Hey, whatever happened to the on-coming Ice Age?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btTvJKqpKLo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
I have explained this several times on here but apparently there are some that just ignore it, hope everyone else will forget or will not know, and then "falsly" ask the question all over again at a later date as if the question never got answered and as if the question itself somehow debunks global warming/climate change.
Lets go back to the 70s shall we. To a time when scientists were just really beginning to get a grasp on the idea that human activity might possibly, actually be able to have an effect on the entire earths climate. An astounding notion at the time. But there it was right in front of us SMOG! everywhere and growing worse. Smog was choking our cities, we were increasingly spewing out more and more lower level Ozone and CFC's. Do any of you remember seeing photos of the Grand Canyon that were so choked with pollutants from far away cities that you could barely see across it? And in many cities it was far worse. Some scientists looked at what this could do if we continued and drew some conclusions. Some of these things would deplete our upper level ozone, and over time some would have a cooling effect on the earth. Extrapolate this out over time...
BUT Guess what? WE DID put government efforts into place and reduced the ozone destroying chemicals. WE DID avert what the scientists predicted could have happened. We saved the ozone that helps protects life on earth.
As for the smog and lower level ozone, we, through government regulation, DID indeed reduce their outputs.
Neither of the above actions destroyed our economy. But they did help us.
While all of this was going on, there were also scientists who were beginning to take note of other chemicals and pollutants that we can not see. We humans tend to pay attention to the stuff right in front of us, easily seen, before we take note of the "unseen". Its just easier to believe I guess. But, they started doing more and more research on the things that we are spewing into the atmosphere that act to warm the earth.
To say that scientists did not know everything is true. Some were more concerned with and paid attention to the cooling stuff we were spewing out. But as a more sophisticated datasets started falling into place AND as we started decreasing the cooling chemicals, THEN the warming chemicals came ever more to the fore. For instance they began to notice that these warming chemicals lasted MUCH longer in the atmosphere than the cooling ones. We were decreasing the cooling stuff all the while increasing the warming stuff. Oh, and we cant go back to spewing out the "cooling" smog to counterbalance things. Its just unhealthy folks lol.
In science when a new field or endeavor begins, there are often large swings in what the data seem to say. As more and more information is added, as time passes and various hypotheses are weighed, added or discarded, a concensus begins to emerge. The "swings" become smaller and smaller. The 60s and 70s were the beginning, and even then scientists weren't completely wrong (we did change the equation by reducing certain types of emissions, while increasing others), and ever since then more and more information has been piling up. First people argue one side then the next, then one side seems to gain the fore, then over time as more and more information is critiqued, they may say "we don't know yet" or " we are more and more certain". In the instance of human induced global warming/climate change,,, We have become more and more certain. The warming effects do indeed far outweigh the cooling, and if we continue on our current path, will actually cause the average global temerature to warm (though yes, some areas may actually cool lol, hence "climate change").
To somehow point back at the beginning and the knowledge we had then in order to somehow lay suspect the decades and decades and decades of science that have steadily built a consensus, is to be disingenuous. The situation today is different for many reasons than it was in the 70s. A. We have indeed decreased our "cooling emissions", but B. have increased the "warming emissions" AND learned ever more about them and the earths climate system.
When I see people playing this "what about global cooling" card, I know that they aren't being truthful. They aren't seeking the truth. They are trying to create a lie of misinformation. They can spout out in one or two sentences something that causes people who aren't that informed, to cast doubt. A doubt that they then know requires a lot of explanation to debunk (see above). They are counting on the the short lie, that people want to believe, winning out over the long truth.