Above, a Climate Crocks greatest hit, “In the 70s, They Said There’d Be an Ice Age”. With last week’s cold snap in eastern North America, deniers are once again assuming an ice age must be coming.
Below, the Daily Climate looks back at the persistence of that silliness.
Doug Struck in The Daily Climate:
BOSTON – Temperatures have plunged to record lows on the East Coast, and once again Peter Gwynne is being heralded as a journalist ahead of his time. By some.
Gwynne was the science editor of Newsweek 39 years ago when he pulled together some interviews from scientists and wrote a nine-paragraph storyabout how the planet was getting cooler.
Ever since, Gwynne’s “global cooling” story – and a similar Time Magazine piece – have been brandished gleefully by those who say it shows global warming is not happening, or at least that scientists – and often journalists – don’t know what they are talking about.
Fox News loves to cite it. So does Rush Limbaugh. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has quoted the story on the Senate floor.
Gwynne, now 72, is a bit chagrinned that from a long career of distinguished science and technology reporting, he is most remembered for this one story.
“I have, in fact, won prizes for science writing,” he said, with just a whiff of annoyance, in an interview this week.
Popping up – again and again
His April 28, 1975 piece has been used by Forbes as evidence of what the magazine called “The Fiction of Climate Science.” It has been set to music on a YouTube video. It has popped up in a slew of finger-wagging blogs and websites dedicated to everything from climate denial to one puzzling circuit of logic entitled “Impeach Obama, McCain and Boehner Today.“
Fox News loves to cite it. So does Rush Limbaugh. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has quoted the story on the Senate floor.
Gwynne, now 72, is a bit chagrinned that from a long career of distinguished science and technology reporting, he is most remembered for this one story.
“I have, in fact, won prizes for science writing,” he said, with just a whiff of annoyance, in an interview this week.
Popping up – again and again
His April 28, 1975 piece has been used by Forbes as evidence of what the magazine called “The Fiction of Climate Science.” It has been set to music on a YouTube video. It has popped up in a slew of finger-wagging blogs and websites dedicated to everything from climate denial to one puzzling circuit of logic entitled “Impeach Obama, McCain and Boehner Today.“
From the latest crop:
Lou Dobbs on Fox News: “This cycle of science… if we go back to 1970, the fear then was global cooling. “
Rush Limbaugh: “I call [global warming] a hoax… A 1975 Newsweek cover was gonna talk about the ice age coming. So they’re really confused how to play it.”
Sean Hannity on Fox News: “If you go back to Time Magazine, they actually were proclaiming the next ice age is coming, now it’s become global warming… How do you believe the same people that were predicting just a couple decades ago that the new ice age is coming?”
Donald J. Trump: “This very expensive global warming bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing.…”
‘Accurate at the time’
Most of the time, Gwynne, who still writes on technology and science from his home in Cape Cod, Mass., takes it good-naturedly.
“It’s part of the game, once you get from science to politics, that’s the way it’s played,” he said. “I just hope people don’t think I think that way.”
And still, Gwynne notes of his story, “I stand by it. It was accurate at the time.”
The story observed – accurately – that there had been a gradual decrease in global average temperatures from about 1940, now believed to be a consequence of soot and aerosols that offered a partial shield to the earth as well as the gradual retreat of an abnormally warm interlude.
Some climatologists predicted the trend would continue, inching the earth toward the colder averages of the “Little Ice Age” from the 16th to 19th centuries.
“When I wrote this story I did not see it as a blockbuster,” Gwynne recalled. “It was just an intriguing piece about what a certain group in a certain niche of climatology was thinking.”
Pushing the envelope ‘a little bit’
And, revisionist lore aside, it was hardly a cover story. It was a one-page article on page 64. It was, Gwynne concedes, written with a bit of over-ventilated style that sometimes marked the magazine’s prose: “There are ominous signs the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically…” the piece begins, and warns of a possible “dramatic decline in food production.”
“Newsweek being Newsweek, we might have pushed the envelope a little bit more than I would have wanted,” Gwynne offered.
