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>From strident predictions of an "immanent ice age" to "we're all gonna fry!" within the space of a few decades

Someone took the time to assemble a bibliography of climate change literature from the 70s with reference to predictions of cooling. In the scientific literature, as contrasted with Newsweek, the closest thing was a paper that pointed out the current interglacial could end in a few thousand years, or maybe even a few hundred. The overwhelming bulk reached the totally accurate conclusion that they didn't know enough to make a prediction.

The hard data on solar output from satellite measurements goes back fifteen years and is kinda-sorta constant over that period. Much earlier, and you're relying on horribly indirect proxy measurements like radionuclides. There are a lot of uncertainties about trends in solar output, although some climatologists think it could account for 10-30% of the temperature rise we've seen.

>in the 70's (which you probably weren't alive for) everyone was worrying about the beginning of a new ice age

Here's a bibliography of climate change literature from the 1970s. The closest thing to "worrying about a new ice age" in the whole list is a paper predicting that one could arrive within thousands, maybe even hundreds of years.

>Luckily, the Earth environment is VERY robust and would kill off the offending causes of massive temperature shifts.

There are positive feedback loops as well as negative feedback loops, and it wouldn't take a "massive" change to affect a lot of peope seriously. Also I would just as soon not be killed off.

>Even if there were a crisis, I wouldn't be worrying about it.

Of course. Worrying is useless. You'd be expected to take constructive action.

What are we going to do about these scientists. First they panic about global cooling, then they [anic about global warming. No, wait, they never panicked about global cooling. There was some misplaced panic and hype from the press (but is that a surprise - misplaced panic and hype is the lifeblood of the industry), but there weren't actually any scientists who were worried about an imminent ice age (a few did write articles about the long term (think 10,000 years or so) expectation of a cessation of the current interglacial warm period, but the words "panic" and "imminent" are rather unrelated).

I call bullshit. What's more, if you'd read previous articles on slashdot, you'd have seen this bullshit already disassembled. The only "scientists" debating in the 70s whether there was global cooling were popular rags like Newsweek, not scientific journals. And if you don't want to search slashdot, try Google and you can come up with some interesting results.

(great-grandparent):In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.

(parent) I distinctly remember that they did.

OK, here's a 1975 summary of the state of knowledge, from the National Academy of Sciences: "...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate...".

An article in the December 10 1976 _Science_ was a little bolder, saying that under certain assumptions "the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate ".

A month-long 1970 MIT conference estimated 2 degrees C of warming but called the estimate "very uncertain".

There's a bibliography of "global cooling" articles at http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend was not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example:[5]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.

Well, although it's a rare thing, the scientific consensus can get things wrong. And, in fact, they have goofed fairly badly on this same subject in the past. Have a look at this pdf from Newsweek in 1975 which warns about global cooling - it talks about the fact that the "evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." It also says that meteorologist are "almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." That time, the consensus was wrong.

Here's the link:
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/newsweek- coolingworld.pdf

Although I agree with you that many people are just burying their heads in the sand, there are actually reasons to be a little bit wary of the dire predictions.

I'm really getting sick of the greenie environmentalists. [...] Then they were crying about how the world will freeze from global cooling. [...]

Actually, you might want to read more about that here : http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

What was being discussed at that time was that investigation of natural climate cycles showed that we should be beginning an ice age. Once we had better technology, we could see that despite this, we were in fact warming rapidly.

Causation is shown very strongly by the data we have, because (a) we know mechanistically it's possible, (b) we know by models this is the effect we expect and (c) it is deeply implausible that a natural effect can hide from us in 400,000 years of records and affect us in a timescale of a few decades without showing any substantial blip in our other data.

Linky showing that scientists never predicted that this would happen

Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No

The continuing references to a supposed analoguous 1970s frenzy over Global Cooling come from the right-wing media in the US, and are not based on historical fact.

Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No

The continuing references to a supposed analoguous 1970s frenzy over Global Cooling come from the right-wing media in the US, and are not based on historical fact.

Are you grizzled enough that your memory is failing you? There was never such a 95% consensus about global cooling.

Also you may not recall that computers have advanced since 1975, and as a result, complex sciences like climate have advanced considerably since then.