Is Global Warming the salvation of mankind?

Question

30 years or so ago during the 70's, all the scientists told us that we were entering a stage of global cooling and we were going to have another ice age and all of Canada would be covered in glaciers....Now that the glaciers are receding should we thank global warming for saving mankind?

Source: In April 1975 Newsweek reported: "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," They warned of a "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of Global cooling.

OK, you yourself, just pointed out articles about global cooling from 2 reputable magazines and yet you accuse me of making the whole thing up?

Brilliant argument, really.

Answer 1

you got it....

Answer 2

As Bob and Enraged Parrot have already stated, there was no actual threat of global cooling back in the 70's and the easiest way to confirm this for yourself is to ask folks who were around in the 70's if they remember such a thing.

Certain skeptics like to skew the facts by claiming that this was a big thing back then. However, ask them to provide evidence to back up their claims and all they can refer to are three small media articles (Newsweek, National Geographic and Time). That's it, the sum total of global cooling is about one page of news reports. You'll find more media coverage relating to gnomes, pixies and fairies than you will about global cooling.

Here's what really happened. Some aspects of the media picked up on the fact that a small number of scientists were studying the cycles that the planet naturally goes through. There's several of them, the better known ones are named Milankovitch Cycles after Milutin Milankovitch who first documented tham way back in the 1930's. These cycles cause the Earth to warm and cool, the scientists at the time quite correctly predicted that in the future the world would enter a cooling phase if no other factors were involved. The predictions are correct, the world will cool in the future if nothing unnatural prevents it. The media, doing what they like to do, picked up on this and sensationalised the findings by making it sound that an imminent ice age had been predicted when the reality was in fact very different.

Answer 3

Try as I might, I have been totally unable to find a single scientist who predicted an eminent ice age in the 70's. In fact, barring the Newsweek article you gave and one (slightly less ridiculous) article in National Geographic, I can't find anything about an eminent ice age at all. Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out every peer reviewed publication that mentions it?

Come to think of it, aside from global warming skeptics, I can't find a single person who even =remembers= your supposed 'global cooling scare' in the 70's. Which leads me to believe that you've made the whole thing up.

Answer 4

The idea that global cooling was a serious theory in the 1970s is just a myth. It was a few guys with a theory and no data, just like the skeptics of today. No major scientific organizations supported the idea. More here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

It bears no resemblance to the strong scientific consensus of today.

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know... Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point. You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

Answer 5

The end result of global warming will be an ice age-not the salvation of human kind but it's demise.

Answer 6

no, mankind doesn't need saving cause you reap what you sew...i think the global cooling was nature's [GOD's] way of purifying what we FU**ed up and then we FU**ed up some more and cause another catastrophe that nature [GOD] has morphed to be another clean up for our screw up. i got my theory off of the movie DAY AFTER TOMORROW, though it was totally ******** i think the world is trying to clean it's self up, even if it means starting over

Answer 7

pollution has an extremely strong potential to be the salvation of all of everything on this planet.

everything on this planet can survive w/o people - people cannot survive w/o this planet - so we are gonna have to get it together and i think we will.

Answer 8

I wouldn't use the term salvation. I don't think we have to worry about the world freezing over anymore. But now we have to worry about the world flooding :(