The Great Global Warming Swindle

Ignoring for now the illogic of dismissing a current prediction because a past prediction may have gotten it wrong...

The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
In the thirty years leading up to the 1970s, available temperature recordings suggested that there was a cooling trend. As a result some scientists suggested that the current inter-glacial period could rapidly draw to a close, which might result in the Earth plunging into a new ice age over the next few centuries. This idea could have been reinforced by the knowledge that the smog that climatologists call ‘aerosols’ – emitted by human activities into the atmosphere – also caused cooling. In fact, as temperature recording has improved in coverage, it’s become apparent that the cooling trend was most pronounced in northern land areas and that global temperature trends were in fact relatively steady during the period prior to 1970.

At the same time as some scientists were suggesting we might be facing another ice age, a greater number published contradicting studies. Their papers showed that the growing amount of greenhouse gasses that humans were putting into the atmosphere would cause much greater warming – warming that would a much greater influence on global temperature than any possible natural or human-caused cooling effects.

By 1980 the predictions about ice ages had ceased, due to the overwhelming evidence contained in an increasing number of reports that warned of global warming. Unfortunately, the small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.



The fact is that around 1970 there were 6 times as many scientists predicting a warming rather than a cooling planet. Today, with 30+years more data to analyse, we've reached a clear scientific consensus: 97% of working climate scientists agree with the view that human beings are causing global warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

 

I was a kid but remember my dad talking about this. I recall him saying many times that he was going to move us to fla or alabama, somewhere down south where it'd be warmer. I was pretty convinced that the woolly mammmoth was returning and we'd all be wearing those fur lined parkas all day.

funny, because now i tell my kids that our home (burbs of chicago) will be beach front property by the time they are my age. (you know, all the ice melting, lakes and ocean levels rising)

 

"ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41 billion, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil in 2008 at $45 billion.
Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That’s why the fight is so pitched. "

 

Are you going to answer the simple question - Were you alive in the 1970s and old enough to watch & understand the media in the U.S. at the time?

 

It's irrelevant but to be civil I'll answer your question, yes I was. In fact I was a student in college studying environmental science. It was not discussed or considered important. At the time nuclear power was the big topic.

 

I tend to very much doubt it. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s and actually watched the media in the U.S. knows the top three stories continuously in the media were Watergate, the Vietnam War, and Global Cooling.

I was in school and our teachers were constantly making us write papers on topics like "how we would survive when the glaciers covered New York City under 400 feet of ice".

 

Futurecurrents isn't old enough to understand what is going on TODAY with climate science and the meida. So, he certainly doesn't have a clue what was happening in the 70's.

 

I'm sorry to hear you had such a poor education and stupid teachers. Inner city school?

Constantly making you write papers about it? Yeah right.

Don't you think it's illogical to dismiss the current science which has around 97% consensus, and computers, because 1/6 th of the science in the 70's got it wrong?

 

So even as a student you were in the dark on what was going on in your field.

 

We have heard from other posters in this thread and others that went through the exact same experience in the 70s when global cooling was all the buzz in the media.

The school district was in northern Nassau County in an affluent area. The papers were part of an agenda laid out by the New York State Regents curriculum state-wide. Many students in all the states had similar experiences regarding global cooling being pushed during the 1970s in academic institutions. Global cooling was an 'accepted fact' in our earth science and other classes.

In the same way today, my children had to write papers in high school and college supporting 'global warming'. If they wrote a paper disputing that global warming exists then they would automatically get an "F" on it.

Are you starting to understand the corollary between the 1970s and today.