The climate of yesterday is linked to the climate of today.

One must throw the bones many times over a long period of time to find the meaning of the perceived trends.. Even today the picture is still very very confused, and to actually pick what will happen on some time line is still impossible.

For all that, the process is slow, and no doubt it will oscillate for our good and our bad...... the only real problem will be the survival reaction by various badly affected groups of people, and how they are treated by the "well, we are OK mob".

your comment that is.  

Two problems: not all opinions are equal and reality is not a matter of opinion.

Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever! -- Anonymous

in the early 1980s some folks were still talking about the next ice age (as cited above) and I also recall something about the role of granite dust as a soil remineralization amendment that had something to do with it. Or maybe it was all a dream . . .
    I also remember during that same time frame having arguments with some extreme new age folks about creatiing your own reality. They actually did believe that reality was a matter of opinion and had all kinds of "reasons" why that was the case. Unfortunately they fell short on helping me to understand how that could be true when all of our realities intersect in the "real world" and most people seem to agree on what theat "real world" looks like. I kind of thought all those folks were debunked. Oh well . . .

>> the ice age was predicted to come in about 10,000 years >>

Let us compress that to 100 years... and lasting for 10,000 years.

mmmh, cool

In the 1970s, there was a book in the popular press, a few articles in popular magazines, and a small amount of scientific speculation based on the recently discovered glacial cycles and the recent slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking the sunlight. There were no daily headlines. There was no avalanche of scientific articles. There were no United Nations treaties or commissions. No G8 summits on the dangers and possible solutions. No institutional pronouncements

In the 1970's there was no internet.  TIME and Newsweek, who both ran stories on the global cooling myth, were the major source of (written) news for much of America outside of the local paper.
To this day, the masses do not read scientific journals, they read what the popular press writes about those journals.  
There can be no "avalanche" if there is no snow.

Also in the 1970's there was no talk radio, and it did not occur to many Americans that the media had a left leaning agenda.  Now there is another side to listen to.  That's why the pace has been stepped up by the left.  They are turning up the volume to drown out the other side.

The United Nations was busy actually sending forces places in the 1970's, namely the Middle East.  Now they worry about myths and lies like global warming instead of sending EFFECTIVE forces to Africa to stop the slaughter.  Kofi is a race-traitor, a criminal and an anti-semite.

The G8 started in 1975, with France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US only.  They were not coming together to start talking about the enviorment, they were coming together to talk about macroeconomic management and international trade.  That's a more recent topic for them to be taking on.

That's why there were no "summits" or "teaties" or "commissions".......

Now that everyone is so hell-bent on destroying Isreal or the United States or both, the global warming farce is a nice distraction.  It demoralizes Americans who buy into it, and it's easier to control a demoralized person.  It sets people up to tear down the American economy, thinking they are doing "good".  It gives useless, spineless people like Al Gore an income.  It breeds hate and discontent.

Most importantly, and what is the saddest thing, it removes people from WANTING to help with REAL and local enviormental problems.  Rational and intelligent people who would be most "green" can't  
stomach the thought of working with people who lie for a living.

There was a reason cooling was predicted then, they were right. If we had continued then to eject particulate matter into the air at the rate we were, and increased it at the rate of industrialization, the planet would likely be cooler now and the greenhouse effect would have been delayed but still inevitable.

We cleaned the soot out of the air in relatively short order because it was so relatively simple to do, one of those things industry could have been doing all along without dire consequences. Of course, they didn't, because there were pennies to be saved and capitalism's short term goals are always opposed to long term environmental goals without Gov't intervention.

Now that there is less particulate matter in the air, the CO2 greenhouse phenomenon is accelerated and more noticeable, and there are scientists who believe reflecting sunlight through high altitude emission of sulfur dioxide may be the only way to reverse the process.

Was the theory all the rage in the 1970's, was it on every channel like global warming is now? Who cares, they were right then and they are right now. The thing no one here seems to remember is that in between 1970 and now there has been a whole lot of ACTION, not just idle theorizing. Namely, the Clean Air Act, and you can visibly trace back the date it was passed in the layers of antartic ice cores.

Bruupo has it right.  Rather than limiting CO2, simply require that an offsetting volume of aerosols be generated.  Instant solution to the global "catastrophe."

On the negative side, it fails to transfer vast quantities of wealth from industrial nations to the third world, fails to demonize the US, and it forces the ecologists to fabricate another crisis that will doom the world unless we act now.

I was in high school in the 80's. I have pretty clear memories of fears of global cooling being foisted on me throughout those years. Pollution was going to destroy the planet. Man was evil.

the quote above "Of course, they didn't, because there were pennies to be saved and capitalism's short term goals are always opposed to long term environmental goals without Gov't intervention" is especially egregious. What you are saying sir is that you want people like George bush in CHARGE of controling pollution.. yet you HATE the guy. The only answer government can provide to pollution is honoring laws regarding private property. Government is inherently evil and the governments of the USSR and CHINA show the disdain they have for the environment. People who OWN things care about them and will protect them.

Take your socialist ideas and show me how it will produce honest, trustworthy politicians. THAT has not been produced anywhere on the planet YET.

Wow.

www.grist.org

Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies and all the major scientific institutions, solidly behind the warning that the temperature is rising, anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause, and it will worsen unless we reduce emissions.

