In the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society last September, scientists William Connolley and Thomas Peterson and journalist/equaintance John Fleck routed a favorite line of climate change deniers, to wit:
community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an
observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate
scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of
the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even
then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important
forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales.
But not only were scientists concerned about global warming in the l970's, they were talking about in the l950's. Physicist Spencer Weart lays this out in his History of Global Warming (available on-line).
In the 1930s, people realized that the United States and North Atlantic
region had warmed significantly during the previous half-century. Scientists
supposed this was just a phase of some mild natural cycle, with unknown
causes. Only one lone voice, the amateur G.S. Callendar, insisted that
greenhouse warming was on the way. Whatever the cause of warming, everyone
thought that if it happened to continue for the next few centuries, so
much the better.
In the 1950s, Callendar's claims provoked a few scientists to look into
the question with improved techniques and calculations. What made that
possible was a sharp increase of government funding, especially from military
agencies with Cold War concerns about the weather and the seas. The new
studies showed that, contrary to earlier crude estimates, carbon dioxide
could indeed build up in the atmosphere and should bring warming. Painstaking
measurements drove home the point in 1961 by showing that the level of
the gas was in fact rising, year by year.
Hollywood got involved. A Bell Labs short for television, circa 1958, directed by no less than Frank Capra, of "It's a Wonderful Life" fame, featuring Frank C. Baxter, aka "Dr. Research," laid out the essential facts of global warming quite succinctly. Six billion tons of CO2 added to the atmosphere a year, a change in atmospheric chemistry, a few degrees of temperature rise, ice sheets begin to melt.
Sound familiar?
Remarkable how much we knew, and how little we cared…
Kit Stolz 
My friend’s dad explained global warming to us in 1967. He said that it probably wouldn’t be a
problem for him, but we would probably have to deal with it by the time we were his age. Pretty
much came in on his schedule.
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He was a chemical engineer. He had the dubious distinction of being the inventor of high fructose corn syrup. He was always explaining things to us. “Boys, why do you think water beads up like that on the windshield?” 42 years later his son is still my close friend.
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