Why do you think the 1970s global cooling myth persists?

Some interesting answers so far -- James E's long-winded answers make me miss Byderule, who sometimes went long and wide but always had something to say when he answered a question -- but I'd like to return to something Heretic said, about "unsubstantiated media reports." First, they may have jumped on the wrong bandwagon, so to speak, but the reports weren't entirely without merit. Second, we can't blame the media, per your question, for the persistence of this theory.

To help me reply to the question, I googled 'global cooling.' THAT was a scary trip! But once I slogged through the morass of skeptics' sites, I found an abstract with this starting sentence: "Climate science as we know it today did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s."

The paragraph concludes by answering your question with the following, noting that the popular myth was "... an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming."

Others have noted that the more encompassing term of climate change allows for a broad spectrum of change, including periods of cooling in some parts of the planet. Hence, the Earth is cooling, right? Wrong. Below, the definition of of climate change from the 2nd link below:

"Climate Change (also referred to as 'global climate change'). The term 'climate change' is sometimes used to refer to all forms of climatic inconsistency, but because the Earth's climate is never static, the term is more properly used to imply a significant change from one climatic condition to another. In some cases, climate change' has been used synonymously with the term, 'global warming'; scientists however, tend to use the term in the wider sense to also include natural changes in climate. See also Enhanced Greenhouse Effect. (EPA) "

I just thought I'd put that out there as many on this site seem to forget -- if they ever knew -- what global warming is. Yahoo uses the site to name a category, but the term is antiquated within the scientific community, where such things truly matter. For the record, the site has no definition provided for global cooling. They've put the myth to rest, as they should.

Facts are nice to have once in a while, don't you agree?

Dana, there was some cooling during the late 60's and early 70's. It was reported at the time. Sure the measurements were probably based on the maximum and minimum temperatures from a relatively few stations, but measured it was.

Certainly there was some concern about an ongoing cooling trend; probably more to do with uninformed alarmists than real Science.

Many of us (students of science) believed that the levels of pollution involved with coal burning, acid rain and so on were responsible. Actually I still lean that way. We now know that other factors had changed, like the way Cosmic rays interacted with the atmosphere after the A bombs in the radiation belts. Maybe there was volcanic activity, who knows. Could even have been enough Nuclear tests world wide to have an influence.

What ever it was warming quickly caught up, suggesting that the cause was some temporary anomaly.

Actually I may well be spreading this "myth" but then I am not truly sceptical, just objective

That's an easy one: because people in Yahoo Answers that either don't believe in Global Warming or don't care to deal with it will latch onto anything to support their viewpoint, even if it is not true.

That's perfectly exemplified by Randall's answer, and in fact almost every one of his questions: he uses whatever he can to dispute global warming, even though he knows (and I'm sure he does) that his arguments are baseless.

And Jim Z, Dana may not have lived through this alleged "scare" in the 70's, but I lived through it and I can say that it was no scare at all. A very few people suggested that the Earth might be cooling, and a few newspapers and magazines tried to make it into a big deal, which it wasn't. One of the main people overselling it back then was Nigel Calder, who can now be seen in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" trying to act as if it was those silly climate scientists that did it--when in fact it was journalists like himself trying to sell books and magazines.

Peter.Jungmann is perhaps too honest when he says:

'screw the "papers." Look at the media reports and television reports and the amount of classroom taken up with fear-mongering.'

What he's really saying is that he doesn't care what the science says, he'd rather base his views on the popular media. Back in the 70's he was probably looking at the print media and TV, now he's probably looking at blog websites and Rush Limbaugh.

Why does the global warming myth persist when opinion polls show only half of climatologists support the theory.

The question most people are most keen to ask climate scientists is probably “do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic (manmade) causes?” Slightly more than half (55.8 percent) of climate scientists surveyed agreed, 14.2 percent were unsure, and 30 percent disagreed. Interestingly, more scientists “strongly disagree” than “strongly agree” that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.

http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pd...

The sad fact is that believers criticize this survey. The academic way of handling this is that you criticize the way the survey was done, and you conduct your own survey on the "improved" method and you release the results. There is no empirical evidence that an overwhelming majority support the AGW hypothesis.

So just like the global cooling scare was not based on overwhelming majorities, neither is the global warming scare. But they are good examples of how the media likes to scare the public in order to sell more papers/increase viewership.

I also believe that the problem with cooling scare is that just as support for the theory was starting to take off, the earth started to warm. If it had lasted another ten years, there would have been even more support for the theory.

Edit: Andrew: Did these organizations ever take votes of its members? Can you tell me the results? As for the heartland institute, they did not conduct the survey, they merely reported it. Do you know of any other surveys that show otherwise?

Because that is how people try to score points when an issue is politicized. People take an event, 'fictionalize the facts' and then keep repeating the fiction they've concocted as if it is part of the fact and therefore factual itself.

