3 million without power in Texas

Climate myths: They predicted global cooling in the 1970s | New Scientist

"between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then."

What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?

"Despite the majority of studies projecting warming, one common myth today misrepresents climate science in the 1970s by saying that the general understanding was of an imminent ice age. The small fraction of studies predicting cooling received a lot of media attention in the 1970s. The idea of a forthcoming ice age made for great headlines. The effect of this disproportionate media coverage persists today, as some people and organizations continue to perpetuate the idea that an ice age was predicted in the 1970s."

We got stuck in the one four years before that, driving home from Thanksgiving in Ohio. Highway workers with heavy equipment got us out of our car on I-75 and took us to a high-school gym near Monroe, Michigan, where we stayed a couple nights on cots, then got taken back to our car to get back on our way. The family on some cots near ours had a gorgeous Afghan hound.

There definitely used to be plenty of wintry stuff at Toledo/Detroit latitudes.

 

Only a few scientists were pushing that idea at that time, most of it was coming from popular media. A much larger number of scientists were already on to global warming, but that wasn't yet getting out into the news as much. This is covered in some very old threads here, I believe in the Environmental Discussion forum.

Subsequent material has suggested that, absent humans or at least their AGW, Earth would now be very gradually heading into the next Ice Age, historically a very slow process. It is about that time in the Milankovitch cycle. But humans seem to have overridden that pattern, with a very strong over-correction.

 

i suppose they'll be right, eventually, if it doesn't burn first

 

The main thing is to see that "somebody predicted cooling!" canard each time it pops back up and remember that the overwhelming majority were then predicting warming, and they're already right.

 

Did you miss the media headlines that he copied? I wish it was easier to search his previous columns for the others illustrating additional similar headlines.

The only portion relevant to my post was her point #3 after "jetstream". And the phrasing "suspect it may be" and "also concern that ... could be..." don't help me at all in believing or finding evidence that extreme cold winter events are any worse or happening any more frequently now in the presence of AGW than they were pre-AGW.

At this point, I'm not looking for 'how' or 'why', but instead for 'what'. I want to see evidence or illustration of extreme winter cold that wasn't happening before.

It has been clear for a long time that people have been commenting or complaining about unusual and wild weather as along as I've been old enough to listen to 'news'. They seem to be remembering past weather as seen through rose colored glasses. I've been hearing about the current year's wild and crazy weather being among the top news stories of the year, for 50 years now. Even back when AGW levels were much less than now. When the CO2 level was just 325 ppm, 90 points less than now.

Though maybe one of the issues here is that the hard winter weather history I've seen written up the most, the stuff often softened by those rose colored glasses, is specific to my region. Some of the extreme cold weather event / AGW claims I'm finding now are referring to events only east of the Rockies. But I've lived only west of the Rockies.

I also get annoyed at people blaming 'extreme' weather events on AGW as a means to deflect from their own lack of preparedness to handle events that are still within local historic bounds. Cue the Texas utilities that apparently didn't follow the winter preparedness recommendations following the investigation into their major failures in the 2011 cold event. And the 1989 event. And several other less severe cold events since 1980.

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A NOAA-NWS page showing the coldest temperatures ever recorded in Texas at 19 locations, covers at least 122 years of record keeping. More than half of those locations had their coldest records set in 1899 to 1933. Only 4 were listed in the last 60 years, zero in the past 30 years.

The statewide record is -23F, recorded in both 1899 and 1933.