But the story was tantalizing enough that other variations – somewhat more nuanced – were written by the New York Times and National Geographic, among others. The theory picked up support from some pretty reputable scientists: the late, esteemed Stephen Schneider of Stanford endorsed a book on the issue.
But there also was a small but growing counter-theory that carbon dioxide and other pollutants accompanying the Industrial Age were creating a warming belt in the atmosphere, and by about 1980 it was clear that the earth’s average temperature was headed upward.
Even today, “there is some degree of uncertainty about natural variability,” acknowledged Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education based in Oakland, Calif. “If it weren’t for the fact that humans had become a force of nature, we would be slipping back into an ice age, according to orbital cycles.”
Missing the point
But earth’s glacial rhythms are “being overridden by human activities, especially burning fossil fuels,” McCaffrey noted. The stories about global cooling “are convenient for people to trot out and wave around,” he said, but they miss the point:
“What’s clear is we are a force of nature. Human activity – the burning of fossil fuels and land change – is having a massive influence. We are in the midst of this giant geoengineering experiment.”
And, Gwynne protested: “I wrote this in 1975!”
Born in England, Gwynne has written for a slew of American and foreign outlets. He left Newsweek in 1981, he ran Technology Review at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, covered space for High Technology, worked for The Scientist in Washington, moved to Hong Kong to run Asia Technology for Dow Jones, and returned to the United States to freelance in 1994.
He remains the North American correspondent for Physics World, based in England, from which perspective he views the “weird and wonderful” American relationship with science. “It’s been American science and scientists – particularly NASA – that showed the climate is changing,” he noted. Yet, unlike in most of Europe, American politicians remain divided over climate science.
Political vs. science reporting
The unsavory afterlife of his 1975 story clearly has not soured his journalistic fervor. “I’ve been able to write for a lot of different audiences, physicists, engineers and the general public,” Gwynne said. “I’ve been willing to accept that some of that is misused and misinterpreted.”
By and large, he added, the U.S. science press has done “a pretty good job” of covering climate change. But “the political press doesn’t check. It tends to do ‘on the one hand, on the other hand.’ A lot of reporters simply will not go into issues like global warming with any understanding that the sides are not equal.”
Journalists should not ignore climate deniers, he cautioned. “You have to give all sides a fair hearing.” But that does not mean they have to be treated equally “if they don’t have the data.” To do so, he said, is false balance “that leaves readers out on a limb.”
“Your job as a journalist is to give each side its best shot,” said Gwynne. Even if the ammunition is four decades old.
FYI: here is the digital copy of the 1975 National Academy of Sciences report
Understanding Climate Change: A program for Action
https://ia801806.us.archive.org/7/items/understandingcli00unit/understandingcli00unit.pdf
This report give a very good overview of Climate Science for the time period.
Two interesting point are make on pages 43 about temperature could warm as much as 0.5C by 2000.
Also on page 149 it also talks about the Middle Age warm epoch.
Here’s another one:
Stockton, C. W. and W. R. Boggess, Geohydrological implications of climate change on water resource development, Contract Report DACW 72-78-C-0031, for U. S. Army Coastal Engineering Res. Center, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, C. W. Stockton & Associates, Tucson, May 1979.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA204483 (May 15, 1979)
Here’s an excerpt (p.159):
Projected Climatic Trends
“On a hemispherical scale, there is rather conclusive evidence that the mean annual temperature is cooling (Van Loon and Williams, 1976). Recent work by Kukla et al.(1977) indicates this trend has not abated. They conclude from analysis of several variables including surface air temperature, upper atmosphere temperature, sea surface temperature, and relative area of snow on land and relative abundance of pack ice, that from 1950-1975, the rate of cooling for most of the above climatic indices in the northern hemisphere was between 0.10 and 1.20C. per decade. However, the slope of the changes versus time curve for most of the indices from the middle and low latitudes of the northern hemisphere increased during the interval 1971-1975. In the higher latitudes, the slope decreased or reversed. Peterson and Lawson (1978) using isotopic paleotemperature data and Box-Jenkins modeling to obtain a forecasting equation, predict an expected mean annual temperature decrease for the northern hemisphere of about 1.30C. (With 95% confidence limits of -0.1 and -2.4) over the next 5000 years. The point is, there appear to be different lines of evidence suggesting a present cooling trend with at least one study suggesting it will continue.”
