The supposed global cooling scare of the 1970’s is something that has been blown out of all proportion, often by those who exaggerate its significance in order to downplay the seriousness of global warming.
Here’s the reality. Following the Second World War many nations experienced a period of growth with expanding industrialisation and growth in the manufacturing, commercial and domestic demand for electricity grew substantially.
Power generation and manufacturing produced very substantial quantities of pollutants including sulphates and other aerosols, together with black particulate matter (soot). The aerosols, most notably in the form of sulphur dioxide, reflect incoming sunlight back into space before it reaches us, at the same time the BPM absorbs sunlight which further reduces the amount of solar energy reaching Earth’s surface.
Prior to the industrial expansion there had been a period of rising temperatures – partly natural and partly manmade. By the 1940’s the emission of these cooling particles was countering the warming and for the next 30 years or so global temperatures more or less levelled off, as seen in this graph:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Fil...
These pollutants are very hazardous to health, millions of people died. The outcome was that countries around the world began to pass Clean Air Acts. By the late 1970’s levels of the cooling / dimming components had been reduced and the underlying warming was able to return.
During the period from 1969 to 1973 there were about 30 scientific papers published that warned of a possible period of global cooling if emissions of the coolants went unchecked. They did not predict a new ice-age or foretell of the doom of civilisation; this was more down to a small number of media reports that sensationalised the scientists’ work.
In reality, the emissions were reduced and any possible cooling was averted. As events have shown, the scientists were absolutely correct in their predictions. We’re seeing a similar thing happening again, the Asian economies do not have the same strict rules about emissions that we do, and as a result emissions of sulphates and BPM are once again increasing, this is helping to slow global warming. The governments of India and China have announced plans to introduce legislation to curb these emissions, if and when they do there will be a resurgence in the warming trend.
From about 1980 the cooling effect had largely been removed allowing the return of warming, with emissions of greenhouse gases at higher levels than before we witnessed the fastest ever known rise in global temperatures, about 0.5°C in just 30 years. This being many, may times faster than any natural cycle can ever produce. Soon we reached the point where the average global temperature had surpassed anything for at least 130,000 years and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were at their highest levels for at least 15 million years.
“Can make changes to avoid a future environmental disaster?” Yes we can, and it won’t be all that hard to achieve. But first we need to put global warming into perspective – it won’t be a disaster for everyone, in fact, many people will benefit from it. Overall the negatives outweigh the positives so on balance it’s not such a good thing.
We already have a lot of the technology needed to significantly reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, it just needs to be implemented on a large enough scale. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, personally I doubt it.
In the worst case scenario there are measures that can be taken and numerous schemes have been developed that could see humanity deliberately interfering with the climates in order to generate cooling. Some of the schemes are perfectly feasible and have been successfully trailed, others are overly ambitious and beyond our current technological capabilities.
I’ve written papers on the subject of global cooling and still have them including lists of the publications I referenced. If you want a list of the books and papers that covered the subject of global cooling then let me know and I can dig out the list.
The Ice age scare of the 70's was not a big deal, I remember the 70's well, but don't remember much of the scare, in fact I didn't remember it at all until later, it wasn't a big media thing like global warming.
But Hey think about it, ice ages don't happen overnight and because the 80's and 90's were hot doesn't mean they were wrong, the decline into an ice age takes thousands of years, with ups and downs in temps along the way.
Global warming is real but very minor and will not cause a environmental disaster, and can we prevent the rise in CO2, No way. for that you need worldwide agreement, which will never happen.
A small number of papers in the 1970s suggested that an ice age might occur. This was not some majority opinion of climatologists, nor was it heavily backed by experimental evidence.
This is how science works. People take data. They interpret that data. They draw conclusions. Sometimes the conclusions are wrong, but science is self-correcting, eventually weeding out bad conclusions from good ones. Global warming is not a new theory. It was suggested more than 100 years ago. It is still around as a theory because it is the only one that has managed to explain and fit the data.
The alternatives spouted by the deniers sound all very plausible. But science isn't about offering speculations. It's showing why the processes proposed are happening, what the mechanism is that drives them, how those processes can be determined and quantified, how those quantities are related through mathematical rules, and how those mathematical rules give rise to the data and observations we've made of the physical process. AGW explains the CO2 rise, the isotope ratios we observe in the atmosphere, the temperature changes we've observed, etc. The skeptics ideas and the deniers 'it's not us' plea hasn't managed to do any of that.
AGW is the best theory we have at present. It will be replaced if a better theory comes along. We've waited 40 years for one. No candidates have emerged.
People have hyped either scare for their own personal benefit. If I could choose, I would pick global warming over an ice age. I worked as a claims adjuster in the late 1970's. My shoulders are still sore from scraping ice and snow off my car five times a day.
A huge shift to make in 40 years? Did you sleep during the 1980s?
Scientists have learned new things since the 1970s. If you were to compare the computing power of an IBM mainframe to the computing power of a smartphone, I think that you would be more impressed by the computing power of a smartphone.
Global warming has been around for more than a century. The global cooing scare of the1970s was a flash in a pan.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
I read the original book about Global Cooling in 1969. My thought is that nothing in the book happened so they needed to do a 180 to keep the money coming in. Global Warming is big business like snake oil and religion. Al Gore isn't getting poorer, ya know! Actually it is a religion, on faith. The weatherman is lucky if he/she tells me the weather for tomorrow but they know what will happen in 200 years. Yes, I have no doubt. A former NOAA head who used to predict the hurricanes with pretty good accuracy had to resign because he thought Global Warming was phooey. Most scientists agree it is true. Most scientists live off of grant money. The people with the grant money tell the scientists what to believe in. Very simple. This is happened in past. Ether, Crystal Spheres and other whackadoo stuff. Of course the world is only 4.8 billion years old and has gone thru all kinds of climate change. We have been here 100,000 years and so we must be responsible for all those changes. HUH? Logic is amazing.
most of that hype was from media wanting to sell headlines. Greenhouse warming has been known for over a hundred years.
It's not volcanoes, humans emit 100 times more than all volcanoes combined, every year. Any temporary cooling by volcanoes is at most a few years while the dust settles while CO2 keeps increasing since the 1800's.
Maybe it's martians, cosmic rays or god....
Increase in population or population explotion and its by product incresed use of fossil fuel. Just look at the statistics for this country on population increase for the last 30 year and double it or triple it for other countries. They will most likely parallel increased use of fossil fuels. These emmissions form a canopy that prevents heat from scaping into space, thus the name greenhouse gases. As that canopy gets thicker and thicker the earth gets warmer and warmer until we melt or the Lord comes back to rescue us.
it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.
That's a huge shift to make in only 40 years... actually more like 30 years as the global warming has been an issue for a while now. Was the ice age scare just hype or did we make changes sufficient to avoid a man made ice ace? What about global warming... hype or real and we can make changes to avoid a future environmental disaster?
