The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers – by David Kirtley
June 7, 2013
One of the golden oldies of climate denial – “In the 70s, They predicted an Ice Age” – is ever new in denio-world. But then, in denio-world, you get points, not for being right, but for creating confusion. That is the goal and the game.
Above, one of my earliest videos, still kind of fun. I’m reposting this piece by David Kirtley from Greg Laden’s blog, hope nobody minds.
This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I’m reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I’m not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we used to be worried about global cooling. The meme, however, is not what it seems to be. And, David places the argument that Ice Age Fears were important and somehow obviate the science in context.
The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers
– by David Kirtley
A few days ago a facebook friend of mine posted the following image:
From the 1977 cover we can see that apparently a new ice age was supposed to arrive. Only 30 years later, according to the 2006 cover, global warming is supposed to be the problem. But the cover on the left isn’t from 1977. It actually is this Time cover from April 9, 2007:
As you can see, the cover title has nothing to do with an imminent ice age, it’s about global warming, as we might expect from a 2007 Time magazine.
The faked image illustrates one of the fake-skeptics’ favorite myths: The 1970s Ice Age Scare. It goes something like this:
- In the 1970s the scientists were all predicting global cooling and a future ice age.
- The media served as the scientists’ lapdog parroting the alarming news.
- The ice age never came—the scientists were dead wrong.
- Now those same scientists are predicting global warming (or is it “climate change” now?)
The entire purpose of this myth is to suggest that scientists can’t be trusted, that they will say/claim/predict whatever to get their names in the newspapers, and that the media falls for it all the time. They were wrong about ice ages in the 1970s, they are wrong now about global warming.
I searched around on Time’s website and looked through all of the covers from the 1970s. I was shocked (shocked!) to find not a single cover with the promise of an in-depth, special report on the Coming Ice Age. What about this cover from December 1973 with Archie Bunker shivering in his chair entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the Energy Crisis. Maybe this cover from January 1977, again entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the weather. How about this one from December 1979, “The Cooling of America”? Again with the Energy Crisis.
Now, there really were news articles in the 1970s about scientists predicting a coming ice age. Time had a piece called “Another Ice Age?” in 1974. Time’s competition, Newsweek, joined in with “The Cooling World” in 1975. People have collected lists and lists of “Coming Ice Age” stories from newspapers, magazines, books, tv shows, etc. throughout the 1970s.
But if it was such a big news story why did it never make the cover of America’s flagship news magazine like the faked image implies? Perhaps there is more to the story.
In the 1970s there were a few developments in climate science:
- Scientists were finding answers to the puzzle of what caused ice ages in the past: variations in earth’s orbit.
- Scientists were gathering data from around the world to come up with global average temperatures, and they found that temperatures had been cooling since about the 1940s.
- Scientists were realizing that some of this cooling was due to increasing air pollution (soot and aerosols, tiny particles suspended in the air) which was decreasing the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere.
- Scientists were also quantifying the “greenhouse effect” of another part of our increasing pollution: carbon dioxide (CO2), which should cause the climate to warm.
The realization that very long cycles in earth’s orbit could cause the waxing and waning of ice ages, coupled with the fact that our soot and aerosols were already causing cooling, led some scientists to conclude that we may be headed for another ice age. Exactly when was still a little unclear. However, the warming effects of CO2 had been known for over a century, and new research in the 1970s was showing that CO2 warming would more than compensate for the cooling caused by aerosols, resulting in net warming.
This, in a very brief nutshell, was the state of climate science in the 1970s. And so the media of the time published many stories about a coming ice age, which made for timely reading during some very cold winters. But many news stories also mentioned that other important detail about CO2: that our climate might soon change due to global warming. In 1976 Time published “The World’s Climate: Unpredictable” which is a very good summary of the then current scientific thinking: some scientists emphasized aerosols and cooling, some scientists emphasized CO2 and warming. There was no consensus either way. Many other 1970s articles which mention a Coming Ice Age also mention the possibility of increased warming due to CO2. For instance,here, here and here.
Fake-skeptics read these stories and only focus on the Coming Ice Age angle, and they enlarge the importance of those scientists who focused on that angle. They totally ignore the rest of the picture of 1970s climate science: that increasing CO2 would cause global warming.
The purpose of the image of the two Time magazine covers, and of the Coming Ice Age Myth, is not to show the real history of climate science, but to obscure that history and to cause confusion. It seems to be working. Because today, when there really is a consensus about climate science and 97% of climatologists agree that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is leading to climate change, only 45% of the public know about that consensus. The other 55% must think we’re still in the 1970s when scientists were still debating the issue. Seems newsworthy to me, maybe Time will run another cover story on it.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
June 25, 2013 at 7:29 pm
Splendid insult by Omnologos –
“And you would shut up now if you had any acquaintance with wisdom.”
Excellent!!!
Please continue.
🙂
June 26, 2013 at 4:58 pm
i wouldn’t classify that as an insult, it was more like a reaction to obdurate, unjustified and wisdom-less statements
But thanks 😉
June 26, 2013 at 6:18 pm
There was no reason to continue.
