Global Cooling and a New Ice Age: Never Forget (humility required in science, change)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 7, 2024

“A new ice age would flood the world’s coastal cities and further lower temperatures to build up new glaciers that could eventually cover huge areas.” (1971)

The warming alarmists dismiss the cooling alarmists of yesterday as fringe and ignorant. But some of the biggest names of the day back then would not take too kindly to the know-it-alls of today.

Alex Epstein has coined the term catastrophicism to describe the age-old Malthusian itch. Back in the 1970s, top scientists such as NASA’s S. I. Rasool, an atmospheric physicist at Columbia University, and Stephen Schneider of National Center for Atmospheric Research, were making headlines about future climate change–from people, not nature.

“Scientists have long debated whether man’s activity is actually heating or cooling the earth,” the Washington Post article below notes.

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In his book The Genesis Strategy: (1976: p. 90), Stephen Schneider, then deputy head, Climate Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote:

“I have cited many examples of recent climatic variability and repeated the warnings of several well-known climatologists that a cooling trend has set in–perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age ….

On the question of predicted global cooling, also see Angus Mcfarlane, “The 1970s Global Cooling Consensus was not a Myth.” A list of posts at WUWT on the subject can be found here.

Many articles in recent years have tried to walk back the climate scare of the 1970s (see here and here). But like the Climategate emails, words, paragraphs, and pages from the climate scientists’ mouth and pen cannot be erased.