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Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

I thought the 70s were all about global cooling?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

There was a lot of press hype about it, but global cooling wasn't widely accepted scientifically. The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this.

One thing hasn't changed: the mainstream media's handling of science and technology was just as bad 40 years as it is now.

"The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this"

BZZZT. One thing you won't find on Wikipedia is honest coverage of climate science. "I was there" (back in the '70s) and it was taken seriously by many opinion makers and the like.

I hasten to point out that "opinion makers" and "scientists" are widely disjunct sets of individuals. (There's also a big difference between "taken seriously as a risk" and "taken seriously as the most probable outcome", and it's very easy to trip the first threshold without tripping the second. Even a 10% chance of, for instance, terrorists using nuclear weapons has to be taken extremely seriously even though it's highly improbable.)

Climate myths: They predicted global cooling in the 1970s

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643

There were quite many papers predicting global warming and very few predicting global cooling. The available data just wasn’t good enough forty years ago to say with certainty what would happen but already then more was pointing in the direction of global warming rather than global cooling.

Even then there was no such thing in peer reviewed works:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-gl...

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=446&filen...

So what's your point? That climate scientists should just STFU when people are wrong about the science?

That which climate "scientists" set up and run the Real Climate site is significant.

I think you're mistaken about how science actually works - the evidence that you gather is what matters, rather than who you are. Perhaps you should be addressing that, rather than engaging in petty ad-hominem attacks.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad-hominem

"The argumentum ad hominem is not always fallacious, for in some instances questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue."

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick would be truly fascinated to learn that "the evidence that you gather is what matters, rather than who you are" in this field. As a bit of quality time searching the contents of http://www.eastangliaemails.com/ will demonstrate: http://www.google.com/search?as_oq=McIntyre+McKitrick+MM&...

Most especially: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419

  From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
  To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
  Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
  Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

"[...] The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew.... I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him"

-- Cardinal Richelieu

Indeed, for as this email demonstrates you only need one line from a dishonest man.

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