He lied about a global cooling consensus.
Ignored evident presented to the contrary. (More warming articles then cooling in the peer-review).
He quote mines Mitchell form “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” a peered-reviewed paper that show the opposite of a cooling consensus.
He then fabricates this: “As for further cooling (forecasts) once again Mitchell had no indication things were going to turn around.”
Then he ignored evident presented to the contrary about Mitchell.
He then claims that his view is not of the typical Fake-skeptic view on global Cooling Consensus.
But from his own web site contradict his view. Ex.
“Why? Because it is all too clear that those scares cannot be real, since they have already been mentioned verbatim in all their dramatic effect, but about Global Cooling. …
… There was a global cooling consensus among scientists, at least up to 1974. And it went on to appear in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times and many more media outlets around the world, at least up to 1976.”
A classic fake skeptics’ web page as stated in the main post.
Really nothing to talk about other than was he lying to us or lying to himself.
Was there anything of substance you like to know about the period?
June 26, 2013 at 6:50 pm
your fantasies are noted
you accused me of having spoken of an Ice Age consensus
I have posted opposite evidence dated many years ago
you have zero knowledge of any truth
June 26, 2013 at 8:21 pm
“There was no reason to continue.” I was right!
Me: “Looks like you’re supporting the Ice age myth. By obfuscating Ice age as global cooling with the sane end result.” Which you are still doing on your web site.
Obfuscate-> formal: to make (something) more difficult to understand. Politicians keep obfuscating the issues.
Did you not read your own web site? Or comprehend it? What are you implying on your web site?
Did you retract it and I missed it? Do you not see the contradiction?
The questions are rhetorical no reason to continue. The end
June 26, 2013 at 8:48 pm
if you tell me where you’ve last seen your brains I’ll help you get them back as whatever’s left is clearly not functioning.
You’ve created this Ice Age=Global cooling. monster, you play with it. I’ve always made the obvious distinction, you can’t. Not my fault by a long shot.
March 22, 2015 at 6:05 pm
Anthropogenic climate change passenger ,
Omnologos never gives up. I have argued with him many time over on Goddard’s blog ( until I got banned for the third time for pointing out his irrational arguments).
Even an issue such as this , which is completely cut and dried, he will argue by evasion and obstinance. He is a smart man though, and I have learned a lot from having to research assertions he has made that appeared to be based on accurate science, until I really understood the issue.
March 23, 2015 at 11:06 am
Too bad you haven’t learned yet to tell claims of a conspiracy from observations of what a warped mind set brings -namely, the ability to spot global warming in everything
November 15, 2013 at 7:29 am
[…] The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers You can keep denying the scientific facts all you want but at least try to stop saying untrue things like claiming ANY published climate scientists ever said anything about an ice age in the scientific literature in the 1970's. It just didn't happen, that's not a matter of opinion, that is just fact. […]
December 15, 2013 at 7:17 am
Poor deluded fool. I was young and impressionable in the 1970s. I clearly remember a World magazine (national geographics for kid). Scaring me silly about an ice age before I got to be 40 years old. Don’t drink the Kool aid. Think for yourself. No global cooling ( and yes there was a consensus). No global warming either. Believe me now or remember this later after you are bloated on Koop aid.
December 15, 2013 at 6:19 pm
take it you did not watch the video.
December 16, 2013 at 2:12 pm
Really looking at your Facebook page it looks like you were not even born during that time. But anyhow apparently you must be drinking alcoholic Kool-Aid. If not then please list the peer-reviewed scientific articles out of the 1970s that point to an imminent ice age to support your false statement that there was consensus. Too bad you didn’t take any sciences in your computer science major. Apparently no critical thinking skills either.
Keep it simple just use the journals Nature, AAAS (Sciene), American meteorological Society, and the (proceedings form) National Academy of Sciences. By the way Fox news does count.
If you are confused about what makes a scientific journal is it is not Time magazine, National Geographic magazine, or any other type of newsmagazines.
November 12, 2014 at 7:42 am
Way to pull out the photoshopped Time cover when you probably knew damn well Time also ran cover stories on the Ice Age Scare:
November 12, 2014 at 9:35 am
November 12, 2014 at 10:17 am
If you read the article, it is about the energy crisis. (Not Ice Age).
try thinking for yourself and read it.
November 12, 2014 at 10:58 am
This topic is about the energy crisis not a cooling climate.
Think for yourself and read the article.
November 12, 2014 at 5:49 pm
You must have missed this:
“I searched around on Time’s website and looked through all of the covers from the 1970s. I was shocked (shocked!) to find not a single cover with the promise of an in-depth, special report on the Coming Ice Age. What about this cover from December 1973 with Archie Bunker shivering in his chair entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the Energy Crisis. Maybe this cover from January 1977, again entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the weather. How about this one from December 1979, “The Cooling of America”? Again with the Energy Crisis.”
Your cover is the last one I mentioned in that paragraph.
