Did we become the so called (deniers) at least in part because of what we were told in the 70's?

Question

Is this one reason many of us are skeptical about the theory of man made GW?

Somebody just asked if we remember the coming ice age. And I remember and belived because of all the proof my science teachers were showing us.

It was taught as a for certain thing. Now I look back and wonder what was really behind the fear mongerig? What's behind it today? and, What's the panic of choice tommorow?

Answer 1

aaronesque: what do you think earth day was for ?

Well I don't know smart one maybe because of this?

Answer 2

Science has come a long way in 40 years! There are sattelites now.

Answer 3

I'm sure that's part of it. It does seem like we always have to have a catastrophe brewing.

Answer 4

no, I have been following the warming and cooling since the 80's. i formed my own opinions based on factual evidence, but always research information that may support AGW. Just haven't found any yet.

I think for the most part, the discussion on (Global Warming) is much like our modern day court system. Both sides just try to prove their side.hundred of websites all claiming to disprove the other, or no real proof. Both sides have extreme activists. Money and politics are major players, and the right thing or the moral thing to do is not high on priorities.

I am mentioning Al Gore only because you stated that science teachers were showing proof. Some politically influenced schools are using his video to teach (brain wash) our school age kids. Al Gore really stands out and has really hurt the Global Warming cause with his commentary and egotistical version of the earth's natural Climate changes. His movie an inconvenient truth is a really bad movie by the way.

There is a small amount of fact there, but little to no absolute truth as to what or who caused it.

The only difference is that the global warming issue has no definitive answer equivalent to jury and /or Judge.. only time holds our future or fate.

I believe we have a responsibility to conserve energy, preserve our environment and recycle everything that is feasibly possible.

I do not believe that we are causing a doom & gloom warming catastrophe. I do know that we need to prepare now by conserving energy, preserving nature and preparing for the next climate change.

Please don't form your opinon from this forum. To many close minded "hot heads" with no real proof to back their doom & gloom.

Start your own "homework assignment" and research for a basis for your own opinion. it is best to not take a position for several weeks of study. Then you try to prove yourself wrong. I have found you get your best real evidence staying objective and open minded, regardless of your position.

Please just don't become one that uses terms like never, always, can't or references about idiots. The AGW'ers don't like being called names.

Answer 5

I don't remember the coming Ice age stuff. I remember they were really big on the smog in the 70s.  That is how our cars ended up with emission standards. I remember Love Canal, how bad they told us nuclear was, acid rain, and how bad pollution was.  They were right about most things (I still think we need nuclear) and I believed them and still do.  This global warming scare is different.  It is sensationalized by the media, pushed by politicians, sold to us by an international governmental bureau and legislated to us by corporations.  It just doesn't add up like the real problems did. It is like a new hot topic for us.  If it actually gets us weaned off foreign oil all well and good, I don't care much for the governments and beliefs of the countries that sell it to us any how. I used to believe man-made global waming was happening, I guess I still do, but I am a skeptic because I don't believe it will have the huge impact that we are told by press and movies. This AGW scare reeks of c**p!

Answer 6

No. because no sicentists in the 1970s "predicted a coming ice age." There were somepopular science articles in magazines like Time and Newsweek (NOT scientific journals)  in which scientists pointed out that the earth had gone through climate changes in the past and porobably would so again.  Including the possibility of another ice age at some point.  THAT is the sum total of what "you wre told." The rest is the imagination of the deniers--who obviously know so little about science they don't even know the difference between a popular magazine and a scientific journal.

Answer 7

Did evidence for "the coming ice age" in the 70's reach universal scientific concensus with evidence compelling enough to initiate entire nations to take immediate action?

Answer 8

Just because somebody was wrong once, doesn't mean they're always wrong.

Answer 9

I remember the 1970s.  We were told about how global temperatures had been dropping since 1945.  Scientists were afraid if the trend continued we would be heading into a new Ice Age.  Also, it rained a lot more then.  I can remember a picture of a man surfing down one of the main boulevards in town.  No dam had busted, it was just snow melt combined with rain water.  We haven't seen anything like it.  

Of course, mankind was blamed for the cooling as well.  Air pollution, particulates, were said to cool the atmosphere and cause greater precipitation.  At the time, it was only a few scientists sounding the alarm. A couple of them were from NASA, just as James Hansen is now.  Only NASA was a much higher profile agency then.  Mankind had first walked on the moon only two years before.  

Global cooling did not dominate the media nearly as much as global warming is now.  But Time magazine did a story on global cooling.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816...

You might be interested in these:

http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialr...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cool...

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...

Answer 10

Good question.  

You missed the point.  The projected ice age was geologically near, not historically near.  That is, in a few hundred or a few thousand years, the next ice age is imminent.  I was taught the same thing.  Those who taught this had no idea how many megatons of heat retaining carbon dioxide humanity would be pumping into the atmosphere in the then very near future.  Our consumption of fossil fuels is doubling at a frightening pace.  Every pound of fossil fuel (a gallon of gasoline is about seven pounds) converts to about two and a half pounds of CO2 when oxidized.  In other words, a gallon of gasoline becomes seventeen or eighteen pounds of CO2.  Do the atomic math on this and you will see that I am correct.

