View Article & Comments

Many of you who have followed the global warming debate, or lack thereof, know that this isn't the first time we've heard claims that catastrophic climate change was imminent. When I was in elementary school one of my teachers brought a copy of Newsweek magazine to our classroom. The article our teacher wanted us to read and discuss was about drastic changes in the Earth's temperature, and the death and devastation that would occur as a result.

Global warming wasn't the problem then. No, it was quite the opposite. The Earth was cooling dramatically according to the author of the article, Peter Gwynne. Mass starvation due to food shortages could be expected within just a few years he wrote. The temperature change was also causing an unprecedented increase in tornados in the midwest. Many of the same problems attributed to global warming today were said to be caused by global cooling then.

There were calls for governments around the world to act immediately to reverse the trend of declining temperatures. Wait until you read how some scientists suggested that might be accomplished. For the record, Gwynne now believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming. In interviews he has given since the global warming debate, ahem, heated up, Gwynne has said his 1975 story was true then, but now AGW is a much more serious problem.


The point I'm trying to make is this: Researchers, scientists, and yes even journalists, have been wrong before. What i have called for all along is open, honest debate of the issue. Those who are the biggest promoters of the AGW theory have attemtped to shut down debate at every turn. They would have us believe that anyone who doubts their findings is a complete loon and no further discussion is necessary. Since when did science become about not asking questions and refusing to look at alternate theories?

Below is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. World temperatures had actually been falling since about 1940. Around 1979 temperatures again began to rise and eventually returned to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original article is available HERE.

A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is availableHERE

There 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. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling 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.

Suppose we had heeded this warning, and had actually changed the course of Arctic rivers, or melted the polar ice cap by covering it with soot? Imagine the problems that might have caused when the Earth began to warm again on its own. The scientists of the time didn't foresee the warming trend that was to resume in less than five years. Many of them are trying to ignore, and even hide, the cooling trend that is occuring now. It seems to me that tampering with the climate in such a way as to intentionally attempt to affect the Earth's temperature might not be such a good idea.