[anonymousiam]

The implication is, at the very least, there were SOME scientists concerned about global cooling in the 1960's and 1970's. I was around then, and it was very much publicized in the media. I never heard anything about global warming until decades later.

[2479411230]

Sorry, I'm still a bit confused. I guess I phrased my question poorly.

> there were SOME scientists concerned about global cooling in the 1960's and 1970's

I get that the existence of the letter implies that people were thinking that way. My question was more, what do you see as the implication of the fact that some people were thinking this way. That is, how does this play into the discussion of the article.

[anonymousiam]

The article makes no mention of any cooling, but does mention warming.

The article is making the case that climate change has been a concern of scientists for over 50 years, which is true, but for the first half of that time, many/most scientists were concerned about global cooling, which is an important point that is not mentioned at all.

I feel like I'm living in Orwell's 1984 where history is being re-written.

[sethrin]

History is not being re-written, you just don't know the difference between opinion articles and actual scientific papers, and you additionally have no understanding of the relevant science. It's not that AGW hasn't been controversial, it's that you have no idea what that controversy was or when it happened. The theory was flat-out disproved in the first half of the 20th Century, and it only slowly regained credibility[0]. By the late 60s the consensus had broadly shifted in favor of CO2-mediated climate change, which is recognized by one of the documents linked in the "economonitor" article[1].

What you believe is untrue. It also seems to be motivated reasoning, so I will limit my engagement, but it's worth clarifying to others that your perspective is meritless.

[0] https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm#Sk [1] https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/charney.1...

[anonymousiam]

What I believe is irrelevant, and please don't be condescending. I've done science for most of my life and had the word "scientist" in my job title for a good part of it.

The article talks about "climate change" since the 1960's, but it's obviously lumping in cooling and warming without distinction, which is misleading.

By limiting your engagement, you are slamming the door on debate and discussion, which is the same game that all climate change alarmists play. Science is never about consensus, it's about a cycle of theory, experiments (where possible), and analysis.

Galileo and Einstein were both victims of consensus.

[mustacheemperor]

TLDR: The book "The Discovery of Climate Change" by Spencer Weart dedicates an entire chapter to fitting the global cooling coverage you remember into the wider history of today's consensus, and I think it will address that much more satisfactorily for you than anyone here can.

Edit: Or one quick one about cooling specifically:

>There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then...When the myth of the 1970s global cooling scare arises in contemporary discussion over climate change, it is most often in the form of citations not to the scientific literature, but to news media coverage.

[5]https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/11584/1/2008bams2370%252E1...

>the same game that all climate change alarmists play

I wrote a different reply and deleted it in hopes of taking a completely different direction rather than just try to argue the points here. My dad remembered the same new coverage and had (I think) the same questions as you, and eventually he got his questions answered in a way that satisfied him in understanding the present day scientific consensus about climate change.

On a board like this you're always going to get terse responses to what you are asking about because to most people here it is akin to demanding that they, individually, win a debate that electricity is safe before you will use your light switch. There is no shortage at all of literature by so many sources specifically to address what you are asking about. Highly qualified people have labored exhaustively compiling the present day evidence for climate change, how it was gathered, how consensus has changed over time. Many people remember the global cooling controversy of the 70s and have asked your exact kind of question many times before. A quick google found this reply on /r/askhistorians[0], and that reply just links a post from 2005[1] which itself cites Spencer Weart's History of Global Warming, since republished as The Discovery of Global Warming, which dedicates a whole chapter specifically to 1970s "global cooling" claims.[3] These kinds of sources are going to be much better equipped and better qualified to explain the facts to you than an internet commenter, and since they've already spent the effort, why should some stranger on this board do it? Especially since this information is already easily available to you! I am not a researcher, or an expert, I didn't have this all immediately on hand. I'm sure you will have stringent standards to apply to select your sources, but even still I suspect you will be able to find enough scholarly works you find sufficiently trustworthy to build a good understanding of how "global cooling" on cable news in the 70s fits into the bigger story of reaching today's scientific consensus about climate change, without somehow contradicting all of it.

Spencer Weart is not an "alarmist playing a game," he provides an extremely thorough analysis of how this science was discovered. The internet records many instances of these positions being investigated and debated without the door being slammed in anyone's face. The refusal of a random internet commenter to retread the exact same debate here today doesn't make them an alarmist and it doesn't say anything about the validity of the general consensus for climate change. The popular debate about climate change has been held and reheld so many times that today scientists ask why there is still such an ongoing popular debate despite so many years of such broad scientific consensus.[4]

The sources linked by the commenter you replied to would probably help too, and my hope is their offer of a "limited engagement" would include a discussion of those sources - which I would be interested to read. But personally, I am not going to debate the viewpoints of these sources with you, and it's not because I'm playing the game, it's because I can't explain this stuff half as well as the original authors, and I especially can't attempt to do that with anyone who's unwilling to even read what they have to say before debating the consensus viewpoint. I really think the Spencer book is a good place to start - he's a historian of science first and foremost, has been for decades.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7f8t9g/what_hap... [1]https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-g... [3]https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674031890 [4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXCdeR6iAgw&embeds_referring...

[anonymousiam]

">There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then...When the myth of the 1970s global cooling scare arises in contemporary discussion over climate change, it is most often in the form of citations not to the scientific literature, but to news media coverage."

Please see my above reply citing over two dozen contemporaneous articles from reputable sources and scientists about global cooling ~50 years ago. Can you cite even a few articles or papers from the same era on the topic of global warming?

So much for the consensus argument, but why are you using it anyway? Science has nothing to do with consensus.

The Spencer Weart book you cite appears to be a "history of scientific discoveries that led to the current scientific opinion on climate change." I will give it a read, but I am reminded of this presentation: (You Have No Idea How Wrong You Are)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA