And Why?
John Terry – I said SCIENTIFIC.
There wasn’t an overwhelming view at the time, but most studies predicted warming from greenhouse gases. Here’s an AMS study on the matter.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008BAMS2370.1
Claims that scientists predicted an ice age are clearly not justified by an objective examination of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The purpose of the false claims is to discredit climate scientists.
What did exist in the 70′s were some sensationalist articles in the popular press that talked of global cooling, not much different than today, really. Today, however, the popular press is even more disconnected with the scientific community. Examples:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2009/20090114065138.aspx
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175
The view that scared the most people at the time, which is why nobody publicly challenged it, is exhibited in the following:
The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. — Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer — Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb (1968)
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 — Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. — Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion — Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century — Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. — Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. — Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. — Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
References :
There wasn’t an overwhelming view at the time, but most studies predicted warming from greenhouse gases. Here’s an AMS study on the matter.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008BAMS2370.1
Claims that scientists predicted an ice age are clearly not justified by an objective examination of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The purpose of the false claims is to discredit climate scientists.
What did exist in the 70′s were some sensationalist articles in the popular press that talked of global cooling, not much different than today, really. Today, however, the popular press is even more disconnected with the scientific community. Examples:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2009/20090114065138.aspx
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175
References :
led by paul ehrlich and other scaremongers and fed by the oil embargo, we had a feeling in the 1070s that (1) there was an impending and suicidal population explosion (2) the food supply would shrink (3) we were running out of everything including energy and (4) global cooling portended another mini ice age that might be exacerbated by a nuclear war into a global nuclear winter.
References :
It had been cooling for a couple of decades and some were worried that an ice age was starting. I doubt that most scientists thought it was likely but only a fool would dismiss the possibility. There was most definitely some attempts at alarmism because I remember it. Most scientists back then weren’t stupid and thought that temperature trends aren’t permanent and considered seeing into the future the realm of fools.
References :
Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
That’s 62% predicting warming vs. less than 10% predicting cooling.
It’s also critical to point out that among those scientists who predicted continued global cooling, many based their conclusions on the assumption that human aerosol emissions would continue to increase rapidly. This did not happen. It’s not that their predictions or models were wrong, it’s that the scenarios they were based on didn’t come to pass.
It’s like if I predict "if I win the lottery, I’ll become a millionaire". If I don’t win the lottery and I’m never a millionaire, does that make my prediction wrong? Deniers would have us think so.
References :
Myth #1: http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/global-warming-myths
Scientists then were mostly smart enough to know that people couldn’t really have that much effect on the earth. (We weren’t so full of ourselves then.)
That said, the concensus estimate was cooling
http://www.debunkglobalwarming.info/coolingworld.pdf
Just in case you’re interested in dismissing the article, count the references to "scientists," universities, NOAA, etc. There are a lot of them.
References :