That 70s ice age scare was a myth right?

It is a myth (actually a lie) to think that most climate scientists were worried about it at the time, that has been demonstrated to be false. Even in the 70's scientists were more concerned about warming than cooling. With any subject, it's often the news media that generates the "scare." One of the media perpetrators was a guy named Nigel Calder, who you'll see if you watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle." He was promoting the ice age idea in order to sell his books (I have one of them) and sell magazines (he was editor of New Scientist back then). He is as culpable as anyone for the "scare," but now he blames scientists for it. Here's an interesting quote from a meteorology textbook:

"It may be that part of the global temperature increases of the last 100 years are due to man's activity in burning fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

When do you think that was written? Within the last few years? Wrong, that was a quote from a meteorology text published in 1966! A huge majority of scientists today believe in global warming--but they were worried about it back in the 70's, too.

The idea that we could cause an ice age by polluting the planet with aerosols is not crazy, though. Pretty much everyone agrees that aerosols CAN cool the planet, that's obvious from volcanic explosions. But we decreased our aerosol emissions, so no one's expecting an ice age. Similarly, if we decreased our CO2 emissions, we could mitigate that problem.

Is it really that hard to understand nuances?

EDIT: After reading some of the denier answers, it amazes me how much propaganda you people believe.

The 70's ice age scare and the current global warming scare can both be tied to the Pacific decanal oscillation. As it turns out, the Pacific Ocean has a 30 year cycle of heating and cooling the atmosphere. I saw a really interesting graph which superimposed the PDO on straight line warming. It showed big warming from the turn of the 20th century until about 1940. There were worries about another ice age around 1900 and runaway heating in the 1930's. Then the oscillation went negative and you had slight cooling from 1940 to about the 1970's (giving rise to the ice age scare). The oscillation then turned positive, leading to a period of warming until about 2000. Now the oscillation has turned back negative, and the strong warming trend has stopped. Underlying this 30 (or so) year cycle of warming and cooling is a real warming trend. If you look at only the last 40 years, the trend looks really scary. If you look at the previous 40 years (1930 to 1970), there is no warming. I wish I had bookmarked the page to this graph. It's really interesting, and shows what can happen if you take one section of the temperature graph out of context.

Well some people WERE scared. So you can't call the scare a myth.

And most Scientists believe we are headed towards a new Ice Age.

But the ~25 year temperature decline that ended in the 70s was followed by a 40 year temperature rise, that gave birth to the current Global Warming scare & killed the notion that we were on an immediately decline to the next big chill.

It replaced right into a brilliant element to observe. I remember my HS technological know-how instructor foaming on the mouth while he replaced into explaining the finished element. Now, I understand that the lecturers are foaming on the mouth as they clarify basically the choice... Public training could be sturdy entertainment if the outcomes weren't so rattling tragic. word to Sky: some individuals have been born properly earlier you have been, and so we've a greater suited recolection of this time in historic previous. I understand which you have been in all probability the unlucky manufactured from a drug brought about hippie escapade, and have a constrained mind, yet please understand that the worldwide did no longer initiate spinning the 2nd you have been spit out of the foul smelling hollow from which you slid.

I was there and remember it well but unlike Dook, I actually bothered reading about the science of the day. I will confess to be duped by Acid Rain but the global cooling scare wasn't very convincing. I don't think all the scientists of the day believed in it, just a vocal minority and a media that loves sensationalism.

A theory which was popular in the media in the 1970's was that sulfate aerosols were going to cool the Earth. However, even then, the majority of scientists predicted global warming due to man made CO2.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-prediction...

This does not mean that the 70's ice age scare was totally without merit. The Earth had experienced slight cooling between the 1940's to the late 1960's, and that cooling could be better explained when considering the forcing due to anthropogenic sulfate aerosols than without considering these aerosols.

There are also some differences between the media scare of the 1970's and today.

1. As I said before, only a minority of scientists were concerned about global cooling due to sulfate aerosols, while today, 97 percent of climate scientists predict warming due to anthropogenic CO2.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-sci...

2. The media scare of the 1970's lasted for only a few years. Scientists have been predicting global warming for over a century.

http://warming.sdsu.edu/

All the scientist and climatologist of the 1970's were certain it was going to happen in a few hundred years and were teaching it in college when I was in college.

They must have done a good job of preventing it, now we are getting too warm.

The same scientific community also told the world that there would not be a drop of oil left on the earth by mid 1980's. Our machines would stop running and everyone would freeze to death because of all the oil on earth having been used up.

I guess they missed that one too.

Who knows ? Scientist wanted to cover the ice with ash to warm things up. A wacky

idea . Now Scientist want to lower CO2 because they think it will cool it down .

Another wacky idea.

It was all over the papers and news magazines at the time.

If you go back and read newspapers of the past they have the same headlines

Hot one decade cool the next one It repeats .

To my knowledge: there was a minor subset of climate scientists in the 70s who were concerned about global cooling. Some news outlets reported on this, as though it was the scientific consensus at the time. It wasn't, I believe the majority of climate scientists at that time either believed there would be global warming in the near future, or had no strong opinion on the matter.

It seems the CIA took the threat of global cooling quite seriously: http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/20...

Notice in their Conclusions section they state that "Leaders in climatology and economics are in agreement that a climate change is taking place..."

I'm not one to go around calling the CIA dirty rotten filthy liars and creators and spreaders of myths.