Nixon was told: sea level would rise by 10 feet in 31 years | Hacker News Reader

Nixon was told: sea level would rise by 10 feet in 31 years

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45 pointsjackfoxy36 comments

During the Cold War, the US Government had two sets of calculations for the effects of nuclear arms (at least according to my dad, who worked for some time studying tactical nuclear weapons in the Marine Corps). The calculations for American losses were a worst case scenario--in other words, they were a generous overestimate of how much death and destruction nuclear weapons could inflict on American targets. The calculations for enemy losses were also a worst case scenario--in this case, a generous underestimate of how much we could kill and destroy by nuking them. The difference between these figures was often tremendous, and yet both figures remain very legitimate planning tools for the business of nuclear warfare.

If Moynihan's figures were intended to serve as a similar worst case scenario for climate change, they were not off by much--the increase in CO2 concentration was off by less than a factor of 2, and the measurements for temperature and sea level were just over an order of magnitude off (reasonable if you take worst-case scenarios for both CO2 concentration and the effects of higher CO2 concentration).

Incidentally, some factors, such as glacial melting, seem to be progressing faster than contemporary global warming estimates have predicted.

i think it just goes to show that "the environment" and "weather" are ridiculously complex and difficult to predict.

i'm sure they thought they were right at the time.

i'm sure they thought they were right at the time

I'm sure they were scared that they might be right, hence the creation of the EPA.

It's hard to judge predictions from so long ago because they were used to influence policy. That policy then influenced what actually happened, so it's not like two independent time points. I doubt that the seas would have risen 10 feet, but if there was no EPA, not environmental movement, not push to curb CO2 emissions, etc... we would probably be in a lot worse shape.

I could be totally wrong, but my impression is that at the time of the EPA’s creation, the model of pollution that it was designed to prevent was based on more or less directly harmful contamination: litter, mercury, smog, that kind of thing.

I don’t think (and again, this is only an impression) that they saw the EPA as addressing global CO2 emissions.

Your impression is certainly consistent with the major environmental legislation that gave the EPA its teeth: we have a Clean Air Act and we have a Clear Water Act. We do not have a Carbon-free Act from the same time period empowering the EPA to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

> It's hard to judge predictions from so long ago because they were used to influence policy. That policy then influenced what actually happened

No. The author's point is that the model used to predict climate change was terribly broken. Scientists told Nixon "if CO2 goes up by X in the next 30 years, average temperatures will go up by Y". That hypothesis is now testable, because we can look at CO2 and temperatures over the predicted time span.

Anything else the EPA may or may not have done has no bearing.

"Scientists told Nixon "if CO2 goes up by X in the next 30 years, average temperatures will go up by Y"."

CO2 didn't go up as much as was predicted. It's only increased by about half as much. If the relationship is non-linear, much of the temperature increases could be loaded into the second half of CO2 rise.

Anyway, it was 1960s science. They had far less data, primitive tools, etc.

Your argument is usually correct, but I am not aware of any successful large-scale effort at limiting CO2 emission to date.

What is really shows that people will use bad science and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) fear tactics to influence policy. What is shows is that this has been going on for 50 years.

The argument for emissions controls has never been that the science is ironclad. It's not. Any honest scientist (whose tenure and/or publishing life doesn't depend on AGW being "real") will admit this. Off-camera. :)

The (only) argument for emissions controls IMO is that, all things being equal, better to err on the side of caution and cleanliness. A rational society would simply live and produce cleanly because, for a number of reasons which have nothing to do with the flimsy science of AGW, that's the best way to "live".

We don't live in a rational society. So what we get are ineffective controls for a poorly-defined problem that may or may not exist. Worst of both worlds, really. I've never understood why AGW needs to be "true" in order for us to mandate, say, cleaner emissions. AGW is just one possible reason on a laundry list of reasons to go green.

(Of course, when I say "green" I mean "nuclear".)

How does this show the science was bad?

Who is "they"? There's no mention of what the science said at the time. It's just one memo from a layperson.

"i think it just goes to show that "the environment" and "weather" are ridiculously complex and difficult to predict."

Climate isn't as hard to predict.

I live in Boston, Mass. It's hot now. I know it'll be cold in six months.

I can also predict that in Phoenix, AZ, it'll much warmer. And that in Greenland, it'll be much colder.

That's not climate.

