Ethics

The 1970s Global Cooling Myth

By Ed Brayton

One of the familiar refrains from the right on global warming goes something like this: "In the 1970s, those stupid scientists actually said the earth was cooling. Now suddenly they're saying the earth is warning. Ha ha! Those damn liberal pointy headed intellectuals (insert words like "socialist" and "communist" here) don't have any idea what they're talking about. Only Real Americans like Joe the Plumber who have never read a single scientific study on the subject know the Real Truth."

A new survey of the literature in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Thomas Peterson, William Connolley, and John Fleck pretty much shreds this ridiculous myth, finding that in fact very few climate scientists in the 70s thought there was any cooling on the way (and those that did think that were working with limited data that has been rendered obsolete by new technology). The article begins:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on November 20, 2008 (boomark / email).