Today's Global Warming story

Have climate scientists been worried about global warming even longer than we realize? Check out this article* from the Washington Post, July 9, 1971:

"If his calculation prove correct, Rasool said, it may be simply necessary for men to stop most fossil fuel-burning - use of coal, oil, natural gas and automobile gasoline...Pollution controls alone, he said, cannot do the job. "I think you have to stop the source." Global Warming would flood the world's coastal cities...

Well, actually, I'm lying to you. That last sentence, instead of starting with "Global Warming," actually starts "A new ice age..."

That's right. 36 years before NASA scientists warned us that we had to stop burning fossil fuels because the incipient global warming would flood coastal cities, NASA scientists were warning us that we had to stop burning fossil fuels because the incipient global cooling would flood coastal cities.

This is my primary problem with the global warming hysteria. I'm perfectly willing to grant that there are some well-intentioned, well-meaning scientists who really, truly believe that we're destroying the earth. But there is a critical mass of global warming hypesters whose solutions to global warming are the same solutions they propose for every social and scientific ill. When leftists who have been telling me my entire life that Americans need to stop burning fossil fuels because America is using an "unfair" amount of the world's resources, or because exhaust fumes cause birth defects or sterility, or because it causes acid rain, or it's going to cause global cooling, decide that we need to stop burning fossil fuels because it's causing global warming, it's not easy to fight the suspicion that what they are really concerned with isn't global warming - it's Americans burning fossil fuels.



Investor's Business Daily looked at that article on Friday, focusing on James Hansen's role in the current climate concern, as well as the earlier one. It's worth a read...


* - Title of the article on page A4 of the 7/9/71 Post - U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming