WI: Climate Change Recognized in the 1970s

Delta Force

Banned
What if climate change was recognized in the mid to late 1970s instead of the late 1980s? Would coal still make the big comeback it did in the 1970s after developing flue gas desulfurization, or would greenhouse gas emissions hold it back? Would there be more emphasis on using electricity instead of natural gas, perhaps including the use of natural gas in power plants (discouraged at the time due to limited reserves)? Could it lead to a revival of major hydropower projects in Canada and the United States, with the environmental impacts being written off like they historically were for coal? Would nuclear energy take the place of renewable power? Would the environmentalist movement accept climate change theory if the government did, or might they try to deny it as an excuse for continuing the construction of new hydropower and nuclear power stations since climate change theory would favor the two sources of power they were most opposed to?
 
In the 60s (and early 70s?) the fear was Global Cooling, not Global Warming. I don't remember why.

But the warming effects have gotten far more visible over my lifetime.
 

Delta Force

Banned
In the 60s (and early 70s?) the fear was Global Cooling, not Global Warming. I don't remember why.

But the warming effects have gotten far more visible over my lifetime.

There were some people who were talking about warming in the 1960s, and even a few conferences about it in the 1970s.
 
Ah, I can actually give a link about this sort of stuff.

Potholer54 did a nice series of videos going into the myths of climate change. One of the first ones he hit was global cooling being the consensus when it was more one of two ideas being considered at the time. Scientists did know the climate was changing, but they weren't sure entirely if it was cooling or warming since they didn't know what the aerosol effect of pollution would do at that point. News outlets however being what they are decided to amp up the story because science is boring. Climate change was also a topic of study and the idea of global warming being a thing that might happen since the 1950s and 1900s respectively.

Like the myth that most people thought the earth was flat (when we knew of its spheroid shape since literally the BCE times), this is just another one of those flat out wrong ideas.
 
There were some people who were talking about warming in the 1960s, and even a few conferences about it in the 1970s.

Even earlier than that, it seems. According to this article, the idea of anthropogenic global warming (that is, not only is the world warming, these changes are man-made) was discussed as early as 1956: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x/abstract

Here's a quote from the abstract:

The extra CO2 released into the atmosphere by industrial processes and other human activities may have caused the temperature rise during the present century.
 
What if climate change was recognized in the mid to late 1970s instead of the late 1980s? Would coal still make the big comeback it did in the 1970s after developing flue gas desulfurization, or would greenhouse gas emissions hold it back? Would there be more emphasis on using electricity instead of natural gas, perhaps including the use of natural gas in power plants (discouraged at the time due to limited reserves)? Could it lead to a revival of major hydropower projects in Canada and the United States, with the environmental impacts being written off like they historically were for coal? Would nuclear energy take the place of renewable power? Would the environmentalist movement accept climate change theory if the government did, or might they try to deny it as an excuse for continuing the construction of new hydropower and nuclear power stations since climate change theory would favor the two sources of power they were most opposed to?

I think it definitely would be a boon for environmentalist causes in general, TBH, but there's something that might complicate things a bit: AGW, at least, actually did not fully begin in earnest until about 1980 or so IOTL. Maybe some earlier breakthroughs on climate science are the key?
 
Honestly, though, the 1970s would probably get all emo about it like they did everything else, and we'd get scifi movies about how everything will be terrible in the future. We'll get a version of "The Day After Tomorrow" at the same time as "Logan's Run".
 

Delta Force

Banned
Even earlier than that, it seems. According to this article, the idea of anthropogenic global warming (that is, not only is the world warming, these changes are man-made) was discussed as early as 1956: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x/abstract

Here's a quote from the abstract:

I think it definitely would be a boon for environmentalist causes in general, TBH, but there's something that might complicate things a bit: AGW, at least, actually did not fully begin in earnest until about 1980 or so IOTL. Maybe some earlier breakthroughs on climate science are the key?

Svante Arrhenius wrote about it as early as the 1896, and even developed a formula on radiative forcing still used today. However, he thought that the radiative forcing would be a good thing by helping to avert the looming ice age and boosting crop yields through higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels. In 1938 G.S. Callendar even gave a presentation to the Royal Academy of Science where he argued that carbon dioxide levels were leading to increased temperatures.

However, the concept of global warming being a good thing was still popular even well into the 1980s, and the Soviet delegations at some of the 1980s climate conferences called for more examination of the effects to prove they would be detrimental.
 
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