Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
As I "want to believe them?"
I've been googling this topic off and on for days and I see plenty of controversy within the scientific community.
Look, I'm old enough to remember being taught in school that we were entering another ICE AGE.
At one time in my lifetime of 49 years, the news and bookstores were filled with predictions of a coming ice age - and I guess this made an impression on me.
Here's an example of one of the many articles rampant in the news at that time:
Newsweek on the cooling world
I was an an impressionable age then. And I clearly recall science teachers in school using that article in class, as well as others. I also remember my mother refusing to buy aeresol products because she believed they were bad for the environment and would increase the chances of global cooling.
Like Rick's family, mine was a hippie-ish sort of family. We were very much aware of environmental issues and tried to live as naturally as possible - even to the point of growing our own food, grinding our own wheat, raising our own meat, and using only the most natural products available. Hell, I didn't even drink a Coke till I was about ten years old, my parents were such "radicals!"
1970s awareness
The temperature record as seen in 1975; compare with the next figure.
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Instrumental record of global average temperatures.
Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, climate scientists were aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference[11]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.
In the 1970s the compilation of records to produce hemispheric, or global, temperature records had just begun.
A history of the discovery of global warming states that: While neither scientists nor the public could be sure in the 1970s whether the world was warming or cooling, people were increasingly inclined to believe that global climate was on the move, and in no small way.[12]
In 1972 Emiliani warned "Man's activity may either precipitate this new ice age or lead to substantial or even total melting of the ice caps..."[13] By 1972 a group of glacial-epoch experts at a conference agreed that "the natural end of our warm epoch is undoubtedly near";[14] but the volume of Quaternary Research reporting on the meeting said that "the basic conclusion to be drawn from the discussions in this section is that the knowledge necessary for understanding the mechanism of climate change is still lamentably inadequate". Unless there were impacts from future human activity, they thought that serious cooling "must be expected within the next few millennia or even centuries"; but many other scientists doubted these conclusions.[15][16]
In 1972, George Kukla and Robert Matthews, in a Science write-up of a conference, asked when and how the current integlacial would end; concluding that "Global cooling and related rapid changes of environment, substantially exceeding the fluctuations experienced by man in historical times, must be expected within the next few millennia or even centuries."[17]
Global cooling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Now - before anyone picks all this apart, let me remind you that I am not saying these viewpoints are true - other than my OWN viewpoint, which is this:
I remember the big flap about global cooling, and now I'm witnessing a big flap about global warming.
All I'm sure of is this - that man's activities can affect the environment, and that we have a responsibility to our planet to live as gentle a life as possible, and to safeguard our environment. I credit my parents with instilling this belief in me.
I'm also sure of this - that political parties and folks with a wide variety of agendas will never cease using science and the media to fuel people's fears - in order to further their own interests.
It's a tough call and it's hard to cut through all the bull **** to get to the truth.
