GW believers, did you also believe?

Question

Global Ice Age scare

Overpopulation scare

Acid Rain scare

Why or Why not?.

Answer 1

Wow, this makes me feel young.  I wasn't alive for the global ice age scare, don't remember an overpopulation scare, and barely remember acid rain.  I didn't think it was fake but wasn't particularly concerned about it.

This gives me an idea for a question.  Did you believe Iraq had WMD's?

Answer 2

"Did" they? I think many still do, lol!  

Climate change (which can include anything)

Overpoplulation (yes, they still think people are evil)

Acid rain (there's still pollution isn't there?)

Answer 3

Whenever I see arguments from Bob, it seems more like someone arguing for a religious belief than arguing something about science.  He suggests that the people in the 1970s that blamed petroleum for causing us to move into an ice age are the same as those that are skeptics now.  In truth those that blamed petroleum in the 1970s are the same as those that are blaming petroleum now for global warming.  The were/are both left wing anti-capitalists.

Answer 4

I believed the Global Ice Age scare, and the Overpopulation scare, but not the Acid Rain scare. I don't believe the acid rain scare because the gases don't seem to be melting into rain anytime soon. But the overpopulation scare, you can tell is happening, because we keep having to build more and more condos around america. Also the global ice age scare I believe is one of the possible outcomes of GW. This is because cold water makes the air cold, right? and well if the polar ice caps melt they're still going to be cold, making the air cold, making the water even colder, and eventually freezing. This is, of course, and theory, but I believe it could totally happen.

Answer 5

and lets not forget, rabid easter bunny scares, and man eating kitty cat scares as well.

Answer 6

Global Ice Age.  No.  This was just a few guys with no good data, and no backing from any major scientific organization.  They in NO WAY resembled today's global warming scientists, they were EXACTLY like today's "skeptics".

Overpopulation.  Somewhat.  It's not a scare in desperately poor African countries, who can't feed their people.  Or in China, which fixed it by limiting families to one child.  Go to Google News and search "food shortage" and [China one child policy].

Acid Rain.  Sure.  It was wiping out forests on the East Coast.  We solved it by restricting SO2 emissions through the Clean Air Act of the 1970s.  We need to do something like that (on an International scale) for CO2.

You have to evaluate each issue scientifically by the DATA, not by listening to "logical" arguments from advocates of a position.

The data supporting global warming is overwhelming.  I'm with the Admiral (who is truly the "vanguard"):

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut

Answer 7

I'm not sure where you got "acid rain scare" -- it was a real problem for soil, forests and lakes, and we fixed it with flue gas desulfurization scrubbers, and a cap-and-trade system, just like we should do with CO2.

Answer 8

Here's what the "vanguard" of the AGW believers think:

"It's time for a warrior society to rise up out of the earth and throw itself in front of the juggernaut of destruction, to be antibodies against the human pox that's ravaging this precious, beautiful planet." - Quoted by Albert Gore in his book Earth in the Balance (1992)

"We must... reclaim the roads and the plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness millions and tens of millions of [acres of] presently settled land." - Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet (1990)

"I'm not advocating illegal activity unless you're accompanied by your parents, or at night." - Quoted by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb in their book Trashing the Economy (1993)

"We advocate bio-diversity for bio-diversity's sake. That says man is no more important than any other species... It may well take our extinction to set things straight." - Quoted Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb in their book Trashing the Economy (1993)

"An Ice Age is coming and I welcome it as much-needed changing. I see no solution to our ruination of earth except for a drastic reduction of the human population." - Quoted in From the Trenches, a publication of Putting People First, March 1, 1993

The problems with the "just a few guys with bad data" counter-argument are that those guys are still out there and were never held accountable for their disinformation, and that the other guys who supposedly had the good data never did anything to correct the record, to correct the public's misconception - - - if it scared the public into wanting to do what they considered to be "the right thing" then they just let the public believe what it believed.

That's not a whole lot better than actively disseminating the mis-information.

Answer 9

The "Global Ice Age scare" was almost non-existent, and in fact some of the people that claim that it's an example of a scare being over-hyped are the ones that were over-hyping it back then! I'm specifically thinking of Nigel Calder, who was featured prominently in "The Great Global Warming Swindle."

Overpopulation is a problem, in fact it's the biggest problem we have and is driving all our other problems. That's easy for me to see, the population the city where I live has doubled since I was a kid--gone from about 500,000 to over one million, and it has not been for the better.  That's happening all over the world. Perhaps there are people out there that think the Earth is better with an ever-increasing population, but I sure don't see it. More cars, more buildings, more pollution, more congestion, ick!

Acid rain was a real problem, but it has largely been taken care of by regulating emissions, at least in North America.  Before, it was a real problem (where it existed, since it was not universal), some of the pH values measured downwind from pulp processing plants were downright scary. I wouldn't want to have been under that--the rain must have tasted sour!

Answer 10

I believe all of them. I think that in 5 years we will be living in the underground caves.