A climate expert debunked a myth about a "global cooling" consensus that has spread for half a century.
In a TikTok video, doctoral candidate Rosh D'Arcy (@all_about_climate), who has degrees in earth and climate science, shared a clip of Donald Trump saying, "They used to talk about global cooling."
@all_about_climate Debunking the global cooling myth. #globalcooling #climatechange #debunked #climatescience #factcheck #climateemergency #climatecrisis #myth #factcheck ♬ original sound - Rosh
Rosh clarified that Trump likely meant to reference the 1970s instead of the 1920s, as the former was when some scientists hypothesized that the planet was set to continue cooling after it had done so for three decades.
He shared a 2008 survey of studies from 1965 to 1979 on "global cooling" and found that 44 predicted warming (62%), 20 were neutral (28%), and seven predicted cooling (10%). Looking at the data more closely reveals that from 1975 to 1979, the ratio is 31 predicting warming, 10 neutral, and just two predicting cooling.
One of those two was written by Reid Bryson and G.J. Dittberner in 1976, and the following year, the pair published a new paper that fell in the neutral column.
"So, it was still a minority view," Rosh said, "and it happened to get a lot of media attention, which is why I think a lot of people think, 'Oh, you know, scientists used to think there was going to be global cooling.' Some scientists did, but it was never a majority view."
The myth started with a nine-paragraph Newsweek article published on page 64 of the April 28, 1975, edition, as Scientific American detailed. The writer in 2014 said the story — about the ideas of certain scientists — "was accurate at the time" as far as reporting on what some scientists were saying, and similar stories amplified the notion that global cooling was imminent. But Peter Gwynne and even the magazine itself have since said those scientists were wrong.
Instead, humans' consumption of dirty energy sources such as gas and coal spiked temperatures in the past 50 years. To stop the planet from overheating, we have to significantly cut carbon dioxide and methane pollution.
Not only would this help cool Earth, but it would also improve our air and water quality, health, and even economies.
"We learned global temperature cycles in school when I was a kid, in the '70s, [and] they told us that we were heading towards another ice age," one commenter wrote.
Rosh responded: "We're in the cooling phase of the cycle," he said, referring to natural cycles of climate change without human activity. "That much is correct. But that doesn't factor in human impact (which was true of a lot of research back then)."
As one TikToker said: "The globe is warming and it's causing the climate to change. I don't know how that got controversial."
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