Dave wants to gallop as usual, so he is quoting a bunch of stuff from the 1970’s. Stuff that is interesting from an historical viewpoint of what people thought BACK THEN, but it’s all FORTY YEARS OLD and irrelevant now that we have watched what has gone on since then. Just go look at the arctic sea ice “death spiral” instead of what some folks conjectured 40 years ago to see whether we are cooling or not.
(Now I’ve done it—-Dave will now gallop on GLOBAL sea ice EXTENT being the highest ever—I apologize to all).
Yes, since the topic is the 1970s ice age scare, I did, indeed, quote a bunch of stuff from the 1970s. Guilty as charged.
Maybe I wasn’t clear—-I have been watching you long enough to question your motives every time you speak out. IMO, you are repeating all this old “science” from “back then” in the hopes that it will stick in people’s minds and confuse them about the “here and now”. That’s what I charge you with. How do you plead?
I think Dave’s comment is on topic – and interesting.
In the contracted report by the U. S. Army Coastal Engineering Res. Center, there’s nothing about modeling the dependent variable (surface temperature), as a function of the many independent variables (forcing and feedbacks). It’s simply a model that assumes the temperature trends of the future will have been the same as those of the past.
Your evidence here again fall short. There is no question there was a cooling trend between 1945 1975 and the northern hemisphere. However your article does not support an immediate return to an ice age period.
“Peterson and Lawson (1978) using isotopic paleotemperature data and Box-Jenkins modeling to obtain a forecasting equation, predict an expected mean annual temperature decrease for the northern hemisphere of about 1.30C. (With 95% confidence limits of -0.1 and -2.4) over the next 5000 years. The point is, there appear to be different lines of evidence suggesting a present cooling trend with at least one study suggesting it will continue.”
Peterson and Lawson (1978) – The title of that article is “A statistical study of a composite isotopic paleotemperature series from the last 700,000 years”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1978.tb00835.x/abstract
and the full report
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1978.tb00835.x/pdf
again at no point are they forecasting a aerosol Ice Age scenario.
The paper does not support your position at all!
Some reading for Dave:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
Andrew over at PopularTechnology.net has accumulated a collection of 100 of these articles from the 1970s about the threat of a renewed ice age:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
Telling Mr. Burton and many of those were peer review articles and science as opposed to newspapers, magazine and opinion pieces
Read the articles and you’ll find they are reporting on the findings and pronouncements of leading climatologists and studies. Of course, as is the case now, there was less “consensus” than there appeared to be.
Please reference the scientific articles that express that there is a full consensus because is total BS even for you
Nobody mentioned a “full consensus” (whatever that means), but the CIA report noted that “leaders in climatology and economics are in agreement that a climatic change is taking place,” and described that change as a return to Little Ice Age conditions:
“The world is returning to the type of climate which has existed over the last 400 years. That is, the abnormal climate of agricultural-optimum is being replaced by a normal climate of the neo-boreal era.”
Yes please list the peer-reviewed articles that support leading climatologists are forecasting global cooling I have no doubt that they were in agreement that we were warming. If you read the references and articles the majority of them are talking about global warming not cooling.
And they were obviously mistaken in what they thought “back then”, so I will ask again—-why do you keep repeating the “evidence” for something that didn’t happen? I will answer my own question—-because you want to confuse people. You are not an honest man, Dave.
Maybe I’m missing something here,but isn’t Dave’s unstated major premise that those scientists in the 70’s were WRONG? That means that he must NOW be accepting the fact that there is indeed global warming. Case closed.You’re welcome.
Dave’s “major unstated premise” is that we are all idiots on Crock and he treats us as if we were so. In support of that premise, he misinforms, obfuscates, and argues the unsupportable as if it were true. He is just a troll, with no “major” anything except his ability to get in our way, at which he excels.
