Newsweek on the cooling world

denisdutton.com

7 points·robotrout··6 comments

I'm not a Global Warming advocate.

But I've never found the "Global Cooling" argument very compelling. I don't think you can take any misconception from 34 years ago and use it to invalidate a current scientific theory because the technology we use to measure and extrapolate has increased so greatly.

Keep in mind this article was written only 4 years after the first commercial microprocessor was release (the 4-bit Intel 4004). So you can't even compare our ability to measure and interrupt data now to what they had then.

Newsweek is not a good resource for judging the true scientific research of the era. Newsweek spins stories to sell magazines. If anyone is curious about the real details of the research I would suggest reading:

The Myth Of The 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus by Thomas C. Peterson, William m. Connolley, and John Fleck

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0...

When were clean air legislations enacted? Maybe that halted the possible cooling effects of soot, and allowed temperatures to start rising.

That's actually an important effect, decreases in aerosols has probably caused an increase in temperature especially in urban areas in the western industrialized world. Interestingly, the increasing use of coal burning to fuel developing economies, especially in China, is leading to increasing local cooling in some areas.

But you can't deny the fact that burning those chemicals releases gasses into the atmosphere which lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. That's no good for Earth's environment if life is to survive nearly as well as it did 10 years ago.

I'm confused -- are they saying that the Earth is cooling or is the temperature increasing??

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