December 13, 2016

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Global Warming? Ha! What about Global Cooling? [Video]

This myth has been debunked many times—but rarely in such a fun way

By Lydia Chain

Michael Studinger NASA

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

You often hear the claim that all the climate scientists were worried about global cooling back in the 1970's. Now they're talking about global warming. They can't even make up their minds, so why should we listen to anything they say? 

ClimateAdam explains that there are two reasons. First, they weren't all worried about cooling in the 70's. Some were, but a majority were more concerted about...you guessed it...global warming. Yes, even way back then. 

The second reason is that even if they were all worried about global cooling 40 years ago (which, just to remind you, they weren't) so what? Scientists update their thinking as they gather new data, and they've gathered a huge amount of data on the changing climate since the days of disco. Here's another example: in the 1960's, doctors went on TV to advertise tobacco products. Now they say smoking is bad! Why should we listen?

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This video first appeared on YouTube on November 3 and is embedded here with permission. Adam Levy, a Multimedia Editor for Nature, created this video for his personal YouTube channel, ClimateAdam. The views represented are his own. Copyright Adam Levy 2016. All rights reserved.

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Lydia Chain is a freelance science journalist, podcaster, and videographer. She hosts Undark's podcast, and also writes about nature, the environment, and evolution, especially when it involves the intersection of humans and wild spaces or animals behaving strangely.

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