Do you buy global warming?

Question

50 years ago they were predicting an Ice Age..that never happened. We have hot days and cold days that set records. I think it's bull. But I do think we have a responsibility to clean up our planet and keep it from getting worse.

Answer 1

ya i'm buying it. you will be too, through higher taxes. that's if we don't get this non sense stopped.

as you can see we have several global cooling deniers here.

even though they try to cover their track so they could promote the new lie, it isn't working.

not ONE of the predictions made by these "experts" has come true since the 60's.

global warming will be no different.

edit:
trevor-

sorry, it WAS mainstream.

how did global cooling theory become curriculum in public schools
if it were just a "few outsiders" and "media people"?

Answer 2

It is true that there was much media hype over the coming ice age in the 1970's. There were television specials on it, many popular science magazines had articles, it was in the news . But there was a VERY BIG DIFFERENCE!

Today, there is much media coverage about Global Warming but it has a bigger CREDIBILITY FACTOR. When you have a business, what do you want to do to increase the credibility factor of your business? You have the big three:

1. Validation from authority - you have a scientist or doctor or some other expert validating your product or service

2. Celebrity endorsements - some famous people who use your product or service or who is willing to talk about it. The celebrity is someone with a.) a high profile and b.) someone people trust

3.) Testimonials from consumers

Now when it came to the Ice Age hype, none of these were present. So it did not really have a high impact on the public. If you were too young, you may not even have known about it. If you were old enough to be interested in science, you definitely knew about it. If you were the general public, you knew about it but were probably not phased by it.

If you look at the timetable for the global warming theory, you will find that all the major scientific bodies had already declared it to be true long before the actual research came about. Many of them declared the global warming theory true from the early research which was mostly false and error ridden. The less error ridden research came later. But the credibility for the research went up.

Having a spokesman like Al Gore was really good for the theory as well. And the ear of many of the top UN diplomats and statesmen who have an influence on the government bodies of the world. Hollywood provided the celebrity endorsements.

This time they did everything right.

With increased funding came increased science. There were fewer scientists who were involved in the global cooling theory but there was also less money for that kind of research. Nowadays, if you want a big research grant, you know where the ticket is: Global Warming.

It has been a very successful campaign. So the comparison between the two climate change media events is a comparison between success and fizzle.

Answer 3

People will tell you that no one was predicting a new ice age 50 years ago, but that is just a lie. I was taught in school that the planet was indeed entering into a new ice age.

Only deniers will say this isn't true.

Of course we have a responsibility to keep our planet clean, and we do. The air and water is much cleaner than it was in the 60's. We no longer use lead in our gas. We should demand that no country ever use leaded gas again. We should demand a world wide ban on the use of leaded gas.

Pollution controls are a multi billion business today. There's hope.

Answer 4

With all due respect, I think it may be wise if you looked a little further into global warming and global cooling.

There were never any predictions made about impending ice age. This was a story confined to a small section of the media and never had any credible scientific backing. The media, as they often do, latched onto something, distorted it, rewrote it and ended up publishing nonsense. The story ran for a few weeks, was confined to a handful of half page articles then died off. Ask people who were around then if they remember the threat of an ice age - they don't because it never happened.

We do have record breaking hot and cold days but a few individual days are fairly meaningless in themselves, global warming is about long term trends - things that happen over years and on a global scale. In this respect all record breaking events are to do with hot weather. 2007 is the hottest year on record to date (it may change tomorrow with the publication of the August data), this decade is the hottest on record. Global temps have never been higher at any time since humans forst appeared on the planet, temps are rising faster now than has ever before been known etc etc.

I studied global warming back in the 1980's, long before it became a politicised and contentious issue. Back then it was easy to be objective, it was also easy to see that it was a very real event.

The evidence is there for all to see. Millions of people wake up every morning, open their curtains and look out on to mountains that until recently were covered in snow, they see deserts that were recently farmland, lakes that have dried up or in some cases, see unfamiliar surroundings because they've been forced to evacuate their houses.

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ADDED LATER.

To afratta437 (above)

I was born in the 60's and went to school in the 70's and global cooling was not on the curriculum. I got a masters in climatology in the 80's and whilst global cooling was taught it certainly wasn't in the context of an impending ice age.

I have access to a database of over 140,000 scientific papers and a search for 'global cooling' reveals nothing credible relating to impending ice ages in the 70's. There are mentions of it from fringe elements and non scientists but that's it.