Climate is what's happening in the same place on the same hour of the same day with similar stochastic conditions year over year. What's your fourth of july weekend going to be like in Boston next year? In 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 years?

I remember being in grade three (1988) and being told about what was then called 'the greenhouse effect' - some apparently respected scientists informed us alarmingly of how whole parts of the world would be underwater by 2000.

I also remember similar predictions from the late 1980s. I think the bottom line is that prognostications of doom sell much better than more conservative predictions with caveats and margins of error added. Scaremongering is more likely to result in increases in funding, career promotion, magazine/journal articles, impassioned speeches by celebrities, etc.

I'm a bit older (was in third grade in '69-70, right after watching Apollo 11 in real time) and the climate science consensus in the '70s and I think before was that we were headed for very bad global cooling, a new Ice Age that would put a mile of ice on top of much of the continental US. Read rather a lot of topical science fiction based on this "science".

Of course it was all man's fault (ignore that we're due for another Ice Age anytime now, see e.g. Fallen Angels: http://www.baen.com/library/ -> The Authors -> Larry Niven) due to sulfur dioxide increasing the reflectivity of clouds.

The "greenhouse effect" has a long history in scientific writings, though not necessarily always in the context it is now. The oldest example I can think of is its appearance in Fourier's writings. Of course, it was in French so it was like "effet de serre"

The greenhouse effect was a plot element in a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Time_(episode)

Eh, primitive data was primitive.

Note that the key part of the prediction was the rate at which CO2 would increase. As it turned out, atmospheric CO2 hasn't yet reached the point that was predicted. So it should be no surprise that the sea level effects, etc, have not occurred either.

The key principles are correct: CO2 does trap heat. Atmospheric CO2 has been increasing over the century. Do the math. Clearly, unless you're counting on a deus ex machina to save your bacon, or expecting to be raptured out beforehand, the conservative stance is to reduce CO2 emissions in order to maintain CO2 levels within the range that is best compatible with the current distribution of humans on earth.

Also, only a moron would use predictions from 40 years ago, based on 40 year old science and data, as an argument against current client science. We have vastly more data, better tools, better methods, better technology, and science has progressed since the Nixon administration.

If you're going to do that, you might as well claim that the movie "Toy Story" would be impossible to create, because the Apollo program computers were unable to do 3D rendering.

It reminds me a bit of creationists, in 2010, arguing over Origin of the Species as if it were the latest in biology.

The Crichton lecture linked on that page is very good: http://www.s8int.com/crichton.html

I thought the 70s were all about global cooling?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

There was a lot of press hype about it, but global cooling wasn't widely accepted scientifically. The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this.

One thing hasn't changed: the mainstream media's handling of science and technology was just as bad 40 years as it is now.

"The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this"

BZZZT. One thing you won't find on Wikipedia is honest coverage of climate science. "I was there" (back in the '70s) and it was taken seriously by many opinion makers and the like.

I hasten to point out that "opinion makers" and "scientists" are widely disjunct sets of individuals. (There's also a big difference between "taken seriously as a risk" and "taken seriously as the most probable outcome", and it's very easy to trip the first threshold without tripping the second. Even a 10% chance of, for instance, terrorists using nuclear weapons has to be taken extremely seriously even though it's highly improbable.)

Climate myths: They predicted global cooling in the 1970s

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643

There were quite many papers predicting global warming and very few predicting global cooling. The available data just wasn’t good enough forty years ago to say with certainty what would happen but already then more was pointing in the direction of global warming rather than global cooling.

Even then there was no such thing in peer reviewed works:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-gl...

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=446&filen...

So what's your point? That climate scientists should just STFU when people are wrong about the science?

That which climate "scientists" set up and run the Real Climate site is significant.

I think you're mistaken about how science actually works - the evidence that you gather is what matters, rather than who you are. Perhaps you should be addressing that, rather than engaging in petty ad-hominem attacks.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad-hominem

"The argumentum ad hominem is not always fallacious, for in some instances questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue."

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick would be truly fascinated to learn that "the evidence that you gather is what matters, rather than who you are" in this field. As a bit of quality time searching the contents of http://www.eastangliaemails.com/ will demonstrate: http://www.google.com/search?as_oq=McIntyre+McKitrick+MM&...

Most especially: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419

  From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
  To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
  Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
  Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

"[...] The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew.... I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him"

-- Cardinal Richelieu

Indeed, for as this email demonstrates you only need one line from a dishonest man.

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