Jbowyer,
Nuclear destruction in the 50’s and 60’s– was a very real possibility given the abundance of nuclear weapons and Mutually Assured Destruction as the dominant strategy for avoiding nuclear war.
More people than food – a problem that human ingenuity has delayed but not solved. The interim solutions have relied on abundant oil and energy and have left vast tracts of formerly arable land as wasteland. Permanent solutions are still notably absent and climate change will make things worse.
Global cooling – The US National Academy of Sciences did a report on the issue in 1975 which basically said understanding of climate at that time was too limited to make such predictions. Compare to more recent reports on climate change from which the NAS which say climate is now well enough understood to make predictions. With the US’s premier science advisory body’s position clear enough I fail to see that there was any widespread scientific agreement on what was happening to climate in the 70’s, regardless of what the mainstream media was saying then or now.
Ozone hole – is real, is still scientifically accepted to be a result of CFC’s and has consequences, including climate ones, that are real no matter that “a scientist” says otherwise.
Y2K? Having communicated with people who worked on Y2K problems they were real and serious. That people foresaw the problems and fixed them isn’t evidence the problems didn’t exist - just evidence that forseeing problems and taking action can be successful.
I don’t think the public and governmental responses to unrelated issues over many decades can really be expected to exhibit clear patterns. In any case they are irrelevant to the scientific basis for AGW. The clearest pattern I see is that you appear willing to uncritically accept the truth of such assertions and uncritically reject any contrary explanations.
Give me the recent output of the world’s leading scientific bodies over these paranoid speculations any day.

"Plimer can't have anything to say because associated with Heartland Institute?"

Mr Plimer may say what he wishes - even on climate change but since he's never written a paper on climate science, nobody's listening though the media finds him amusing.

Mind you the gentleman has an impressive industry profile:

Director of CBH Resources Limited (lead-zinc-silver deposits and a variety of other base and precious metal mineralisation styles and a producer with a A$700 million market capitalisation.)

Director of Kefi Minerals

Director of Ivanhoe Australia

The good professor lists in his bio the following:

"Research Interests

"Characterisation of the stratigraphy, structure and alteration associated with the Broken Hill orebody."

Aw...wot? No climate research?!!

Science be damned?! However did Plimer become Professor Emiritus of Earth Sciences at Melbourne University. That is the planet we're talking about isn't it? It's the one I'm on anyway.

Heartland has been "disenfranchised" according to Q&A. Are there alarmist franchises available now? A chain of inconvenience stores perhaps. A better word might be excommunicated, given that he dares to remain open to questioning orthodoxy - the point of the article. He wouldn't be the first scientist to have experienced it.

Thank heavens Bob Brown is not in any danger! I was panicking there for a minute. 20 metres above sea level. Phew! If his current altitude were, say, -50cm below it, I would be very concerned, and could only pray that God gives him the intuition to walk in an upwardly direction.

As far as the gabfest in New York was concerned:

Conference co-sponsors received the following benefits:

• input into the program regarding speakers and panel topics

• admission to all meals and sessions for up to 20 people

• logo and organization info on all promotional material produced, including advertising prior to the event.

There was no fee for sponsorship, but conference co-sponsors were asked to do the following:

• place a link on the homepage of their Web sites to Heartland's web site

• send two or three emails to their membership/donor lists promoting the event

• describe the event in a newsletter or online essay

• get 20 people to attend the event as their guests

Meaning;

Sponsors had a hand in deciding what the topics of the conference would be (unlike real scientific conferences).

There was no fee for sponsorship (unusual) but “sponsors” were asked to spread the word about the “conference” and to get people to attend.

That is, the Heartland Institute looked for sponsorship not in the form of sponsorship fees, but in the form of ‘deny-n-delay’ noise ... sow the seeds of doubt, generate noise and promote inaction.

Btw, according to the “conference” registration information, there was a 20% registration fee discount for signers of the Oregon Petition.

Apparently, they had about 60 sponsors and 800 people registered to attend, that means they were giving away more admissions than people registered to attend. It's likely that almost everyone that attended got free admission.

No Fungo, they (the 'scientists') disenfranchised themselves.

If any allied to the Heartland Institute really wanted to get their message out, they would have presented their submission to the International Science Congress at Copenhagen. They did not.

It is very disturbing (if unscientific) that people like Roy Spencer "publishes" his papers on 'denialist' web sites like WUWT before they have been submitted (let alone published) in climate science journals or critiqued by his peers in the scientific community.

It is also disturbing that people like Bob Carter can rant in the popular press, blogosphere, right wing magazines and go on public speaking tours etc without actually having published any of his "claims" in climate science journals.

Extremists on both sides should pull their heads out of their nether-nethers ... global warming "alarmists" AND global warming "deniers".

Fungochumley, which part don't you understand?

Protagoras, if we're going to get into arguments about pecuniary interests, I might point out that Tim Flannery is a shareholder in geothermal company Geodynamics, a Director of Carbonscape and a Director of Australian Wildlife Conservancy, so there's not doubt that he stands to benefit by influencing government climate policy. He certainly makes a packet writing about it. Climateology is also absent from his collection of degrees.

Al Gore makes a nice little pile from being the principal climate Jeremiah, and his only qualification is as a politician (I'd add preachifyin', but he never finished Divinity School; I'm not sure if you need any qualifications to sell snake oil or not).

A fairly nasty p*ssing contest about who's making money from what, I know (I especially hate putting the boot into Tim, who's a likeable bloke), but you get my point.