Remember global cooling?

A cooling trend beginning in about 1940 caused a "global cooling" scare in the 1970s. Today, of course, the environmental Chicken Littles who fretted about a coming ice age now warn against catastrophic global warming.

[I]t is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase six-to eightfold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise the present global background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5[degrees]K [3.5[degrees]C]. Such a large decrease in the average surface temperature of the Earth, sustained over a period of a few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

--Science, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate," July 9, 1971

Climatologists now blame those recurring droughts and floods on a global cooling trend. It could bring massive tragedies for mankind.

--Fortune, "Ominous Changes in the World's Weather," February 1974

However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing....

Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7[degrees]F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

--Time, "Another Ice Age?" June 24, 1974

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 ten years from now....

The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down.

--Newsweek, "The Cooling World," April 28, 1975

Climatologists have advanced a number of theories to explain why the world's climate is getting worse. The dominant school maintains that the world is becoming cooler, resulting in a loss of arable land at the higher latitudes and major shifts in rainfall patterns. A second school believes the world is warming, with equally serious consequences.

--Business Week, "The world's climate is getting worse" August 2, 1976

Most scientists agree that today's ice movement may reflect a worldwide cooling trend, but their explanations vary widely.

--National Geographic, "What's Happening to Our Climate?" November 1976

Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end ... leading into the next glacial age....

--National Science Board, 1972 As quoted by the National Geographic article cited above

What ever happened to global warming? Scientists have issued apocalyptic warnings for years, claiming that gases from cars, power plants and factories are creating a greenhouse effect that will boost the temperature dangerously.... But if last week is any indication of winters to come, it might be more to the point to start worrying about the next Ice Age instead. After all, human-induced warming is still largely theoretical, while ice ages are an established part of the planet's history.

--Time, "The Ice Age Cometh?" January 31, 1994