SubscribeNewsweek’s 1975 Article About Coming Ice Age
From the now notorious April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek :
The Cooling World
By Peter Gwynne
28 April 1975There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia — where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.
During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree — a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
“A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases — all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”
Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.
They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Lest we forget just how wrong the climate experts can be.
It’s funny isn’t it?
Everyone complains about the weather, but only liberals try to legislate it.
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18 Responses to “Newsweek’s 1975 Article About Coming Ice Age”
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March 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
The irony is, in another thirty years the “global cooling” theory will probably be back in vogue again.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Ah the movie The Day After Tomorrow covers this,
The world gets hot enough to melt both the polar ice caps, Now this causes super storms
and really huge explosions.
It gets so hot that the world is plunged into another ice age causing people to burn books and furniture
to keep from freezing to death, All because of global warming.
Well burning books and furniture must be worse than burning all those nasty fossil fuels.
Cause that plunges the world into even colder temperatures.
Its gonna get so hot we’ll freeze to death, Susana don’t you cry.
March 24th, 2007 at 12:37 am
“Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.”
–Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace
It’s all an excuse anyway. Why else did Sodom get a free pass for draining a bunch of wetlands (not to mention the 700 burning oil-wells and the pipe running crude directly into the Persian Gulf), China doesn’t catch any flak for the corners they cut, the USSR didn’t get a bit of condemnation for basically saying “Let’s turn off all the safety mechanisms, run this reactor full-blast, and see what happens!”… Yet farmers in the Klamath River Basin are being put out of business so the government can protect a crap-eating fish, we spend more than 90,000 a year protecting the Puerto Rican Cave Cockroach, medical centers aren’t built because they might disturb fly habitats, and in the middle of an oil shortage we aren’t allowed to build refineries or wells?
Are we supposed to not notice that the problem is always capitalism, the outcome is always catastrophe, and the solution is always socialism?
March 24th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Check out Ann Coulter’s lateast column on this. It talks about how a real scientific theory is rigorously questioned and tested, not accepted and regarded as gospel with no basis.
March 24th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming
Gore won’t accept. Monckton really knows science and Gore knows that Monckton would make mincemeat out of him
In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore’s Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms “the Second Great Debate,” an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, “That our effect on climate is not dangerous.”
Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, “A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.” Monckton and Gore have once before clashed head to head on the science, politics, and religion of global warming in the usually-decorous pages of the London Sunday Telegraph last November.
Monckton calls on the former Vice President to “step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world’s poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge.”
The arena of the glittering “Second Great Debate” will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the “Great Debate” between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop “Soapy Sam” Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue “not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism.”
Lord Monckton’s resounding challenge to Al Gore reads as follows — “The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice- President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, ‘That our effect on climate is not dangerous,’ to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President’s choosing. “Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President’s prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!”
March 24th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Liberals won’t debate because they know the lies, falicies and just outright hypocracy will be exposed. They use talking points to repeat the same thing over and over again to make it so commonly heard that people accept it as truth. Remember the duck and cover of years gone by (hide under your desk during the next nuke attack?) We (my school system) didn’t do it - ever. It was dumb, it was meant to instill fear in children no less - still not sure if it was fear of our government or of communism (oh heck let’s fear them both) and it was pushed again and again.
I don’t buy the glowball warning scam because an idiot politician is pushing it while living like 3 kings but telling me I got to buy hazmet light bulbs, a wood stove and walk to work . . .but even if there is an iota of truth in the glowball warning scam, I still don’t fear it. Because the next time I step out of the house I could be run down, shot in a robbery or drop dead of a heart attack - we all die. Living in fear of it is, well, insane. . .
BTW, if the earth (this is for the libs out there) was created by the Big Bang and is a gazillion years old, survived an ice age already - uhm, well 1) what did man who is, what only 500 or 100 million years old, have to do with it? and 2) does that not indicate that yes, indeedy children, the earth can survive again?
And if you don’t believe that (evolution) then God created the Earth (and if you read the end of the book) despite what man does to man - the Earth survives.
So either ‘earth creation’ outlook - Earth is the Winner.
