I would define "pre-warming" climate funding as being approximately per the 1970 era when the prevailing thought was that earth would slip into a mini-ice-age.
I have lost count of how many times this easy to repeat meme has been factually dismissed. A true legend of a denier zombie mistruth.....

Figure 1: Number of papers classified as predicting future global cooling (blue) or warming (red). In no year were there more global cooling papers than global warming papers.
So in fact, the large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than climate science predicting cooling, the opposite is the case. Most interesting about Peterson's paper is not the debunking of an already well debunked skeptic argument but a succinct history of climate science over the 20th century, describing how scientists from different fields gradually pieced together their diverse findings into a more unified picture of how climate operates.
Read the Connelly Petersen Fleck paper for yourself to see an analysis of the science from the 1970's. Only 13 pages. http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
Are you willing to retract your statement JWoods, or provide evidence to support it?
Anyways...
If you suggest turning back the clock on climate science to the 1970's era, how do you propose deciding which areas of science deserve additional funding?
Or are you advocating the status quo for all funding across the board?