February 28, 2016 at 9:35 pm
Well then you didn’t look very hard. I always view people who have an special interest agenda (or support one), with suspicion.
Magazines that published “earth cooling” or warning of “potential ice age” articles
in the 1970s included: Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Scientific American, Science News, and about 20 others. Furthermore, about 200 to 300 or more daily newspapers and scientific publications also published articles, information, and studies on the subject. The consensus at that time was clear.
Much of it was peer reviewed scientific research by NOAA, NASA, and other prestigious scientific bodies. The data at the time of course matched what they were saying. We are in fact not “warming” even at present. We have had record ice, snow, blizzards, and freeze in the U.S. and much of the world (including Antarctica)
in the last several years. In the last several years, the Arctic Ice Cap has made a recovery. Below is just some of what I could find in 10 minutes:
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=798:icac-science-advisor-prepare-for-cooling-not-warming&catid=1:latest
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/09/11/global-cooling-arctic-ice-54817/
31,000+ Scientists, -many of whom are PhD climatologists, geologists, atmospheric researchers etc., including many from NASA, and NOAA, have signed a petition, and believe without any doubt that the concept of Global Warming is a threat to our world, and as being manmade, is false, and fraudulent. There is no conclusive evidence. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to develop clean energy sources and cut emissions where possible. You are well aware of the petition and like others would/will surely attempt to “debunk or discredit” it.
Last year, and this year, (and in 2013) there was record cold and record snow storms, blizzards all over the world. Do you remember back east last year? They had a record ice storm/freeze. This year, record snowfall in New York and many other eastern states. Alaska and Canada, -some of the coldest temperatures on record.
Liberals, corrupt special interests, and brainwashed fools will attempt to debunk this information, but the science is clear and doesn’t lie. It suggests that we are very likely heading into a cooling period. I know that doesn’t fit the U.N. Globalist Agenda 21 plan, but they will purposely every few decades go back and forth on their scare tactics in order to gain ever increasing control over sovereign states and attempt to tax them with their fabricated cap and trade system (among other techniques). People cry: Oh it’s the criminal oil companies, but in fact oil is one resource that is drastically necessary to shift to clean energy technology and to develop and expand new ones. The same is true of coal to a lesser extent, but we saw how Obama treats that industry. Once clean energy infrastructure is built up, we can minimize our need for fossil fuels.
The “Collectivists” also want to continue to “privatize” land and resources in sovereign nations. It doesn’t take a genius to do the research. I began on the side of Global Warming, was a California Democrat, and could have been characterized as a moderate Liberal. I voted for Obama in 2008.
Time magazine alone between 1970 and 1980 published no less than 4 articles and a few magazine covers, warning of the earth cooling.
http://www.petitionproject.org/
This was an article from Newsweek magazine in 1975:
Click to access newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20060812025725/http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,944914,00.html
http://www.johnlocke.org/newsletters/research/2013-03-07-8u34q61jqrcsdf5b6e4euoevb5-enviro-update.html
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/16/climatologist-dr-judith-curry-warns-of-decades-of-global-cooling-the-current-cool-phase-will-continue-until-the-2030s/
http://isthereglobalcooling.com/
http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/story-the_petition_project
http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-cooling-is-here/10783
http://icecap.us/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/17/paul-driessen-earth-may-be-cooling-no-warming/?page=all
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nat-geog-1976-11.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/#f01ef791690d
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
http://www.nature.com/news/us-science-agency-refuses-request-for-climate-records-1.18660
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2053842/Scientists-sign-petition-denying-man-made-global-warming.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/05/21/the-greening-of-gores-bank-account/#76192d96504f
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/07/todays-climate-fraud-from-the-union-of-concerned-scientists/
http://www.politisite.com/2014/03/01/former-greenpeace-co-founder-pokes-holes-in-climate-change-agenda/
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/09/15/un-ipcc-report-leaked-to-uk-daily-mail-ipcc-scientists-accept-their-forecast-computers-may-have-exaggerated-the-effect-of-increased-carbon-emissions-on-world-temperatures-and-not-taken-en/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/05/31/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/#18f4d8401281
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/04/26/former-nasa-scientist-global-warming-is-nonsense/
http://reason.com/eod
https://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/insanely-ridiculous-predictions-of-doom-and-destruction-from-the-first-earth-day-1970-that-never-happened/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=record+ice+storm+east+coast
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=the+earth+is+actually+cooling&safe=off&start=10
====================================================
February 28, 2016 at 9:37 pm
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/1967-43-years-of-global-cooling/
February 29, 2016 at 12:36 pm
WHOA! A new denier troll has appeared in all his glory.—-jcheckler.
Another one who has nothing better to do than flip through his “AGW Denier’s Manual” and pick oput the dame old tired and discredited horseshit that we’ve been hearing for years—-you know, that stuff that will become truth if it’s repeated enough times?
I am for one am SO excited that he he is doing this…….ZZZZZZzzzzz,,,,,,,!!!!!
February 29, 2016 at 12:44 pm
Pardon the typo’s—-it’s hard to properly proofread a reply when one keeps falling asleep.