But all the scientists knew the world was cooling in the 1970s and 1980s

Omniclimate it would seem can speak Italian and has used this to do some intersting research, let's let him explain:

'Italian newspaper “La Stampa” has just put online its 1867-today archive (yes, it IS in Italian). What better chance (well, for me at least…) to explore the evolution of “global cooling” thinking in the 1970s beyond the usual English-speaking newsmedia? With the added bonus of plenty of names and other key words to use as…keywords for further research.

Very briefly: in the 15 articles I have found so far:

* the popularity of scientists predicting an ice age is very clear up to the Feb 1979 meeting of the World Meteorological Organization
* “upcoming ice age” is the meme du jour up to 1985 at least
* there is a warmist slant in 1990 but strangely, the arguments of discussion are more or less the same still central to the debate in 2010

This collection strongly indicates that in Italy, like elsewhere, the average reader of newspapers would have had all the reasons to believe in a “global cooling consensus” for much of the 1970′s and even later.'

Read the whole article, fascinating...