that you have to look at older graphs, before climatology became so corrupted. They do indeed show a step and decades long fall in temperatures.
    - random314 4y ago
      Can you please cite these older "non-falsified" graphs directly instead of providing vague instructions like "don't use Google "? I don't care about engaging in debates about editorial language. I would also like to see some citations about these modern climatologists claiming that the data from 1940-75 are malicious lies.