There’s also the 1974 CIA Report on climate change.
Now the problem with the CIA report is he doesn’t reference any science articles directly or misquotes it when he does. If you read the references at the end you will see the articles are mostly on warming. Also the author was confused about the glacial interglacial forecasting for the next 2500 years and the current cooling trend that was underway.
Would you care to identify any of those supposed misquotes?
In “Annex II Climate Theory*” Reid A. Bryson of the University of Wisconsin develop a weather forecasting methodology he asks “Why has earth cooled? There are three main factors involved affecting how much sunlight reaches the earth and how much is re-radiated into space:” Volcanic dust, man-made dust [we now call aerosols], and carbon dioxide. “… According to his theory, the earth would have cooled due to this dust even more than it has if it had not been for measurable and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide which man has put onto the atmosphere by burning fuel (the greenhouse effect).” As for the dust he is talking about the increase in volcanos and human dust in the 1930s. It ends with a “Bryson expects a return to something like the last century,” which Bryson disputes.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn&entity=UW.BrysonReid.p0008&id=UW.BrysonReid&isize=M&q1=climate%20change
On record at the University Of Wisconsin – Madison (above) Bryson said “his work was not a prediction but only a warning of what may happen.”
“There is a cooling trend in the world’s climate, which began in 1945 and if this trend continues it will severely affect the food situation.” Further down it says: “scientists have developed two contradictory theories to account for changes in the world climate the greenhouse effect and the dust effect.” Skipping to the next 2 pages and going to the middle “recently, in an attempt to see which affect will win, Bryson and other scientists developed a computer model of the Earth’s climate they use increasing carbon dioxide and destinations resulting from expansion use of fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum.” Further down Bryson says the changing carbon dioxide and dust levels will result in an effective change of the world’s climate for better or worse.
There is no “Annex II Climate Theory” in the 1974 CIA Report to which I linked:
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
That appears to be in another 1974 CIA Report, which Google finds here:
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/environment/potentialtrends.pdf
I had no idea there were two such reports!
I also thank you for the UW link.
Actually they are two reports written by the same author. And these are not scientific reports.
The first one is “Potential Implication of trends in the world population, food production, and climate”
“A study of Climatological Research as it pertains to Intelligence Problem”
Who was the author?
Two reports were done essentially at the same time by the same authors (it refers to itself in the other report) for the most part they’re almost duplicates of each other. Both ignored the scientific studies at the time including the sources that they listed. Both reports heavily rely on the misuse of the Wisconsin study. Which is just Bryson’s report which he disputed because it was not a forecast but a what if. Which invalidated both reports. The authors had difficulty distinguishing between the cooling trend from the 1940s and the interglacial-glacial period. Similar to the list of global cooling you posted most of them are about the glacial cycles not about the fictitious aerosol Ice Age forecast
Bryson calculated that unless there was a change in circumstances, such as a decrease in volcanism, the cooling trend would continue. He wrote, “If these [volcanic] eruptions continue at the present rate or increase, the added dust will cause the world’s climate to continue its cooling trend for some years.”
In fact, volcanic activity was quite low when he wrote that (Aug. 1974), so there was no reason to expect it to decrease further. (There’d been only one VEI 4 volcanic eruption since 1968, though there was another a few months after Bryson wrote that.)
So I think the CIA author(s)’ interpretation of Bryson’s prediction was at least very close to correct.
Changing topics… where do you find the reference that leads you to conclude that the two reports were by the same author(s)? I’m not saying they aren’t, it seems quite plausible, but I just don’t see an indication that they are.
So Professor Reid Bryson has publicly repudiated much of the CIA reports; and they quote him as a principal source. But the CIA reports are more right about Professor Reid Bryson then he is? Do you not see the logical fallacy here?
This is changing the facts to fit your views.
Read his article it was a paloclimate report not a forecast for future climate.
What was the title of Bryson’s Article?
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn&entity=UW.BrysonReid.p0008&id=UW.BrysonReid&isize=M&q1=climate%20change
How does any of this fit the narrative of Fox News that all ( most) scientist in the. 70s were forecasting a new ice ages in the next few decades.