The problem with that is that you are talking about the concensus of many people who may be self proclaimed "experts" but the reality is that they are not really experts at all.  The real definition of an expert in such an enormously complex subject such as global climate is in fact very narrow and is strictly limited to climatologists only and possibly even narrower than that, climatologists that are specialised in certain area of climatology.  You see all sorts of non-climatologists in the media talking about "global warming".  These people might specialise in fields like geology, oceanography or cosmology.  Such people should not be considered true "experts" in this complex subject yet these are the very people that are considered amongst the 2500 leading scientists.  I'm not a climatologist myself however I do have a Masters degree in engineering and have published articles in scientific journals.  I am therefore well aware that people specialise in very narrow fields and that it only takes a small deviation from this narrow field to no longer be an expert.  

Wouldn't it be more compelling to say that the "widespread consensus" has more to do with the fact that there's mountains of evidence inhand that point towards manmade warming.

Meanwhile, the ammount of evidence that points towards the opposite is largely disproven, or unverified.

It's not so much the number of scientists as it is the overwhelming weight of credible evidence.

And the overwhelming lack of credible evidence from skeptics.

Coby, if you're going to talk about the global cooling scare, the least you could do is use it as a salutory lesson on the fallibility of scientific prediction.
Yet you, and others, dismiss it so quickly that it seems like more of an inconvenience to be smoothed over. You're in too much of a rush to despatch the global cooling annoyance, and not ready to really sit back and take a neutral, disinterested look at what's going on here.
 

Global Cooling was a (presumably) interesting and plausible hypothesis that was tested, and quickly rejected. This is science working precisely as it should. It speaks overwhelmingly not to the failings of scientific prediction, but its strengths. 'Science' can distinguish between the good guesses and the bad ones.

It's a very good thing when scientists make strange or controversial predictions, or hypotheses, then lay them out to inspection by others. Because in science, all possibilities must be accounted for. Occasionally, these crazy ideas turn out to be revolutionary. More often they don't. Good science neither accepts nor rejects hypotheses uncritically, unlike the people who speak in its name.

...and an eloquent defense of science.
I would add that in reality, big scientific ideas and research programs - "paradigms" - gain momentum, and are carried forward by their own methodology and assumptions, even when they begin to fail.
In reality, most scientists are so deeply embedded in their own network of knowledge, theories, instruments, and methodologies, it is hard to see when their chosen paradigm is heading in the wrong direction.

The "faulty paradigm" theory is one for which I have a great deal of sympathy. The climate is an incredibly complex subject, and we know that when confronted with the unfathomable, humans tend to see patterns that don't actually exist. I also have no doubt that such things can occur communally as well as individually, with solid work being built on insufficiently-tested previous assertions, slowly leading away from the truth...

But I have reasons for thinking that this is not the case for AGW. One is that there's absolutely no evidence. This despite the fact that there are many people who would wish it to be true, including me. The faulty paradigm hypothesis, while plausible, doesn't have a lick of real evidence to support it.

Another is that I believe that 'science' is in quite a good state now. With the internet, there are more possibilities than ever for scientists to talk to one another, and test each others work. This enables scientists to perform the checks and balances integral to the scientific method to an unprecedented degree. Make a mistake, and someone will find it, as happened two seeks ago. Also, scepticism, and "thinking outside the box" is as well-ingrained into our academic culture as it ever has been.

While I hold out hope that the present state of climate science will indeed prove to be a scientific wrong turn, I'm not holding my breath. Given the stakes involved, I see no choice but to act on my thorouhgly thought-out position.

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which popularized the "paradigm shift" model of scientific progress, was a great read.  However, many people latch onto the "sexy" revolution aspect and ignore the fact that, as Kuhn recognized, the vast majority of valuable scientific work happens within the existing paradigm.  This sort of work doesn't grab headlines the way that breakthroughs or valiant dissenters do.  "Joe Chang, PhD student, guided by his advisor, worked carefully and conscientiously to make some minor modifications to a model of ocean currents that incrementally advanced our understanding of global climate."  99% of science is like this.  But where's the hook?  Where's the glamorous rebellion?  Chang looks kind of dorky and doesn't have any sound bites.  This story is, unfortunately, not going to get the same amount of press as a "maverick" scientist with an exciting tale of conflict to peddle, no matter how much higher-quality Chang's work might be.

So sure, scientific paradigms sometimes prove inadequate - but they're proven so by evidence, not just by yelling, "You're the Scientific Establishment, man! Being a contrarian is so much groovier!"

eriga,
I agree with you that most science is pretty boring, and that's how it should be. That whole "against the establishment" thing was fun when I was a hot-headed undergraduate some time ago, but I'm way past the age of wanting to rebel.
In the case of global warming, I think it's much "groovier" to toe the line.
Global warming means you get to oppose big business, oil companies, hummers, people who drive hummers, various wars (especially those involving oil, and which result in large amounts of fuel burning), conspicuous consumption, and George Bush. That sounds pretty sexy to me.
Trust me, if I could believe it, I would.

The article does not note what the cooling time frame was for those 7 papers projecting global cooling. I assume they were short-term projections, not the projections associated with Milankovitch cycles (but assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups). Perhaps someone has a link to the actual review?