Waffling? Yeah, considering new evidence and new ideas and adjusting one's ideas is SUCH a weakness. Much better to fix something in one's mind, and NEVER reconsider it, however much contrary evidence later comes to light. ---- NOT!
Yes, my understanding is it was NOT a consensus that we were cooling.
But aside from that, we have so much BETTER and more comprehensive data now, than 40 years ago. Not to mention we now see indisputable results of warming.
Scientists didn't waffle in the 1970's on global cooling. Scientists realized that CO2 was warming the Earth and particulates were cooling the Earth. The controversy was about which effect would predominate. The issue was settled when particulate emissions were regulated, and the Earth's temperature began again responding more to CO2. The article below looks at George Will's take on the issue.
Scientific theories are the best and simplest explanation of the evidence. When new evidence is discovered, the theory is again evaluated to see if it explains the evidence. If not, a new theory is proposed and tested. It is a method that continually improves our understanding and also keeps us from being dogmatic.The only weakness is that scientific theories can always be criticized by those wanting absolute truth, but that is because they don't understand science, or the nature of reality.
Scientific "waffling" can accurately be shown over time. Global Warming is the accurate depiction of average global temperature increases during certain time periods just as Global Cooling is the accurate reading of temperature decreases over time. Finding an accurate global average temperature in 1620ad is an impossibility. The same could be said about an accurate global average temperature in 1920ad although we had more mechanical readings in 1920, but the simple fact that temperature readings are not taken at specific times of the day and all over the entire planet (at all levels and evenly spaced around the whole planet) keeps that accurate global average temperature elusive even today. To accurately say that past global temperatures were warmer or colder at specific times is where climate arrogance has totally corrupted the science itself and is only politically motivated at this time.
The recent ARGO Program (ocean temps down to 2000 feet below sea level) along with satellite temperature readings and weather balloon data seem to be the best way to accurately depict our global average temperature to date. Land based thermometers are obsolete due to the many factors that can corrupt the data.
Depends on the evidence. What I have seen so far with climate science is a continuous struggle to explain why the evidence isn't matching the predictions, how a contradiction isn't a contradiction, why heat is missing, why truncatting erroneous data is better than eliminating it, why emails showing a trend unethical behavior isn't valid because the emails were stolen, how antartic ice loss or even if it is gaining is evidence of the same thing, and how all this isn't simply evidence of climate change it is evidence of man induced warming. I see no evidence that climate science is attempting to match evidence with a cause instead they are attempting to explain how all evidence is indicative of increased CO2.
Definitely a strength, science should be flexible, open to new idea's new evidence.
The scientists that predicted global cooling could still be right, they might have got the time period wrong, that's all.
It is an example of how out of balance some people who call themselves 'scientists' can go in order to scare people. The earth's temperatures are controlled by forces put in motion by God, not man. These eggheads would have you believe that man can do something to change the temperature. How egotistical can you get?
First off, you have to separate reality from the denialist's recycled/garbled myths.
Three things WERE happening in the 1970s
1) Climate scientists were working out, using theory, observations and models, how what was then called the "greenhouse effect" might develop.
2) It was noted that global temperatures that had risen up to about 1940 had leveled. (They did not really appreciate then, the role of aerosols.
3) There was some speculation (mostly by journalists, not scientists) about when the next ice age might come (some time in the next few thousand years it was thought).
Since then:
1) The science, both theory and evidence, has become much much more robust. There is tons of now, and 99% of it supports what were still only tentative conclusions about AGW in the 1970s ("global warming" as a term did not come into standard parlance until the late 1980s).
2) Temperatures have risen again notably, although not by much since about 2003.
3) AGW is powerful enough and far enough along and going hundreds or thousands of times faster than most natural process, so almost nobody even tries to pretend that an ice age might be imminent. In the highly unlikely event of it having been imminent 30 years ago, we have more than stalled it off since.
Conclusion: Science has changed a lot since the 1970s, but not in the ways that ignorant anti-science shovelers mis-imagine.
I think it shows the general fallability of science in general. Nothing can ever be proven, really, truly and completely; nothing can be predicted with 100% accuracy. I think it's a strength in that it shows up that science is not foolproof, and a weakness in that it was incorrect and led many people into false thinking.
This might be a useful link in the circumstances:
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress...
Also, let's remind ourselves about what was said in the seventies:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/...
Science does not waffle – it advances through the accumulation of knowledge. Deniers see that as a weakness because it does not fit into their primitive belief system in which everything is part of a politico-religious war between good and evil.
Some parties here make much of the idea that, in the '70s, scientists were predicting global cooling rather than global warming.
Aside from the fact that this was, for the most part, not true (even then, I believe more scientists anticipated warming than cooling), to the extent that it is true, does this actually reveal a weakness of climate science, or a strength of science in general?
That is, if scientists change their minds about what the evidence predicts in a particular area, does this demonstrate that they're unreliable, or trustworthy, and why or how? Feel free to elaborate on the scientific method in general, et cetera.
That is how science works. When scientists are confronted with new evidence, they do change their minds. This is a strength, not a weakness of science.