I have asked on here and on scientific forums for someone to provide a link to ANY scientific report that predicted an impending ice age, to date I haven't received a single one.

If you know of any publication other than a few paragraphs in Newsweek, Time and National Geographic I would be very interested to read it.

By the 1970's we knew quite clearly why the planet had been cooling in preceding decades. By this time Clean Air Acts had been, and were being, implemented around the world. Scientists knew the warming trend that had been masked by global dimming would re-emerge as the dominant driver of climate change, this has been known since the 50's.

The media interest in global cooling stemmed from scientific studies that were being conducted into cyclical changes the planet goes through. The scientists quite correctly predicted that the planet would enter another ice age, they were talking in terms of tens of thousands of years, the media changed the facts to give the impression an ice age was imminent.

Answer 5

There were no scientists predicting an ice age in the 60's. There were, in fact, no scientists predicting imminent ice ages in the 70's (which is actually the time period you're referring to). Why? Because climate scientists at the time were already aware that greenhouse gases from human activities were having a warming effect on the climate.

One or two scientists speculated that, if the cooling trend continued (they didn't expect it to), it could result in feedback mechanisms that could lead to an ice age. There was no research done on it, and no articles published in peer reviewed journals. The idea of an imminent ice age received very little, if any, support from the scientific community.

There were, however, some regrettable and inaccurate things reported by the mainstream media at the time. Newsweek wrote a sensational and completely bogus article claiming that scientists were warning of a coming ice age, and National Geographic published a (slightly better) article claiming the same thing.

Unfortunately, though perhaps unsurprisingly, global warming theory skeptics have repeatedly distorted what actually happened. In fact, Richard Lindzen, one of the most respectable and prominent of the GW skeptics, has called the argument "stupid." And said he was surprised that anyone actually believed it.

Answer 6

You are absolutely right.

In the 70's everyone thought there was going to be an Ice Age. And now, scientists believe Global Warming is taking over our world. All of this is fake. A hoax. Unbelievable. Now, I'm not going by the books here, but I know that Global Warming is not taking an affect on our world. The Earth goes through stages. Such as the 70's. That was a cold stage. This would be a warm stage we are going through. The Ozone layer is, in fact, closing up as we speak, even though it's getting hotter. But it is our responsibility to clean up our Earth.

Answer 7

No. And I don't pay any attention to the doomsayers either. It's a waste of time, energy, effort and money to try to stop, change, control or "fix" nature. Nature cannot be hurt by man that it can not recover on it's own. By all means, don't litter, but don't do useless things to try to "make earth better". It's not sick, the ice won't melt and drown earthlings, it won't get too warm or too cold any time soon, and it's not going to stop or die or end just because of some paranoid delusional idiots thinking it will.

Answer 8

Most of the developed world has done a pretty good job of cleaning up after itself. As an environmental consultant, I work at cleaning up environmental problems. Exaggerating human influence on the climate seems to be a tactic from some and they exaggerate the knowledge of scientists as well. No one in their right mind wants dirty air or dirty water. The alarmists too often seek to portray those that doubt their scenarios and evidence as somehow not caring enough.

Dana is incorrect IMO. I have been around long enough to remember the warnings that we are causing the planet to go into an ice age due to petroleum. Before that there were predictions of the planet heating up too much in the 1930s. Before that there were warnings of ice age. Chiken littles have certainly been around for thousands of years.

Answer 9

A survey was just published this week ... More that half the world's published scientists belive that global warming is mostly natural, and not mostly manmade.

This disputes the UN's findings that say global warming is 90% probability of being manmade.

Answer 10

No, at least not in the sense that Al Gore and others preach. It could be the earth is still warming from the last mini-ice age that lasted appx from the late1300's or early 1400's to the late 1700's. What caused the 7 or more ice ages? If we were in a global cooling cycle, would the Eco-bots be saying that what is causing it, is the same stuff that is now responsible for global warming?

Answer 11

There have always been alarmists and they always try to cover up their mistakes. You are right, we should try to burn less oil, capitalism will solve this problem with or without the shrieks of alarmists, when oil breaks the hundred dollar/barrel mark.

1970 Newsweek

the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.

http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

In the seventies climatologists had
professed that industrial pollution would
bring about a new Ice Age. In 1971, the
spiritual leader of the global warming
prophets, Dr. Stephen H. Schneider from
the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado, claimed
that this pollution would soon reduce the
global temperature by 3.5°C.1 His
remarks were followed by more official
statements from the National Science
Board of the U.S. National Science
Foundation, ”

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf