Do you remember the good old days when scientists were scaring us about using coal and this was going to cause an Ice Age?

Question

http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/03/flashback-1971-scientists-predict-burning-coal-will-cause-the-next-ice-age/

Answer 1

The article cites Dr. S. I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University. He sounds like a scientist. HH Lamb of the CRU at UEA was also much quoted in the press telling us that things would get colder - another scientist. See the link for examples of the press quoting Lamb.



"A new ice age is creeping over the Northern Hemisphere and the rest of this century will get colder and colder ..." Prof Hubert Lamb.



Lamb was actually one of the brighter climate scientists. He realized that to demonstrate a change you needed to be sure what had happened previously. Climate science has gone backwards since then. Now you just need to spot two things and you know that one caused the other and that proves it is different and in a bad way. No need to know what happened before.



I think it is an age problem. The people who disbelieve the 1970's scare were probably not old enough to take it in at the time - if they were alive at all. Consequently, for them, it did not happen. We who lived through it see things differently. Those who ignore history etc etc.



In another 20 years or so, the current warmies will be telling their incredulous grand children about the warming scare we had prior to the new cooling scare they are learning about in school. "How could you have been so silly granddad?" they will ask.



I bet the cure will be more centralization, even bigger governments , and yet more taxes. That should do it.

Answer 2

Lemme pull out a canned answer for this.



Back lo these many years ago, there was a certain amount of *media hype* about a "coming ice age", mostly from sulfur aerosols and the like that were causing global dimming. As far as I'm aware, a (slim) majority of *actual scientists* in the relevant fields were more concerned about possible global warming from CO2 (no, Al Gore didn't start global warming, unless he had a time machine). There were some scientists also concerned about the issue, but to the extent there was a scientific consensus at the time, it was one of warming (there really wasn't one, yet--most scientists at the time, if asked, would probably have said "we're not sure". If pressed, they might have said "I think it's possible we're headed for anthropogenic global warming", but really *the data wasn't in yet*.)



The thing you have to understand is, whatever you hear about science in the media often bears little or no resemblance to, well, what actual scientists actually think is going on. Reporters are looking for news that will sell papers (or tune eyes in to TV sets, or whatever), and that means spectacle and dramatic pronouncement, not "well, there's a slim chance that" or "the research suggests that possibly". And, at the time, before we understood much about climate (and thus, for example, knew that warming could lead to significant changes in rainfall patterns, and thus cause droughts and/or floods), "The Earth is going to freeze!" sounded much more dramatic than "It's going to get a bit warmer".

Answer 3

Yes.



Here is the abstract of one of the few science papers on the subject, most of them at the time were dealing with the effects of CO2



"Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5°K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age." [1]



I also remember how dumping the aerosols into the atmosphere caused terrible smog [2,3]



.

Answer 4

How could anyone? Let’s work backward from you question:



Starting with the Daily Caller headline:



“Flashback 1971: Scientists Predict Burning Coal Will Cause The Next Ice Age”



The Daily Caller Story references the Real Climate story headlined



“45 Years Since Top Scientists Warned That Fossil Fuels Would Cause A New Ice Age

Posted on April 2, 2015”



https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/45-years-since-top-scientists-warned-that-fossil-fuels-would-cause-a-new-ice-age/



Real Climate cites as evidence a 1971 newspaper article “U. S. Scientist See New Ice Age Coming”



The newspaper article was based on one paper by two scientists, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate” (Rasooll and Schneider 1971) which said if you hold everything else constant a 4-fold increase in aerosols could cause substantial cooling.



http://www.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138



Meanwhile, in 1976, Hansen co-authored a paper, “Greenhouse Effects due to Man-Made Perturbations of Trace Gases”



http://www.sciencemag.org/content/194/4266/685



There is no way to logically or honestly follow that progression to a conclusion that "scientists were scaring us about using coal and this was going to cause an Ice Age?"



=====



OM --



>>Edit@Gary F: Perhaps you missed these other articles: <<



It is true that I get zero information about science from news stories - particularly snippets from article - and I certainly do not read the same story a dozen times and conclude that means there is 12 times more evidence of something. On the other hand, if I read 12 research studies based on independent lines of evidence from physics, chemistry, geology, and biology then I do weight the information more -- because consensus of evidence is the basis of all scientific knowledge. In any case, Goddard's collection of nonscientific evidence - even when not repetition - does not always say what he claims. Apparently, Goddard considers and past reference to cool weather events is the same thing as predicting an Ice Age. And, I doubt many people were really scared by forecasts of Ice Ages 10,000 years and more in the future.

Answer 5

I was in high school in the Los Angeles area then and I can say for sure that it DID look like gas masks could be needed in a few decades. You have no idea how bad the smog was then. No idea at all. It was BAD. Lots of environmental laws were passed, people complained how the cost of cleaning up the air was going to ruin the economy (just like people now are saying what a waste of money it is to try to limit CO2 emissions), but the laws went into effect and today the air is cleaner and you and I are benefiting from that. If the deniers had had their way back then, people in large cities WOULD be wearing gas masks now. China is learning that now. They kept the economy strong wit no pollution laws, people ARE wearing masks (surgical masks) in cities, and now the government is rushing a bunch of rules into effect. How much better and maybe cheaper would it have been to control pollution from the start?