The subject of the post .
Nut jobs like yourself claim a majority of scientist we’re forecasting a new ice age in the coming decades. Which is just false and you have yet to show peer review article that would support otherwise!
Every year there are new reports in certain media, amplified in “wattsupwiththat” and the like, that we are on the way to another Maunder minumum, usually sourced from solar physicists (rather than climate specialists). The latest was from Mike Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at Reading University, if you read the version in wattsupwith that it doesn’t mention this importatnt addition to the story.
“But Lockwood says we should not expect a new grand minimum to bring on a new little ice age. Human-induced global warming, he says, is already a more important force in global temperatures than even major solar cycles.”
That’s the way think tanks and anti-science propogandists manipulate information and play with people’s minds.
I have read that Mr Burton has an IT software business, does he not involve himself in the very key IT activity of capacity planning and therefore realise the importance of long term upward trends.
IS he blind to the NOAA “keeling curve” of CO2 concentrations, has he not read about the early lab tests by Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenious (1824-1896) that were confirmed by the USAF pioneered research on heat-trapping properties of CO2 way back in the 1950s. Does he think he knows better than all that knowledge ??? Does he really think that we are all a bunch of hippies, liberals, socialists, Marxists and Trotskyites – what a strange fantasy world the deluded man lives in.
“daveburton Says:
Nobody mentioned a “full consensus” (whatever that means), but the CIA report noted that “leaders in climatology and economics are in agreement that a climatic change is taking place,” and described that change as a return to Little Ice Age conditions…”
Would you agree that your CIA quote is misleading, because, as I recall, the number of reports, studies, etc in the peer-reviewed literature published in the 1970’s on climate change which documented or predicted a WARMING climate was multiply larger than the number of pieces which proposed or predicted a COOLING climate, let alone a return to an Ice Age?
So, the consensus, even in the ’70’, was for a warming climate – would you not agree?
No, I would not agree with that nonsense, Gingerbaker.
That’s why I have asked you more than once to show me peer review articles that support that. Since you are not as old as I am and was not around during this time at least as a college student/teacher let me give you a little bit of an idea what happened in the 70s
.
First off since the mid-1940s temperatures had decline in the northern hemisphere through to 1975.
For the first time, Radiometric dating techniques were used to date glacial interglacial periods. A number of scientific reports had come out dating the time and links of the glacial interglacial intervals. It was surprising to find out that the interglacial periods were generally less than 10,000 years and that we had been in the current interglacial period for about 8000 years so we are overdue for an ice age (looking only at paleoclimate data).
Carbon dioxide / global warming was known the biggest unknown in climate physics at the first of the 70s was the role of aerosols played in the overall scheme. In the mid-70s data from the eruption of Agung 1960 gave climate physics more of an idea how aerosols interacted in the atmosphere. And from that they were actually able to do forecasting models Hansen being one of first.
The aerosol Ice Age global cooling is a canard with no basis except only one report which everyone is familiar with
“daveburton Says:
No, I would not agree with that nonsense, Gingerbaker ”
Gosh – it’s nonsense is it?
Perhaps – could it be? – that you are not well informed on the topic?
In the September 2008 edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), there is a review article by Thomas Peterson, William Connolley, and John Fleck on the “Myth of the 1970″s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus”.
They conducted a survey of the peer-reviewed literature which found:
That looks like a multiple of more than 6:1 to me, Dave. Not nonsense after all, I should think.
The review article also quotes from the National Research Council report of 1979 which strangely enough does not bolster your assertion.
The report and discussion of same may be found here:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/11/10/203320/killing-the-myth-of-the-1970s-global-cooling-scientific-consensus/
I have just viewed your latest video and congratulations Sir it is one of your best with a very clear, powerful and simple message, one additional thought occurs to me and that is as a race (evolving through a period of 200,000 years), we have survived and continued through a couple of ice ages already, and sampling CO2 levels in ice samples from around the world show that the levels were between 180 ppm (during the glacial) and 280 ppm (during interglacial periods). Although an ice age would be alarming and affect world food supplies/migration etc , we have proven we can survive and adapt to it already. When was the world last at a 400ppm and above CO2 level ? well over 400,000 years ago long before mankind came on the scene. How do people think we can adapt to that I wonder ? get a whole bunch more of super A/C units ?
