Trivia! In the 70's, there were more peer-reviewed papers on, A) global cooling, or B) global warming?

Question

1st correct answer gets 10 pts.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm

(hint hint, nudge nudge)

Answer 1

Global cooling - they were anticipating a new ice age.

Answer 2

Cooling, as I was part of the report.

Hint, I was there and still around, and freezing my azz off in the north.

Answer 3

B) global cooling!

Answer 4

Warming.

Answer 5

I don't think there were ANY peer-reviewed papers on global cooling, were there?  There were a few articles about it in the newsmagazines, I think I still have one of the issues, but global cooling was certainly never a widely-held theory.  The media just reported on it and phrased things in a way to sell the most copy.

EDIT:  I see I have several thumbs down on this comment, and I really don't care but I am curious; are people aware of peer-reviewed papers on global cooling that were published and publicized in the media?  Or is there other evidence of the majority of the scientific community believing that global cooling was occurring?  I'm certainly not aware of it, although I was a young adult very interested in politics and the environment at the time who absorbed tons of printed material and televised news reports.  I actually still have many of the original periodicals published back at that time and I can't recall or find ANYTHING approaching the hysteria or 'consensus' that is being implied today in hindsight.

I'm just saying, if there WAS such a wave of broad concern in the scientific community supported by research-as is being suggested-there's got to be a source for making the claim that isn't being shared.  Can someone post a link or something?

EDIT 2: I see Dana posted that the ratio seen in one study was 44:7, so there were some peer-reviewed papers published, but that certainly still seems to support my recollection that it was a minority view without broad-based support by the scientific community.  Can anyone provide any documentation for an opposing opinion supported by historically accurate FACTS?

One other thing I just noticed in the comments-the first Earth Day was NOT 'all about global cooling.'  Geez.  Talk about a manufactured conclusion, like this whole global cooling  mythology.  Obviously I didn't bother following the link in the original question to discover it was rhetorical before making my first comments about peer reviewed papers, but I won't change that part of my answer, I just didn't remember any credible evidence being presented by scientific groups at the time.

Answer 6

That's an easy question. Definitely global warming. A quick google scholar found the following:

Are We on the Brink of Pronounced Global Warming (1975)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

"the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years"

Global Cooling? (1976)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

"both hemispheres will be subject to warming due to the atmospheric (greenhouse) effect as the CO2 content of the atmosphere builds up from the combustion of fossil fuels"

On the Carbon Dioxide–Climate Confusion (1975)

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?requ...

"Based on current understanding of climate theory ... estimate for the global surface temperature increase from a doubling of atmospheric C02 content is between 1.5 and 3 K"

I could go on and on and on and on ...

But as long as the doubters can find a single scientists who predicted global cooling in the 70's, this myth will continue.

Answer 7

wow, thanks for bringing this article to my attention. Its funny, but this is a common argument that anti-global warming people use...

Answer 8

Warming by a ratio of 44:7.  The 'they predicted cooling' myth is based entirely on the media rather than the scientific literature.  See Myth #1 at the link below.

Answer 9

It says that the majority of climatologist predicted warming.  That is not to say that alarmists of the day didn't predict an Ice Age due to petroleum.  I am sure there were many responsible climatologist that recognized the cooling of the 1970s was a natural trend and would likely warm.  I certainly remember hearing about the coming Ice Age but I was smart enough even at that younger age to take those predictions with a grain of salt.  You might take comfort but the numbers you cite are meaningless in my opinion.  The alarmist then predicted Industry was causing cooling.  Alarmists now predict industry will cause warming.  Both are probably mistaken and both are certainly overestimating their magical powers of prediction.

Answer 10

But didn't you prove our point?  That was a fraud, "science" is not always right, science is always changing, and one "scientific" claim today may be denied later on.  And that's also proof that we've had periods of a supposed "energy crisis"--that disappear and appear again!  It's not about any crisis or lack of resources, it's about price gouging and artificial scarcity.  If you look up President Carter on wiki, it talks about OPEC holding back their supply of oil which lead to inflated prices.  But Carter didn't dare confront them, he placed solar panels on the roof of the White House and suggested everyone else do the same.  Nothing's wrong with conservation, but something is wrong with allowing oil companies to decide what happens to our economies.

Edit: That proves the point--if global cooling is supposedly wrong now, why can't this (man-made global warming caused by CO2 production) also be wrong?  I think most skeptics are not saying that global cooling is defintely right and warming is wrong--they're saying that the alarmists have made claims that contradict each other and gives good reason to be skeptical.  The media is talking about AGW more because they know that people believe whatever they see on TV and that it's more affective that talking about in magazines (especially these days).  As Bush said, fool me once...

Edit: From what I see from people who were around, it was cooling.  I think that article lacks any concrete evidence and is just an attempt to rewrite/revise history (see "memory hole" in Orwell's 1984).

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

Answer 11

But was there tangible evidence that mankind caused either one of them?   No.

Besides - the issue isn't about peer reviewed papers - it's about the scare mongering.   The first Earth Day event was all about global cooling.

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PA...

And as you've mentioned, there WERE peer-reviewed articles on global cooling.    That's the point - that's why we need proof, not "consensus."     The number of people who believe something to be true is irrelevant to whether there is any proof that it is.

Answer 12

Trivia: We were supposedly  to be in an ice age already... if we listen to all the alarmists!

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2008, AND THEREAFTER



Environmentalists' Wild Predictions



Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.



At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."



In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."



Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."



It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.



Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?



Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.



Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.



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