Sociology of climate denialism

I've been struggling to understand this, and a letter to the editor of the Kingston Whig Standard today is worth noting.

Local climate denier, G.F. Millar writes:

Re: Gwynne Dyer's "History will repeat itself," Nov. 2.

So the bad news is coming fast, according to the intrepid Mr. Dyer. Last year the "bad news" was: CO2 had reached the tipping point at 350 ppm, (head for the hills!). This year it seems we can live with 450 ppm. Can't wait for 2010.

In 1975, the NAS "experts" exhibited the same hysterical fears -- this time, however, asserting a "finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling would befall the Earth within the next 100 years."

In The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun? Can We Survive It?, published in 1975 by Prentice-Hall, its author, Lowell Ponte, captured the then prevailing mood: "The NAS report was shocking, for it represented a warning from some of the world's most conservative scientists that an Ice Age, beginning in the near future ... was not impossible." Contending that we may be on the brink of a (100,000 year) period of colder climate, the NAS urged an immediate near quadrupling of funds for research. "We simply cannot afford to be unprepared for either a natural or man-made climate catastrophe."

Mr. Ponte lectured the public: "Global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for 110,000 years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance: the survival of ourselves, our children, our species."

Any of this sound familiar?

This is basically a cut and paste job (with some little changes for exaggeration) a May 1998 (!) letter to the editor of right-wing newspaper, the Washington Times, by noted climate change denier, S. Fred Singer.

He writes:

But this exaggerated concern about global warming contrasts sharply with an earlier NAS/NRC report, "Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action." There, in 1975, the NAS "experts" exhibited the same hysterical fears—-this time, however, asserting a "finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years."

The 1975 NAS panel claimed to have good reason for their fears: Global temperatures had been in steady decline since the 1940s. They considered the preceding period of warming, between 1860 and 1940, as "unusual," following as it did the "Little Ice Age," which had lasted from 1430 to 1850.

In "The Cooling: Has the next ice age already begun? Can we survive it?", published in 1975 by Prentice--Hall, its author Lowell Ponte captures the then prevailing mood: "The NAS report was shocking, for it represented a warning from some of the world's most conservative scientists that an Ice Age beginning in the near future . . . was not impossible." Contending that we may be "on the brink of a [10,000 year] period of colder climate," the NAS urged an immediate near-quadrupling of funds for research. "We simply cannot afford to be unprepared for either a natural or man-made climatic catastrophe [of global cooling]."

At about the: same time, as Mr. Ponte relates, a group of "leading climatologists," meeting in Bonn, Germany, warned that "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near-certainty to major crop failures within a decade [because of global cooling]. If national and international policies do not take these near-certain failures into account, they win result in mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence that could exact a still more terrible toll . . . ."

By 1975, the climate had indeed been cooling for about 35 years and many scientists were becoming increasingly convinced that another Ice Age was imminent. These experts included climatologist Stephen H. Schneider, who later demonstrated his intellectual flexibility by becoming one of the strongest proponents of global warming. Lester R. Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute, was then a major enthusiast for cooling, crop failures and famine. Whether freeze or fry, he is still predicting global famine.

Mr. Ponte's book claims that "since 1970, half a million human beings in Northern Africa and Asia have starved because of floods and droughts caused by the cooling climate. . . .In the continental United States severe floods have destroyed billions of dollars' worth of property in the Mississippi Basin, the Great Lakes region, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. . . . Parts of the nation were hit with what the National Weather Service called 'record cold.'. . . Rain and floods described as 'the worst in a century' struck large areas of Washington state."

In Europe, the 1960s were years of unusual cold, but the "odd warmth" of the 1970s was also considered a feature of global cooling. Warned British climatologist Hubert H. Lamb, "Like chills and fever, these are an signs of a planet catching climatic cold."

Mr. Ponte lectures the public: "Global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for 10,000 years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance: the survival of ourselves, our children, our species."

Any of this sound familiar?

I've marked the places where they diverge with a different colour. Mr. Millar, it appears, wasn't satisfied with the misinformation of Fred Singer. He had to make up some more with his little changes. His changing "could" to "would" and round brackets to square brackets are pretty significant changes.

I wonder how much of global warming denialism is really just copying and pasting of old S. Fred Singer stuff that has been thoroughly debunked.

As for the question of global cooling "hysteria", it is well documented that
in the 1970's only the popular press was pushing the notion of an imminent
ice age. Climate scientists were not. The 1975 National Academy of Sciences
report, that Millar refers to, simply says that scientists of the time did not
think they had a good quantitative understanding of the earth's climate.
They could not predict how the climate would change in the future and
therefore they had to admit a finite (a technical term used by scientists to
mean non-infinitesimal, that is, non-zero) probability of global cooling -
and lots of other possibilities.

Nowadays we do have climate models and immensely better historical climate
data to check them against. These models all show that, unless some serious
changes take place, we are headed for a hotter earth.