There is always a lot of noise generated around this topic but for once, we can all welcome the new material in the form of the “other” CIA report.
Perhaps a future generation of historians will clarify things out. For now this is the best reconstruction (I wish more folks were more careful when quoting history…obviously whatever was new in 1975 was not known in 1974 and so on…):
Early 1970s (before 1975)
1. With a NH cooling trend between the 1940s and the mid 1970s, most climatologists thought the planet was undergoing global cooling
2. Those same climatologists agreed that, eventually, CO2 emissions would be going to cause some form of global warming. Points 1 and 2 are in the oft-mentioned Mitchell paper of 1972.
3. Some climatologists however were of the opinion that the warming would not be enough to stop the cooling. These discussions can be traced back to the early ’60s.
4. A subset of those at point 3 were worried about an impending ice age. They found their way into mainstream media, exactly as 30 years later those worried about an impending end of civilization due to global warming. Likewise for CIA reports.
1975-1979
5. New data and research put point 1 in doubt. First of all, the cooling trend is discovered to be confined to the northern hemisphere. Furthermore, that same trend stops.
6. During this period there is no consensus in climatology for future cooling or warming.
1979-onwards
7. With temperatures trending upwards, the CO2-emissions camp wins the day and a consensus is formed around AGW.
——–
I cannot see anything controversial in the above, but I am sure many people can. Such is history.
“welcome the new material in the form of the “other” CIA report.”?
Apparently you did not remember but I had list both report in our previous augments on this topic we had months ago.
well, let’s say I didn’t notice that it was two reports, not one.
what do you think of the timeline, have you seen alternatives to it?
http://www.amazon.com/Potential-implications-population-production-climate/dp/B002YD9DQ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389692392&sr=8-1&keywords=Potential+Implication+of+trends+in+the+world+population%2C+food+production%2C+and+climate
the link to a hardcopy I gave you.
Its easy to be an AGW denier. Just don’t read.
Look at Amazon
Search for Potential Implication of trends in the world population, food production, and climate.
You can buy the paperback I got it on May 3 of last year.
Very secret report!
I don’t think anybody ever claimed ‘secrecy’. When I sourced the other report from the British Library, it was because it had never been classified, rather a journalist at the WP at the time had read it and wrote a piece about it.
Of course then as the years pass reports don’t become ‘secret’ as much as ‘forgotten’ (and in this case, ‘mixed up’ with another similar report written in the same year).
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn&entity=UW.BrysonReid.p0008&id=UW.BrysonReid&isize=M&q1=climate%20change
It was a public report and Bryson publicly criticize the misuse of his report. From a newspaper article. (See link above )
The two reports don’t fit the narrative of Fox News that all ( most) scientist in the. 70s were forecasting a new ice ages in the next few decades.
as I said I don’t believe in that either. However I still have to find somebody with the courage to admit that global cooling was the consensus among scientists between 1972 and 1975.
We are back to the old argument.
How is it that your web site doesn’t reflect what you just said?
http://omnologos.com/world-exclusive-cia-1974-document-reveals-emptiness-of-agw-scares-closes-debate-on-global-cooling-consensus-and-more-2/
But fits the Fox narrative.
I was and am talking “global cooling” and not “ice age” (in other posts at the time and since, I made the distinction explicit, since it’s hard to understand for many who don’t want to understand).
I am talking about most scientists believing the Earth was undergoing global cooling (not an incipient ice age), by the time Mitchell wrote his paper.
You yourself know very well that in the early 1970s (before 1975) scientists thought the cooling that they were seeing in the northern hemisphere was actually of a global nature.
Hence the global cooling consensus (despite the same scientists expecting AGW to start at some point).
And still there you are, writing one of the stupidest comments ever written on the face of the internet. Forget Fox News’ narrative (as if I watched the channel, ever) and try some courage instead.
