"Convection in the Antarctic Ice Sheet Leading to a Surge of the Ice Sheet and Possibly to a New Ice Age" is a 1970's Science paper by Hughes. Its all superceeded stuff now - the idea that the ice might (very very slowly) convect was current once, but no more (or else the cores wouldn't work very well :-).
The abstract is: The Antarctic surge theory of Pleistocene glaciation is reexamined in the context of thermal convection theory applied to the Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet surges when a water layer at the base of the ice sheet reaches the edge of the ice sheet over broad fronts and has a thickness sufficient to drown the projections from the bed that most strongly hinder basal ice flow. Frictional heat from convection flow promotes basal melting, and, as the ice sheet grows to the continental shelf of Antarctica, a surge of the ice sheet appears likely.
You can read it here as long as you don't tell.
The reason for this posting is that it comes up as yet-another failed "ice age in the 1970's" thingy, by someone who only read the title and abstract.
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William -
Thanks for another helpful debunking on this important subject. Hope to see more from you in this area in the future. :-)
Can you share who it was who "only read the title and abstract"?
[Oh, twas on wiki of course: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global cooling - look at the recent history and the talk page -W]
Could you comment on this wrt the ice sheet surging into a warmer ocean.
[It has nothing to do with present-day science; the assumption of convection is now known to be wrong -W]
What's the point here? Are you saying that journalists are more likely to read beyond the title and abstract nowadays? Or are you saying that the title and abstract cannot be assumed to be a correct summary of a paper? Or are you demonstrating how adding a little complex maths to a paper can disguise abject guesswork quite well?
[I'm not sure what the point is. To show you a paper you might find interesting, perhaps -W]
WC -
That's a nice find and sincere thanks for the effort and hosting that archive. But the approach is not sufficient; you are swimming uphill. The average person understands complex subjects through analogies. While you carefully show that scientists never claimed an ice age was imminent, denialists merely devise another inappropriate but easily grasped bad analogy. So it goes . . .
I think you miss the point. This article was highlighted as exemplyfing the scientific beliefs as they were in the 1970's. The author himself invalidated his measurements. The article is an applied science article using measurements to show that the conditions in antarctica in 1970 exceeded the requirements for Pleistocene era ice ages.
The article title, abstract and text (I have the article) are simply consistent with the belief at the time that the world was due for a new ice age. The title survived peer review in 1970. It would not survive today.
WMC is arguing that in 1970, "global cooling" was not a mainstream scientific view (in a sense, he's correct since "global cooling" wasn't invented yet, but next "ice age" was). That seems ludicrous considering all the scientists that didn't blink at articles claiming a new ice age could be occuring.
[You misunderstand and misrepresent the state of the science at the time. All through the 70's there were more articles about global warming than cooling. This article would not be invalid today because of GW, but because its science is wrong. Oh, and isn't it funny that you only have the article *after* I posted it? You didn't bother reading it *before* -W]
For a more contemporaneous viewpoint, watch the ''Cosmos'' series with Carl Sagan ("Heaven and Hell" scene) . In 1980, he gave almost equal weight to cooling theories as well as warming theories. Sagan's general point was anthropogenic changes to climate were a concern (his view: greenhouse gases warmed the planet, clear cutting the rainforest cooled the planet). He simply espoused the scientific views at the time. As a science, global cooling/new ice age is thouroughly debunked but it was a proiminent view held by scientists in the 1970's.
[If Sagan was giving equal weight to cooling in 1980, he was well out of line with the state of the science, which wouldn't be odd, since he wasn't a climatologist. But you might have hoped that he would have talked to some. See for example the world climate conf in 1979 -W]
No, I read it before you posted it and have the $10.00 receipt to prove it. But it didn't change anything. I rewrote it with detail. I wish I had known you had it as it would have saved me $10.00.
And yes, I believe there were more warming than cooling articles. The two theories were independant and there wasn't a charged political climate regarding them. Climatologists addressed both as anthropogenic climate change was just starting to be investigated.
[I disagree that the theories were independent; you only have to look at the srticles saying that it wasn't clear if GHG warming or aerosol cooling was going to be bigger to see this -W]
Here's another. I don't have a copy of this. I suspect it covers both warming and cooling. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/206/4425/1363
[Yeeeesss... what is your point? People were looking at aerosol and albedo effects. This is well known -W]
It was respected enough to be cited by this paper http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
My point has always been that cooling theories in the 1970's were significant up to and including the belief that an ice age might be approaching. It was not clear in the 1970's whether GHG cooling or the cooling mechanisms would prevail. Both theories were significant and widespread. Neither theory at the time had the evidence to disprove the other. Science often has competing theories that are contradictory. Perhaps the longest one today is general relativity vs. quantum mechanics. Both are correct and both views are held by physicists for an awfully long time even though they were not compatible. In the 1970's, the same was true for cooling vs. warming. Scientists understood the arguments for both warming and cooling. Since the science didn't pick sides, the scientists didn't either. Warming and cooling papers were published side by side. Scientists caveated cooling papers with the anthropogenic warming and warming papers with the effects of cooling.
[You're wrong on just about all counts I think. The main point is that neither warming nor cooling were nearly as significant, worked on, or known by the public as they are today. Scientists only began to understand the arguments during the 70's; and all through the 70's there were more warming than cooling papers - in that sense, scientists did indeed pick sides.
See http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
-W]
And the albedo effect mentioned here was changes in ground albedo due to changes in vegetation, not aerosols.