Popular Science mag Oct 1977 - "Our Changing Weather"

I found this Popular Science magazine from 34 years ago. There's an interesting article on page 100 entitled "Our Changing Weather". Basically they are making the case that the weather should be getting colder. It's an interesting read from the perspective back in 1977.

Actually I found this whole magazine issue interesting. Page 99 has a short article "Two new Electrics" and page 30 "The New Home Computer". It really makes you think about the pace of change and how long ideas churn around before something happens.

Grab a copy of "Merchants of Doubt" for the back story.

While science has been warning of our effects on climate since the 1950s, they started to actually see the changes in the late 60s/early 70s. That's when the denial machine that was born to 'prove' that cigarettes were safe and that acid rain was not caused by coal turned against climate science.

As with all of these other areas, scientists continued to learn and publish in their journals, while the denial machine used to press to get their message to the people.

"Garbage in, Garbage out" in action...

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M[/youtube]

Interesting AndyH. I suppose the way I look at is that if the natural cycle indicates that we should actually be getting cooler yet, in fact, we are getting warmer it's one more smoking gun that man is causing it. As if we needed yet another smoking gun, hell we have a smoking arsenal!

Yes, the article does concentrate on the proposition that the world is likely on a cooling trend, but at the end it does present the idea that some people were already starting to have that human activity was having an impact that might overcome the natural climate cycle. The thoughts on the natural cycle remain true - we should be entering a cooling period - and the idea that human activity could trump that natural trend has also been proven true.

ENIAC said:

I found this Popular Science magazine from 34 years ago. There's an interesting article on page 100 entitled "Our Changing Weather". Basically they are making the case that the weather should be getting colder. It's an interesting read from the perspective back in 1977.

Click to expand...

I agree. Like you I found the computer article interesting, especially the author's prediction that home computers would change our way of life. I also found it interesting that Dodge and Plymouth discontinued their full-size car lines at that time in order to reach the new government 18 MPG fuel economy standard.

ENIAC said:

Actually I found this whole magazine issue interesting. Page 99 has a short article "Two new Electrics" and page 30 "The New Home Computer". It really makes you think about the pace of change and how long ideas churn around before something happens.

Click to expand...

As the Greenman video already outlined - the point is not that we should be cooling but are warming instead, but that a sentence was taken out of context and spun into part of the 'denial cloak' used to hide the truth.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
"THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS"

An enduring popular myth suggests that in the
1970s the climate science community was
predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice
age, an observation frequently used by those who
would undermine what climate scientists say today
about the prospect of global warming.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the
contrary, greenhouse warming even then
dominated scientists’ thinking about the most
important forces shaping Earth’s climate on
human time scales. More importantly than
showing the falsehood of the myth, this review
shows the important way scientists of the time built
the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of
modern climate science now rests.

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