In 1972, Idso published an article called "An American
Haboob", in which he documented a large dust storm in Arizona which occurred on July 16, 1971, and which stretched from
Tucson to
Phoenix. In 1980, Idso published research which concluded that
climate sensitivity was probably only about 0.3 °C, about a tenth of the generally accepted value. The following year, he opposed
NASA's global warming predictions, saying they were "about 10 times too great," adding that, in his view, global warming would have a beneficial effect on agriculture. In 1984, Idso, along with A.J. Brazel, published a study in
Nature which concluded, contrary to a report the
National Academy of Sciences released the previous year, that rising CO2 levels would increase
streamflow. The study's authors argued that the NAS report came to the opposite conclusion because it neglected the effect of rising CO2 levels on plants. In the 1997 book,
Global Warming: The Science and the Politics Idso said: "I find no compelling reason to believe that the earth will necessarily experience any global warming as a consequence of the ongoing rise in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration." In the 1998 paper, ''-induced global warming: a skeptic's view of potential climate change'' Idso said: "Several of these cooling forces have individually been estimated to be of equivalent magnitude, but of opposite sign, to the typically predicted
greenhouse effect of a doubling of the air’s content, which suggests to me that little net temperature change will ultimately result from the ongoing buildup of in Earth's atmosphere." == Personal life ==