You have nothing to fear but Al Gore himself.
March 24th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Speaking of Al Gore, I just had to share…. enjoy!
“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” –Al Gore
“Democrats understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”-Vice President Al Gore
“Welcome to President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, and my fellow astronauts.” –Vice President Al Gore
“Mars is essentially in the same orbit… Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, & water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.” –Vice President Al Gore, 8/11/94
“The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.” — Vice President Al Gore, 9/15/95
“I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.” –Vice President Al Gore, 5/22/98
“One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, & that one word is ‘to be prepared’.” –Vice President Al Gore, 12/6/93
“Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.” –Vice President Al Gore, 11/30/96
“I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”-Vice President Al Gore
“The future will be better tomorrow.” Vice President Al Gore
“We’re going to have the best-educated American people in the world.” –Vice President Al Gore, 9/21/97
“People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.” — Vice President Al Gore
“I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.” –Vice President Al Gore to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/93
“We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.” — Vice President Al Gore
“Public speaking is very easy.” -Vice President Al Gore to reporters in 10/95
“I am not part of the problem. I am a Democrat.” –Vice President Al Gore
“A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.” — Vice President Al Gore
“When I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct & simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame. –Al Gore
“Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.” –Vice President Al Gore, 5/20/96
“We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.” — Vice President Al Gore, 9/22/97
“For NASA, space is still a high priority.” –Vice President Al Gore, 9/5/93
“Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.” –Vice President Al Gore, 9/18/95
“The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Al Gore may or may not make.” –Vice President Al Gore
“We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.”-Vice President Al Gore
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” — Vice President Al Gore
“[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system.” — Vice President Al Gore
“As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet” –AL Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
..and just think about the bashing I use to give Vice-President Quayle!
March 24th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
You brought tears of laughter to my eyes, my stomach hurts. I am saving that one.
March 24th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Some claim that list isn’t accurate. For instance, this article, which doesn’t really substantiate its claims:
Does Gore stand by all the misstatements he never made?
http://www.post-gazette.com/he.....uotes3.asp
March 24th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
LMAO - those were great - right up there with Brooke Shields ‘if you are killed then you are dead.’ remark.
I’m sure that I’ve made a few bloopers in my life - I just try never to do them outside of the house and certainly not to someone with pen & paper or a microphone.
And we are to call this idiot - enlightened and elite and smarter than me?
March 25th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
It’s so funny; as Rachel Marsden pointed out, watching liberals and Hollywood actors talk about global warming. It’s like watching 5-year olds at MCDonalds examining the Happy Meal menu. In this article alone, the words “science” and “scientists” are thrown around so loosely.
I wish Hollywood actors and actresses would go back to actually making good movies. I haven’t seen a “good movie” from this age (at least the last ten years). I find myself watching AMC a lot when men chased dames and actually got to smoke cigars/cigarettes in their offices! Even when the women were naughty in those films, it was acknowledged and they were ridiculed and always “learned a lesson.” Nowadays they’re exploring their individuality.
We have to admit though, the best part of this global warming phase is watching people like Daryl Hannah and Leo Dicaprio talk about Science. Which I have to say is much more entertaining than actually watching one of their movies.
Great article - thanks for posting it!
March 26th, 2007 at 12:35 am
By the way, the temperature plunge that Newsweek charted is also noted in “The Great Global Warming Swindle”:
YouTube - The Great Global Warming Swindle (Complete)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
March 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Carbon Credits - Basic Math and Logic:
As Gore peddles inane assumtions as “science:, one cannot avoid the “inconvenient truth” of this bogus “system” that is nothing more than a cover for the hypocrits like Gore and their vast wealth and waste. Anyone who owns 3 or 4 houses is clearly polluting more than the average American. I believe a 5 year old can deduce that. But I want to break it down as to the bs it all is:
Both “A” and “B” represent a person each
Example 1: 50 Units of Carbon is the Pegged Allowable Goal
A - 100 units of carbon emmissions
B - 10 units of carbon emmissions
Total Real Carbon Emissions: 110
A “buys” 40 units from B “theoretically”, to reduce his carbon emissions
A - 60 units of carbon emissions
B - 50 units of carbon emissions
Total Real Carbon Emissions: 110 - No net loss or gain. Same carbon emissions. Yet, A is still exceeding the pegged carbon emissions.
