What would have happened if we'd listened to the global cooling alarmists in the 1960s and 1970s?

Question

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)

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 in “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)

Answer 1

Sorry I need to respond to the martian. Al Gore is the new Billy Sunday not anything less. Or maybe the real life Elmer Gantry.

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

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

Answer 2

A management professor in college told of an experiment where two actors appeared on stage in an auditorium.  One was dressed in janitors garb and the other wore a lab coat.

The "janitor" explained that they were having problems with air circulation so they brought a scientist to help determine the circulation.

The "scientist" produced a flask with a liquid in it.  He told the audience that it would release a harmless gas with a pronounced odor.  He asked the audience to raise their hands when they smelled it.  In this way he could determine how the air circulated.

One by one people raised their hands as they smelled the the odor.

Only thing is the flask contained water, it was all in their heads, put there by what they thought was an expert.

People love to be gullible and we love to be scared, whether it is a slight rise or fall in temperature we love being spooked by some form of frivolity.  In another age, Gore would have been a rival circus owner to P.T. Barnum.

Answer 3

I hope you see the irony in quoting Reid Bryson, who's often cited as a global warming skeptic these days.

The answer is that if we'd listened to the "global cooling alarmists", we would have been making a mistake because they were in the minority.

Answer 4

Yes - It's just reactive science.

On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.

The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.

Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.

Now Hansen is the lead alarmist sounding the warnings that man kind is doomed because of the same stuff that he claimed was going to cause global cooling.  

I guess he found that warming was more profitable.