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>Not too long ago Carl Sagan and others were on TV breathlessly begging people to worry about global cooling. No he wasn't: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/0

>Not too long ago Carl Sagan and others were on TV breathlessly begging people to worry about global cooling. No he wasn't: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/28/if-you-wish-to-make-up-facts-from-scratch/183472 http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/28/if-you-wish-to-make-... There was never a widespread consensus about global cooling: >A 2008 paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society actually reviewed the climate research published in the 70s and concluded that "global cooling was never more than a minor aspect of the scientific climate change literature of the era, let alone the scientific consensus" and "emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then." WUWT is a climate change denial site run by conspiracy theorists. It's not a good place to get facts about anything.

gadders 11y ago
>> WUWT is a climate change denial site run by conspiracy theorists. "I disagree with their position so I will slander them."
- anon1385 11y ago
  You will notice that I first presented hard evidence that they were wrong in the form of a scientific paper that actually reviewed the climate science published in the 70s. I then provided additional commentary about the quality of the site.
- ticviking 11y ago
  Actually I believe the formal fallacy that makes climate skeptics sites unreliable is "Begging the question". Which isn't to say that climate & environmental science isn't a bit sick. It suffers from group-think and a pretty hefty anti-human bias. They in general did not begin from "I do not like the implication of the carbon emission -> global warming hypothesis to my business model so I will not consider explanations that force me(or my patrons) to stop making money from fossil fuels"
  - gadders 11y ago
    Again, an incorrect assertion of the motives of climate change sceptics. I may as well say that pro-Climate Change people are not convinced about the science but like the side-effects it may have on global inequality.
    - ticviking 11y ago
      True enough. That is my principal reason for opposing virtually every "Climate Change Solution" I see that has strongly re-distributive effects. That and the frankly anti-human bias of virtually all environmental scientists of my acquaintance. My point is that both are a valid critiques and should influence how you read the arguments made by both sides. I was mostly annoyed that you were calling skepticism for those biases slander instead of pointing out that both sides are biased, and thus we(as humans) are likely to fall for the side that our confirmation bias leads us to. Overall I'm convinced that warming is happening, and that human CO2 emissions are probably single largest cause of that. I'm also pretty well convinced that the impact of that warming is well below the alarmists views, and that we will move to renewables just as soon as it is efficient to do so.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I linked to WUWT for the video, clearly there were people politicizing science at the time and if you bothered to read my wikipedia link you can see how this stuff got into the press and public consciousness via the scientific community. >There was never a widespread consensus about global cooling: The problem is that its hard for the public to weigh these claims when experts go on TV. Again, my point is that consensus changes, politics change, etc. Scientific consensus is often more wrong than right and later replaced or refined by something else. Denying that is sophomoric. Scientists aren't immune from fads and hysteria, especially when that stuff results in grants and fame.
- anon1385 11y ago
  Yes, some people were worried about it. The one person you actually named in your post was not. Bad start. In my experience the main way it got into the public consciousness was through climate change deniers in subsequent decades. I've never seen anybody talk about it who wasn't a climate change denier. Most people today would have no memory at all of a couple of Time magazine articles in the 1970s that made wacky scientific predictions that turned out to be wrong. There must have been hundreds of articles like that on all sorts of topics. It was a minority position. There wasn't a huge amount of research published on the topic. As far as I know no government or corporate polices were ever changed based on the idea. So it isn't a valid comparison to the trans-fat issue at all. It's actually just a classic example of "small group of minority opinion scientists who got a disproportionate but still small level of media coverage were wrong". That happens all the time. The media loves a plucky outsider with a dramatic story to tell. It's a strange topic for WUWT to bring up since that entire site is based on the idea that the majority of scientists are wrong and that a small group of people (mostly not even scientists) with disproportionately loud voices in the media are actually right. If you want to make an analogy then WUWT are the global coolists of today (but with even less scientific credibility since they publish basically no papers). Which is of course fitting since a lot of people on that site are still predicting an imminent ice age.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    >Time magazine articles in the 1970s We're talking network TV and the cover of the nation's most popular magazines and newspapers. A lot of people were exposed to these ideas, lets not deny that. >It's a strange topic for WUWT Let me guess, you're too young to know any of this stuff, but to the boomer generation they really went from "Guys new ice age coming" to "hey global warming" pretty quickly. I think you need to sympathize with them. Yes, obviously climate change/warming is happening, but dismissing how these things get into the media, climate cooling hysteria in the 70s, etc just makes you seem like some "SCIENCE CAN NEVER BE WRONG" type who disingenuously pisses on the experiences and realpolitik of the time. The reality is that that cooling was in the popular consciousness and led by x amount of high profile scientists. It happened. The question in my mind is what stops this from happening again? Nothing as far as I can tell. Experts have a high levels of influence and combined with mass media can change or understanding of things pretty quickly. This is often a feature of our mass communication society, but it is just as likely to be a bug (wrong facts, conspiracy theories, propaganda, etc). The internet seems to make this worse. tldr; science is as much political as it is technical

gadders 11y ago

>> WUWT is a climate change denial site run by conspiracy theorists. "I disagree with their position so I will slander them."