Hey, everyone! Now that we are all busily feeding the DB troll on this thread, I recommend that you all go over to the “Icestorm-Prius” thread and watch dave burton choke to death on his abysmal understanding of high school physics.
He has really shot himself in the foot over there—-he says there is NO reason for a Prius to have an INVERTER! Bwahahahahahahaha!
Alert to those in the Cary, NC area that need their computers fixed. Don’t take them to Dave. If he doesn’t understand inverters, he probably doesn’t understand transformers, rectifiers, resistors, or capacitors either.
Old Guy apparently thinks that Prius motors run from 60 Hz single-phase 110v AC. He’s mistaken.
Dave would confuse you by talking about the phase characteristics of the AC that is used. AC is AC for our purposes, the batteries are DC, and the inverter is necessary to make the conversion, period. Typical obfuscation and game playing on Dave’s part.
From Toyota’s own website on its hybrid technology
“Power Control Unit
Toyota’s hybrid technology is equipped with a Power Control Unit that consists of an inverter, a Voltage-Boosting Converter and an AC/DC converter to run the car on electric motors”.
“Inverter
The inverter converts DC supplied by the battery to AC to turn the electric motors. Conversely, it converts AC generated by the electric motors and the generator into DC to recharge the battery”.
Recall that he started with this comment
“Prius hybrids already come with an inverter.” They do? What for?”
Yes, Dave they come with an inverter, and Toyota says so and gives the same explanation I did. My point is that a Prius does in fact have an inverter and couldn’t run without one. Why do you insist on playing games with us and trying to confuse the issue?.
Tsk tsk! Old Guy knows perfectly well that we were talking about the sort of inverter that you can use to power your refrigerator. He’s just not honest enough to admit it.
I couldn’t have been more clear. I wrote, “An inverter, in this context, is a device which converts DC (from the batteries) to single-phase, 110v 60 Hz AC.”
Old Guy, the Prius motors run on variable-frequency three-phase power. You might not know the difference, but, trust me, your refrigerator does. It won’t run on that.
And, oh yeah, the standard Prius inverter’s output is at 650 volts. How do you suppose your refrigerator will do on that?
Dave mindlessly insists on keeping his faulty reasoning (and attempted coverup of his duplicity) before us all so that we can continue to laugh and shake our heads at him. I’m done feeding this appearance of the DB troll with these final remarks. There are new posts to ponder.
First, please note that Dave is now talking about the “standard Prius inverter”, a big move for him since he didn’t seem to think the Prius had one or know what it’s purpose was when we began If you recall, Dave began this idiot gallop by asking what a Prius needed an inverter for. So, if nothing else, this exchange has actually caused Dave to learn some facts to spread on top of his delusions. Said Dave,
“Prius hybrids already come with an inverter.” They do? What for?”
MY refrigerator will never have to “do” on 650 volts, Dave, because I will never plug it into anything but the ADD-ON Prius inverter that this article talks about that WILL provide the proper 110-120 volt AC that it needs.
Good-bye, Dave. Go back under the bridge with the other trolls and mutter to yourself in the dark. The topic has been discussed to the point that anyone who didn’t understand inverters now does, and anyone who thought you were wasting our time is now sure of it.
Readers of the xxiii century will wonder no doubt why you trolled blogs with dozens of empty comments about why you wouldn’t respond any longer to “trolls”.
O-look-at-ME makes a typically empty-headed comment that ignores the fact that we likely will not have any such thing as “blogs” in the XXIII century. The greatly reduced numbers of humans (if any survive at all) will be struggling to find their daily bread.
And I’m sorry that O-look-at-ME is apparently too stupid to recognize that giving “electricity lessons” and “honesty lessons” to fools like daveburton is not an “empty” activity (although it really is fruitless).
If O-look-at-ME had a memory that extended past 30 seconds and the last time he scratched his butt or picked his nose, he just might remember that the DB troll injected the Prius inverter into this totally unrelated thread in the first place, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now (excuse me—I misspoke there, I should have said I wouldn’t be talking to a rock—with which no conversation is possible).