&gt; Just 40 years ago &quot;global warming&quot; was called &quot;global cooling&quot;, and an ice-age apocalypse was predicted<p>That&#x27;s rather misleading. As noted in the Wikipedia article on &quot;global cooling&quot; [1], which I know you are aware of because you cited it in the original version of your comment:<p><pre><code>   This hypothesis had little support in the scientific
   community, but gained temporary popular attention due
   to a combination of a slight downward trend of
   temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press
   reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of
   the scientific climate literature, which showed a larger
   and faster-growing body of literature projecting future
   warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.
</code></pre>
Those who did support it generally did so not because they thought global warming was wrong. They just thought that smog levels would continue rising faster than greenhouse gas levels, so that the cooling affect that smog causes would be more significant than the warming effect greenhouse gases cause.<p>Their only mistake was not anticipating that we would actually start taking air pollution seriously enough to not only stop the smog rise but reverse it. Since the &#x27;70s smog levels have come way down.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_cooling" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_cooling</a>