Global cooling wrote their 1971 paper, climatologists had not yet recognized the significance of greenhouse gases other than water vapor and carbon dioxide, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. Early in that decade, carbon dioxide was the only widely studied human-influenced greenhouse gas. The attention drawn to atmospheric gases in the 1970s stimulated many discoveries in subsequent decades. As the temperature pattern changed, global cooling was of waning interest by 1979. A common argument used to dispute the significance of human caused climate change, which TIME Magazine calls the Ice Age Fallacy, is to allege that scientists showed concerns about global
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (ERC) is the conversion of carbon dioxide to more reduced chemical species using electrical energy. The first examples of electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide are from the 19th century, when carbon dioxide was reduced to carbon monoxide using a zinc cathode. Research in this field intensified in the 1980s following the oil embargoes of the 1970s. Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide represents a possible means of producing chemicals or fuels, converting carbon dioxide () to organic feedstocks such as formic acid (HCOOH), methanol (CHOH), ethylene (CH), methane (CH), and