There was a lot of press hype about it, but global cooling wasn't widely accepted scientifically. The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this.
One thing hasn't changed: the mainstream media's handling of science and technology was just as bad 40 years as it is now.
"The first paragraph of that Wikipedia article even says this"
BZZZT. One thing you won't find on Wikipedia is honest coverage of climate science. "I was there" (back in the '70s) and it was taken seriously by many opinion makers and the like.
I hasten to point out that "opinion makers" and "scientists" are widely disjunct sets of individuals. (There's also a big difference between "taken seriously as a risk" and "taken seriously as the most probable outcome", and it's very easy to trip the first threshold without tripping the second. Even a 10% chance of, for instance, terrorists using nuclear weapons has to be taken extremely seriously even though it's highly improbable.)
There were quite many papers predicting global warming and very few predicting global cooling. The available data just wasn’t good enough forty years ago to say with certainty what would happen but already then more was pointing in the direction of global warming rather than global cooling.
I think you're mistaken about how science actually works - the evidence that you gather is what matters, rather than who you are. Perhaps you should be addressing that, rather than engaging in petty ad-hominem attacks.
"The argumentum ad hominem is not always fallacious, for in some instances questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue."
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004
"[...] The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew.... I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling