What would have happened if we'd listened to the scientists warning of global warming in the 70s?

Question

"a survey of scientific journals of the [1970s] showed that only seven supported global cooling, 44 predicted warming and 20 others were neutral, USA Today reported Thursday."

http://www.physorg.com/news122834330.html

“It became clear that human-produced greenhouse gases should become a dominant forcing and even exceed other climate forcings, such as volcanoes or the Sun, at some point in the future,” Hansen observed.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/temptracker/

Do you think we would have the problems that we currently have if we'd listened to the majority of scientists warning of the possibility of anthropogenic global warming?

Answer 1

Your right, most journals didn't expect continued cooling. Global cooling became popular in the media because of the cooling trend from about 1945 to 1970. But, 15 years doesn't make a significant trend. Besides, a coming ice age is "scarier" than warm days ahead.

As far as what effect on global warming now if people took steps in the 70s, my guess (and it is only a guess, no one could know) is little to none. Nevertheless, the 70s were the ideal time to build more nuclear power plant for another reason entirely; to limit foreign dependence on oil. After the oil embargo, it would have received at least some popular support.  

Answer 2

We would be more like Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Costa Rica, England, Italy, Spain, Columbia....

The EPI ranks the U.S. at #39. That's pretty damned awful. We're right down there at the bottom of the barrel with China and India. Lovely.



I believe we still have time but now it's going to take a lot more work to stop completely and then begin to reverse the damage. You'd have to change the mindset of an entire nation. (A greedy, gobbling one.)

The first article I ever read on the effects of global warming and how it would affect, not just the United States, but the entire world, was "The Glaciers Are Coming!" in Playboy Magazine...if you can imagine.

It was written in 1971.

(Science Magazine didn't pick up the subject until 1976!!)

I was shocked by the implications and wondered how long we'd known about it and if the rest of the world was aware of the danger!

That article didn't pull any punches either. It pointedly described exactly what effects chlorofluorocarbons (air pollutants/emmissions) would have on the ozone layer within the next 10 years (1981) -- that there would be sizable holes in it at the north and south poles and then the REAL problems would begin: the catastrophic climate disasters we're going through now.

Now what? I'd hate to think we're going down without a fight.

Answer 3

Maybe we'd have expanded our use of non-CO2-generating nuclear power - - - - oh wait, the UCS and Greenpeace and other prominent environmentalist groups opposed that.

So I guess we wouldn't have done anything.

Fact is, while a survey of scientific journals suggests more climatologists were writing of warming than of cooling, not a single of one them left their ivory towers to take the microphone away from Ehlich and his other doomsday-cult fellows who were spouting off about cooling.   The environmental ACTIVISTS were clearly on the global cooling bandwagon - - - and it was considered to be a "noble lie" - scaring people into doing "the right thing" even if for the wrong reasons.

That is why your movement has a serious boy-who-cried-wolf problem, Dana.

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, in 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 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 4

I don't know, but I wouldn't mind seeing the results of a survey of ALL climate experts.... not only board members of associations supposedly representing their members.  I'm concerned that there may be too many 'bureaucratic scientists' .... J. Hansen for example... who are all too eager to further political rather than scientific agendas.

Answer 5

Nothing - Al Gore, who is the driving force behind this baloney, was a young twerp at the time and incapable of causing the level of trouble he does today.

Answer 6

If we had listened, we would have done something different back then and the problems would be different today but our science in understanding that stuff would be farther advanced because we have been paying attention.  

Answer 7

We could have probably avoided some of the greenhouse gas emissions which lead to rapid global warming, as well as reducing our addiction to oil, potentially avoiding the war in Iraq, etc.

I guess it's a good idea to listen to scientists.

Answer 8

It was actually global cooling and a future ice age in the 70's.  That was the scare back then, but since it didn't work James Hansen did a flip flop.  Don't trust him or his data...the appearance of corruption in his work is too evident.

Answer 9

We'd be over this fad by now and would have moved on to another, like cancer snow or poison sun.