"Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979. It was, if anything, better understood. Today, almost nine out of ten Americans do not know that scientists agree, well beyond the threshold of consensus, that human beings have altered the global climate through the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels.  But by 1979 the main points were already settled beyond debate, and attention turned from basic principles to a refinement of the predicted consequences."   
Losing Earth - A Recent History, by  Nathaniel Rich