We used to call that way of talking a "lie." However, now it is called a 'myth.' But there actually is no 'myth' about global cooling being the majority belief of the scientific community of the1970s and the same scientists then believing in global warming today. That is what is actually known as a 'lie.' Not a falsehood, not a misleading remark, not an errant memory, not an inaccuracy, not a misinterpretation. It's a lie.

Oh, I don't know...... could be articles like this:

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

.....or quotes like this:

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)

......or this:

This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976

.....or this:

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

or this:

....If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

I was a teen when I read articles about global cooling but I don't recall feeling any panic, it was reported but not with the focus and force of global warming. Maybe that was partly because the media was more responsible back then and even covered up presidential pecadillos for the good of the nation in a way they'd never do today. The story may have died on it's own as new evidence was published and the bulk of the scientific community didn't express daily concerns about cooling.

Other than as a way to show that scientists aren't always right, I agree that this is a weak argument since in fact the majority of scientists may not have believed it was going to continue to cool. But there are many examples of the majority of scientists being wrong, that's just how it works with a new idea that upsets the old order. Eventually germ theory and quantum theory were accepted once the evidence became indisputable, but many thousands died unnecessarily until doctors began to believe sterilized instruments were a good idea. It's easy to be skeptical of scientists since they themselves are trained to be skeptical and to test a hypothesis with as little pre-judgment as possible and they're as human as the rest of us and make mistakes.

But stating that there was no 'consensus' on global cooling among scientists overlooks the fact that the public doesn't read scientific literature, they read Time and Newsweek and they based their fear of cooling on those articles. It's not a myth that people were worried about cooling back then, just that they were misinformed about it by the major media outlets of the time.

I was around in the 70's, admittedly in my teens and early 20's, and the only cooling theory I remember was the Nuclear Winter scenario from Dr Sagan, which was based on observations of Martian dust storms blocking sunlight and cooling the surface of that planet!

I was not aware of any AGW debate at this time, to be honest, it wasn't an issue back then but, at the height of the Cold War with two superpowers actively pursuing the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) theory, the Nuclear Winter idea was very much in the public consciousness.

The idea was that, in the event of war, hundreds, possibly thousands of nuclear warheads would be exploded, these putting so much dust and smoke into the atmosphere that, for months or years after, all sunlight would be blocked and the surface temperature would plumet!

Perhaps this is what people are remembering...

To answer your question, on a forum such as this, it is easy to cherry pick.

It's easy to say "As far back as 1970 there were predictions of global cooling. No less than 7 different scientific papers made this prediction, yet the AGW proponents conveniently ignore these"...

There is no review process here; on this forum the proponent and the denier have equal status.

The trouble is that many, possibly most people here, will not be able to tell who is giving the full picture.

All you can do is keep informing and keep correcting.

I have to say, faced with the repetitive and sometimes ridiculous nature of the questions, I admire your dedication to this task.

Realistically when you seriously look for real data the AGW hypotheses is more on a par in provability with astrology and flat earth thinking while the skeptical view is more in line with Darwin, Einstein and the big bang. One point here is that the mild climate optimum we are currently in happens on a regular basis and is only unusual in that is much colder than normal optimums and has been much slower than normal in getting this warm. What is unusual and has no documentation to support it is the AGW hypotheses and the divergent global warming and adverse climate change religions that have sprung from it. All historical and scientific evidence shows that the climate variations we have experienced over the last 150 years are well within the documented variations of the last 8,000 years of human existence on this world.

About climate optimums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

About climate minimums

http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa3/beckmanj...

And absolutely none of the claims made by the promoters of AGW can be supported by the hypotheses they have presented because their mathematical models are unable to reflect the real world variations. They are unable to track the variations in climate because they assume Co2 is a major causative factor in the climate warming when it is actually a minor side affect of it. Other science professionals who are looking for real causes are beginning to find them, but these efforts of hard working scientists are not getting good coverage because they show there is no cause for panic while the AGW promoters desire panic to push their one world political agenda.

So why can not the faithful believers present something more solid than, “it has to be AGW because we can not think of anything else that could give the results we see. So despite the record of history showing that the change we have had from 1850 to 1998 is well within the normal change spectrum we find the liberal ninnies crying disaster is imminent for financial and political reward. There is no emergency, has been no emergency and there will be no disaster unless we go into another solar minimum. Now that could be a real disaster because the last set of minimums caused the deaths of several hundred million people, today a serious minimum like the Sporer or Maunder could kill billions.

I agree with peter and others that suggest you didn't live through it. I certainly remember it. When you get older and wiser, perhaps you too will realize that doomsday scenarios come and go all the time. I didn't fall the global cooling in the 1970s or the global warming or today. The only one I did fall for was acid rain. I was fooled by that one, but you live and learn.