Example 2: 50 Units of Carbon Emissions is the Pegged Goal
A - 100 Units of carbon emissions
B - 10 Units of carbon emissions
Total Real Carbon Emissions: 110
A “net buys” 40 units of carbon emissions from B
A - 140 Units of Carbon Emissions
B - -30 Units of Carbon Emissions (theoretical - you cant have a less than zero impact if you breath)
Total Real Carbon Emissions: 110
I have deduced, through 5th grade math - that at best, carbon credits do nothing to lesson the actual carbon emmissions and at worst - increase actual carbon emissions.
This bogus “slight of hand” system is nothing more than a red herring as to the “beliefs” of folks like Gore and Kerry and their actual carbon emissions. They are able to keep their lifestyles, while demanding you “change” yours. An as pointed out - may in fact be able to increase their total emissions - on the backs of “perceived” emissions that the common person doesn’t even emit. You can substitute the “A” and “B” samples with companies - as is currently done today - to see the net effect of said system. Zero.
Its one thing to make up “science”, but now - Gore and his ilk are making up math…
I welcome any math folks to educate me on the error of my ways.
March 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Gee, when the Sierra Club isn’t signing off on this - makes you wonder, huh??
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_tra.....orCHXMWM0F
“Offsets, said the Sierra Club’s Hamilton, should be a last resort”.
“It does no good but assuage your guilt if you drive a huge Hummer, live in a McMansion, then say you’ve bought offsets,” said Bruce Hamilton at the Sierra Club. “First, you should eliminate trips, walk rather than driving, insulate your house.”
After you’ve shrunk your energy use, then you can think about offsets, he said. “We need to get more money in the economy dedicated to reducing carbon emissions.”
March 28th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
What the global warming sheep always ignore is the Little Optimum of the medieval period, back in 800-1300, I believe. Tempratures got even warmer than they are today, and it was a time of plenty. Farmers cleared out land to raise crops, and the croplands they had before were producing enormous yields. Yet I never heard any of this until I read a book about the Black Death. All I ever heard was “YAH!! GLOBAL WARMING IS COMING AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!” And anyway, if global warming is irreversible, shouldn’t we be trying to adapt to the world, rather than change the weather, which no one since the dawn of time has ever been able to do?
SteveFlesher: I saw an amazing movie about three weeks ago, “Amazing Grace”, and it’s a period piece about William Wilberforce, who almost singlehandedly outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire back in the early 1800s. Made me cry.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Odie44, you stopped short of your math point. You could replace “A” and “B” with countries. Which is exactly what the Kyoto Accords that Al Gore sign for the United States was supposed to do except on a national scale. Small non-industrialized countries could sell there green house gas emmisions allowances to large industrial countries like the U.S., Japan, and Australia. And since many of the largest polluters (China and India) were exempt from having to have an standards. So they could continue to grow their industrial base and we in the U.S. would need to curtail ours to reamain with in the standards that were laid out for us or we would have to purchase “offsets” from those poorer countries to allow our continued growth. This is a socialist system if I ever saw one (From each according to his ability; To each according to his need).
March 28th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Excellant point Riftsrunner.
Oddly enough - it was Clinton, with VP Gore - who passed on Kyoto originally.
The blatant fraud and hypocrisy of Democrats is amazing, being it goes unchecked from the Reps and people in general.
And of course, our global warming alarmists are promising another “severe” hurricane season for 2007. Not as bold as last years prediction of 10-12 Cat 3’s, which was 100% WRONG, but more fear-based junk “science”. And I guarantee if and when the predictions don’t come true - these so called experts will say nothing as to their inane “micro” predictions, based on man made global warming theory…
March 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
“Oddly enough - it was Clinton, with VP Gore - who passed on Kyoto originally.”
Along with the entire US Senate, as noted here a year and a half ago:
Did Someone Say ‘Kyoto Treaty’? - The Clinton Record | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com.....-say-kyoto