And I also recall that some at the time suspected an ice age could be starting. I also recall people saying that maybe the greenhouse effect from our CO2 emissions might counteract that.



Anyway, science is about finding the truth. Science is not God or a law that some priesthood of scientists dictates to the masses. It is simply a way of thinking logically. When you find your theory is wrong you change the theory. It is not flip-flopping, it is learning from your mistakes. Logically, changing the amount of CO2 in the air by the kind of amounts we are doing is not something to just ignore because you assume it must be harmless. And be aware that I am not saying we need to DO something as much as that we need to STOP doing something. It may be harmless, but then again it may not, but I can say for sure that if those saying it is harmless prevail in public policy, and it turns out to be harmful, the amount if insults, scorn, hate, and even threats that will be heaped on those people will pale in comparison to the scorn you are voicing now. And if it does indeed prove to me harmless, we will still have a better, cleaner world for the effort.



Keep in mind it is not as if we are just minding our own business and now being told to do something. We are actively emitting more and more CO2 and I want us to stop. It reminds me of a friend who was developing film in a dark room when someone opened the door, letting in light, which will ruin the film! He yelled to shut the door by they just stood there in the open door letting the light in has he tried to cover the undeveloped film to limit the damage. The person holding the door open is NOT doing no harm and they need to stop holding the door open and shut it!

Answer 6

Yes, a few scientists were worrying about that then. Luckily we took the threat from air pollution seriously back then and took steps to address the problem of aerosol pollution as well as other health threats from air pollution. Anyone in developed countries that is old enough to remember conditions back then will no doubt have noticed how much cleaner the air is now than it was then. I remember high pollution days from the 1970s that made our eyes burn and your chest tight, but for the most part those days are gone.



Of course at the same time many more scientists were worried about the rapidly increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and unfortunately that problem was NOT addressed then. Aerosols in the third world from coal and other high pollution sources have problem masked some of the problem associated with global warming, since they have caused a "global dimming", but the problem is still there.



graphicconception says:



"I think it is an age problem. The people who disbelieve the 1970's scare were probably not old enough to take it in at the time - if they were alive at all."



graphicconception may have been alive in the 1970's, but I suspect that then--like today--he got his science from sources other than textbooks and scientific journals. People that were warning about cooling then were in the minority (I could show him a meteorology text from the late 60's that talks about global warming), but if you're a "skeptic" then you get all your science from popular media. The 1972 paper by Rasool and Schneider overestimated the very real cooling effect of aerosols, and was later corrected by Schneider in a 1975 paper that stated "CO2 warming dominates the surface temperature patterns soon after 1980". If that weren't enough, the aerosol output was greatly reduced by the developed world, so that projects of aerosol increase were overestimated--in other words, the problem was at least partially taken care of.



I might mention that I WAS alive then and paying attention to earth science, and the person I remember promoting a forthcoming ice age was none other than Nigel Calder, one of the denier stars of "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

Answer 7

I remember it but didn't pay much attention to it because even as a youngster I wasn't that gullible but I was certainly more easily influenced back then. I think it wasn't as a widespread as global warming is because it simply wasn't that big of a long term credible threat but it was an example of leftist politics trying to use science to push their causes. There is a long list of leftist Causes. I watched a show last night on "star wars" the Strategic Defense Initiative where the leftist clowns in Washington and the press mocked President Reagan suggesting he was ignorant of science believing that we could make an effective anti-missile system. That charge in particular irritated me. The thing about these anti-science clowns, they really think they know science better than everyone else and they believe their politics amounts to reality and science. They cannot separate them.

Answer 8

I've never been a big pusher of the 70's ice age scare. I realize some people think it's relevant to how scientists act today but I have to disagree.



Skeptics pushing this previous ice age "scare" is akin to warmists thinking there is a big oil conspiracy (even though they are investing hundreds of millions into renewables). I'm sure there's some grain of truth to both but I see little relevance to current climate science as a discussion point.

__________________________________________



Edit@Gary F: Perhaps you missed these other articles: https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/1970s-ice-age-scare/



Or these: http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html



If that puts you into a state of cognitive dissonance, then I guess there is always this to calm you down: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1



Like I said, I don't really care one way or the other but it is certainly entertaining to see the contortions and twists to deny some simple facts. If that's indicative of anything it's that nothing will change the mind of some regarding their overwhelming belief in the disaster of CO2 emissions.

Answer 9

Yes but their political agenda changed or else it just wasn't scary enough for their purposes. Maybe they should try jumping out of the dark and hollering boo.

Answer 10

No. I've been too busy reading fake quotes of Goebbels.

Answer 11

BS has fashion too

Answer 12

No, only climate deniers were talking about global cooling in the 70s. Scientists were talking about global warming in the 70s.

Answer 13

unfortunately I am old enough to - so my answer to your question is...yes.

Answer 14

no. scientists did not say that.