Global Cooling?

[Coss]

Americans who lived through the 1960s and ’70s may remember the dire global-cooling predictions that were hyped and given great credibility by Newsweek, Time, Life, National Geographic, and numerous other mainstream media outlets. According to the man-made global-cooling theories of the time, billions of people should be dead by now owing to cooling-linked crop failures and starvation.

 

“If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000,†claimed ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California in 1970. “This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.†Of course, 2000 came and went, and the world did not get 11 degrees colder. No ice age arrived, either.

 

In 1971, another global-cooling alarmist, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich, who is perhaps best known for his 1968 book The Population Bomb, made similarly wild forecasts for the end of the millennium in a speech at the British Institute for Biology. “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,†he claimed. “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 and give ten to one that the life of the average Briton would be of distinctly lower quality than it is today.â€

 

Of course, England still exists, and its population was doing much better in 2000 than when Ehrlich made his kooky claims. But long before 2000, Ehrlich had abandoned global-cooling alarmism in favor of warning that the Earth faced catastrophic global warming. Now he is warning that humans may soon be forced to resort to cannibalism.

 

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/18888-embarrassing-predictions-haunt-the-global-warming-industry

[baa99]

I lived through those times and I remember NO warnings about global cooling. I was very interested in science and regularly reading Scientific American, Science Digest, etc. There were warnings about a nuclear winter after a nuke war.

[Specialist]

The Nuclear Winter hysteria was ca. 1982. The original study was debunked very thoroughly when the Russians pointed out that Turco, Toon et al had not considered atmospheric scavenging by lake effect snow. The problem was that Turco, Toon et al calibrated their models against Martian data, and Mars doesn't have lake effect snow, because it doesn't have lakes (or oceans) DUH!

 

There's also the annoying fact that the Thera explosion didn't glaciate the planet, despite having put a LOT more debris into the atmosphere than the Nuclear Winter scenarios envisioned.

 

There's also 1800-And-Froze-To-Death, The Year With No Summer.

 

What's REALLY hilarious: the driver for The Coming Ice Age (I do remember the hysteria) was supposed to be uncontrolled release of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, and the proposed solution was to put carbon emissions under strict controls. Funny, that's exactly what they're now proposing for Global Warming...

 

[Coss]

I lived through those times and I remember NO warnings about global cooling. I was very interested in science and regularly reading Scientific American, Science Digest, etc. There were warnings about a nuclear winter after a nuke war.

 

Well, in the most gentlemanly way, I have to disagree, all I was hearing from the media and science community was the likelihood of an ice age in as little as 11 years.

[Guest]

We will be hit by a meteor that will wipe us long before so called climate change would ever become a worry, humankind would have adapted in the meanwhile in anycase. There are hundreds on the way right now, and only a matter of time before one hits us ....

[Flashermac]

If one smacks into the ocean, it would make one hell of a tsunami.

[Dexi]

Depends how big it is - if its only the size of a golf ball then not too bad.

[Flashermac]

I lived through those times and I remember NO warnings about global cooling. I was very interested in science and regularly reading Scientific American, Science Digest, etc. There were warnings about a nuclear winter after a nuke war.

 

 

Oddly enough, I don't remember any either. Maybe my mind was on something else.

[Guest]

" If one smacks into the ocean, it would make one hell of a tsunami. "

 

If a meteorite 20 kilometre or so across smacks into land head on, it would make one hell of a dust cloud, enough to block out the sun for awhile until we all freeze to death .......

 

 

 

• 
   
  

[Coss]

We will be hit by a meteor that will wipe us long before so called climate change would ever become a worry, humankind would have adapted in the meanwhile in anycase. There are hundreds on the way right now, and only a matter of time before one hits us ....

 

I don't know the odds on a meteor hitting us soon, but it would make a mess, that's for sure.

 

You've hit on good point, humans would adapt, but I think what's at stake here is Al Gore's sliced white bread lifestyle.

 

If one smacks into the ocean, it would make one hell of a tsunami.

 

I just watched a movie 'Deep Impact' where just such an event happened, but it's OK, despite some considerable damage, Morgan Freeman led 'merica and the land of the free survived. Actually a reasonable good portrayal of what would happen. The space hijinx were bit far fetched though.

 

Oddly enough, I don't remember any either. Maybe my mind was on something else.

 

I'll try and dig out some articles, I don't intend to mislead, I'll report back.