Comment by RobGR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RobGR | Hacker News Reader

"Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect." They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have an ecological catastrophe."

Ice age was the preferred senario of the Doomday crowd back then.

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-ab...

My grandfather subscribed to Reader's Digest and kept every one of them, in a tall neat stack that reached to the ceiling next to the toilet. There were more from as far back as the 50's in a little cubby hole between the toilet and bathtub. We lived with him for a year in the 80's, and I read a huge number of those; I was convinced the return of the ice caps was imminent, and quite excited about the prospect.

I read quite a bit about the nuclear winter debate, and nothing in the popular press about warming until the 90s. I know from what I have read that papers on warming were published as early as the 40s, but in the popular immagination, cooling was expected, and any human effects would be catastrophic cooling from a nuclear exchange.

> "Doomsayers were worried about something they called the 'greenhouse effect.'"

I picked up a strange anthology from 1971 for classroom use, Science Fiction: The Future [ISBN 0155786504], from a street vendor a couple days ago. Here is an excerpt from "The Human Race Has, Maybe, Thirty-Five Years Left" by David Lyle, originally appearing in 1967 Esquire:

"Dr. Barry Commoner reported recently (in his book, Science and Survival) that the burning of fuels has caused the carbon-dioxide content of the earth's atmosphere to rise fourteen percent in the past century. This has produced a general warming effect on the atmosphere. The President's [Johnson, I suppose] Science Advisory Committee concludes that this warming may begin melting the Antarctic ice cap by the year 2000 (raising sea levels four feet a decade and, of course, finally inundating huge land areas and major cities, like New York)."

I remember thoughts of global warming floating in my head since the 1970s, perhaps, vaguely, having to do with chlorofluorocarbons and holes in the ozone layer. But I don't recollect anything about increased carbon dioxide. Hence, I was a bit amazed and surprised when I read about carbon dioxide in this old Esquire article last night.

> Ice age was the preferred senario of the Doomday crowd back then.

I had not heard of nuclear winter until the 1980s. Wikipedia (definitive source ;-) confirms "nuclear winter" buzz began in the early '80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#History

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