anon1385 11y ago
You will notice that I first presented hard evidence that they were wrong in the form of a scientific paper that actually reviewed the climate science published in the 70s. I then provided additional commentary about the quality of the site.
ticviking 11y ago
Actually I believe the formal fallacy that makes climate skeptics sites unreliable is "Begging the question". Which isn't to say that climate & environmental science isn't a bit sick. It suffers from group-think and a pretty hefty anti-human bias. They in general did not begin from "I do not like the implication of the carbon emission -> global warming hypothesis to my business model so I will not consider explanations that force me(or my patrons) to stop making money from fossil fuels"
- gadders 11y ago
  Again, an incorrect assertion of the motives of climate change sceptics. I may as well say that pro-Climate Change people are not convinced about the science but like the side-effects it may have on global inequality.
  - ticviking 11y ago
    True enough. That is my principal reason for opposing virtually every "Climate Change Solution" I see that has strongly re-distributive effects. That and the frankly anti-human bias of virtually all environmental scientists of my acquaintance. My point is that both are a valid critiques and should influence how you read the arguments made by both sides. I was mostly annoyed that you were calling skepticism for those biases slander instead of pointing out that both sides are biased, and thus we(as humans) are likely to fall for the side that our confirmation bias leads us to. Overall I'm convinced that warming is happening, and that human CO2 emissions are probably single largest cause of that. I'm also pretty well convinced that the impact of that warming is well below the alarmists views, and that we will move to renewables just as soon as it is efficient to do so.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I linked to WUWT for the video, clearly there were people politicizing science at the time and if you bothered to read my wikipedia link you can see how this stuff got into the press and public consciousness via the scientific community. >There was never a widespread consensus about global cooling: The problem is that its hard for the public to weigh these claims when experts go on TV. Again, my point is that consensus changes, politics change, etc. Scientific consensus is often more wrong than right and later replaced or refined by something else. Denying that is sophomoric. Scientists aren't immune from fads and hysteria, especially when that stuff results in grants and fame.

anon1385 11y ago
Yes, some people were worried about it. The one person you actually named in your post was not. Bad start. In my experience the main way it got into the public consciousness was through climate change deniers in subsequent decades. I've never seen anybody talk about it who wasn't a climate change denier. Most people today would have no memory at all of a couple of Time magazine articles in the 1970s that made wacky scientific predictions that turned out to be wrong. There must have been hundreds of articles like that on all sorts of topics. It was a minority position. There wasn't a huge amount of research published on the topic. As far as I know no government or corporate polices were ever changed based on the idea. So it isn't a valid comparison to the trans-fat issue at all. It's actually just a classic example of "small group of minority opinion scientists who got a disproportionate but still small level of media coverage were wrong". That happens all the time. The media loves a plucky outsider with a dramatic story to tell. It's a strange topic for WUWT to bring up since that entire site is based on the idea that the majority of scientists are wrong and that a small group of people (mostly not even scientists) with disproportionately loud voices in the media are actually right. If you want to make an analogy then WUWT are the global coolists of today (but with even less scientific credibility since they publish basically no papers). Which is of course fitting since a lot of people on that site are still predicting an imminent ice age.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >Time magazine articles in the 1970s We're talking network TV and the cover of the nation's most popular magazines and newspapers. A lot of people were exposed to these ideas, lets not deny that. >It's a strange topic for WUWT Let me guess, you're too young to know any of this stuff, but to the boomer generation they really went from "Guys new ice age coming" to "hey global warming" pretty quickly. I think you need to sympathize with them. Yes, obviously climate change/warming is happening, but dismissing how these things get into the media, climate cooling hysteria in the 70s, etc just makes you seem like some "SCIENCE CAN NEVER BE WRONG" type who disingenuously pisses on the experiences and realpolitik of the time. The reality is that that cooling was in the popular consciousness and led by x amount of high profile scientists. It happened. The question in my mind is what stops this from happening again? Nothing as far as I can tell. Experts have a high levels of influence and combined with mass media can change or understanding of things pretty quickly. This is often a feature of our mass communication society, but it is just as likely to be a bug (wrong facts, conspiracy theories, propaganda, etc). The internet seems to make this worse. tldr; science is as much political as it is technical