Multiply this times trillions of gallons of petroleum and the result is foregone.  We have effectively erected a lens in our atmosphere that is very similar to the one you learned to start a fire with when you were a child, only much larger.  We all now stand below a magnifying lens, waiting for the sun to fry us.

I loved the You Tube video the prior respondent sent us to. with the four square logic table.  It was very instructive, and similar to the ancient argument that acting like God exists is safer than acting like He doesn't.  Though valid, both miss the salient issue, that being the designation of truth.

The simple truth is that global warming has begun.  It will accelerate.  Given the physics of a rapidly increasing density of CO2 in the atmosphere, this is predictable.  Forget the science of "this is what happened and this is why it happened", and focus on the science of "If this happens, then this will be the result".

Simply build a planetary model, inject a higher concentration of CO2 into the surrounding atmosphere, consider the infrared retention properties of CO2, and the prediction would be one of increasing average temperature.  Do not wonder if it is happening.  Wonder why we failed to predict it.

As I have mentioned in numerous prior posts, the weather is like a pendulum.  Hotter summers swing into colder winters.  When it is winter in the US, it is summer in Australia.  Australia is experiencing one of the worst droughts, possibly THE worst drought, in its history.  The shortage of precipitation in Australia has become critical.  A swing to torrential flooding could well be next.

Watch the You Tube video.  Go to the lower row, the "True" row, and look ate the possibilities.  Concentrate on the lower left, where something is changed and the situation gets better.  Consider this box as a dream.  NO AMOUNT OF CHANGE WILL STOP THE INFLUX OF CO2.  The atmosphere and the plants can absorb and convert the CO2 output of a few million humans and their campfires.  Six billion humans overwhelm the ecosystem.  Period.

Ecosystems are all about balance, a counter to a force, a remedy for a failure, a correction for a doomed trajectory.  A disturbance results in a corrective factor.  Geologically, if the atmospheric CO2 increased, then plant life flourished and dealt with it.  Many a green house has a CO2 generator installed to encourage growth.

This corrective factor no longer works,  Not only has the CO2 level risen so high that the normal plant absorption rate would take a thousand years or so to correct it, but we a mowing down our trees at a record pace.  The Black forest is only a memory.  Condos stand where trees once did in Aspen.  And the free cutting in South America is appalling.  Too much CO2, too few trees.  Too bad, so sad.  

Be skeptical, please.  Be forewarned as well.  And, pray that you are lucky, and your luck will extend to the entire planet.

The dangers of overpopulation were delineated and predicted over forty years ago, and no action was taken.  Abortion became popular in some parts of the world, but in most other parts of the world procreation continued unabated, as it does today.  Be bunnies, have fun, forget the consequences.

Mankind has had so many opportunities to truly succeed, but has chosen to ignore most of them.  Just like rats, we have procreated ourselves into a crisis that will be resolved only by a sharp die-back, which was also predicted in the sixties.

Be proud of mankind.  Assure yourself that brain power and technology will save us all (or, at least, most of us).  Better air conditioners.  More efficient cars and buildings.  Fewer plastic bottles.  All of which slow the inevitable.  

Being more efficient does not reverse the onslaught of reproduction, it merely delays the consequences.  

Wonder if you will.  Watch, and learn.  

Have no children.  That would be best.

And, I wish you luck.

Answer 11

The coming ice age that never came

That ALL logging was bad.

That ALL mining was bad.

That nuclear power was bad.

Etc etc etc etc etc

We were fed a lot of bullsh*t and it turned out to be BULLSH*T

Most of it turned out to be disinformation by radicals that were working for the soviets during the cold war.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/artic...

Now it looks like global warming is also a russian disinformation campaign.

As it fits the same pattern and the same people are pushing it.

The only thing i see is when russia found that they could not win the cold war. And the use of nuclear weapons would  not

let them win,  They faked giving up, Got rid of the countries that were a drag on there economy. And started a program to wreak the industrial base in the US.

The disinformation program that they came up with is the global warming scam.

You will note that there has not been any link between global warming and Russia and Russia is a large industrial country.

They have as much industrial base as the US with no pollution controls and much of it is run with dirty coal fired plants.

It is like Russia is not there when it come to CO2 levels and global warming.

It is to the point that it is ether,

A Russian disinformation campaign

or

The radicals that use to do the disinformation campaigns for the Russians have started there own disinformation campaign

for there own reasons,  Like they now want control of the free world so they can be the ruling class leaders.

THEY WANT TO TAX THE RICH EXCEPT THEMSELVES

TAX THE MIDDLE CLASS AND MAKE THE POOR POORER AND DEPENDENT ON THEM.

THEY ALSO WANT TO RUN THE CORPERATIONS OUT OF THE US AND TO CHINA BY TAXING THEM TILL THEY LEAVE,

THIS LEAVES A COUNTRY OF THE POOR RULED BY A FAR LEFT RULING CLASS.

Answer 12

This was just a few guys with no good data who got way more attention from the media than they deserved (which explains most of the answers above).  With no backing from ANY major scientific organization.  I can't imagine what "proof" your teachers showed you, because ther really wasn't any.

They very much resembled the "skeptics" of today.

What they were not like in any way is today's thousands of climatologists, with a mountain of verified and replicated data, and the backing of EVERY major scientific organization.

More details here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=9...