Time Cover Fake; 1970’s Global Cooling Fears Not

_{Barry Arrington

April 13, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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It turns out the Time magazine cover “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age” is a photoshopped fake. However, while the cover is a fake, Time was in fact printing stories about fears of global cooling in the 70’s. See here. And so was Newsweek. See here. And the National Science Board. See here. And Science. See here. And several other sources summarized here. We regret the error of putting the fake Time cover up. However, the point we were trying to make remains valid.

Comments

Whether the earth is cooling or warming, human kind is the cause, and it's catastrophically destructive -- so much so that we must take immediate action to quell the engines of capitalism before we find that humans have caused irreparable damage to mother earth. We must enact policies to discourage the use of fossil fuels by the citizenry and drive up their price. We must enact policies to bring population growth under control. We must funnel billions of dollars into green energy promotion. These are not things which can be overlooked, they must be done now so that the planet will not suffer for our opulence and greed. And we need to do this on a global level under the purview of a world-wide governing authority. This isn't something that we can debate endlessly; we must act now. We've operated long enough under the failed experiment of individual liberty and economic freedom, and its costing us our planet. If Earth is to survive, it's time to reengineer the structure of government and economy on a world scale, at least where the West is concerned.material.infantacy_{April 14, 2012
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Neil, It was a bit before my time, but from my own survey of 1970's publications (which I described in the now deleted thread), I would say it was more than merely a "what if" - there certainly were scientists concerned about the climate cooling (incidentally, most scientists today agree that there indeed was a cooling trend) but it was hardly a consensus that we were entering an ice age, or that global cooling was a greater danger than global warming. Years ago, after hearing so often that the "consensus" of scientists was that global cooling was the bigger threat, I looked through publications of the decade such as Scientific American, and Discover magazine, etc, out of curiosity and was surprised to find that I couldn't find stories on global cooling - but DID find the occasional story on global warming (not nearly as often as one would looking through the same publications during the past 30 years, but they did exist.) The best places to find such stories was in the mainstream media, where I found the Newsweek article from 1975, and a couple stories in Time. Although I found stories on global warming in those magazines as well. So, even at the height of global cooling concerns, I would say that scientific literature leaned very heavily towards global warming being a larger concern, while the more mainstream media was more split, but leaned slightly towards the global cooling side. I'm not sure why there was the disconnect, but it may have been merely because the global cooling idea was newer, and headlines about food shortages and "ice ages" are more eye catching than "the climate may become a couple degrees warmer over the next century".goodusername_{April 14, 2012
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H'mm: N/week article in linked list above:
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 . . .
Notice that appeal to massive evidence. Being speculative and being duly tentative in light of limitations of methods and results -- the underlying context of discussion [i.e. the Tennessee sci edu and controversies Amdt] --are quite different things, and it is the same failing that needs to be addressed today. KFkairosfocus_{April 14, 2012
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My recollection from the 70s, was that the "ice age" discussion was speculative, a kind of wondering "what if". I don't recall any actual prediction of a coming ice age. On the other hand, I do recall reports from the 60s, that human activity had significantly increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that couldn't be good even if there were no clear predictions of the potential risks at that time.Neil Rickert_{April 14, 2012
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Looks like the penguin cover is based on a 2007 Time cover
One of the early commenters on the earlier, now deleted post pointed that exact cover image out and was told that the 1977 penguin cover was one of the magazine's more famous and was asked if he lived in a cave. I guess we know now that he doesn't.Mike LaFontaine_{April 14, 2012
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Folks: Looks like the penguin cover is based on a 2007 Time cover here. KFkairosfocus_{April 14, 2012
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Ouch, thanks for the correction. KFkairosfocus_{April 13, 2012
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Toronto remembers nuclear winter in the '70s. So does Ottawa. And Saskatoon. We waited for things to get worse and they did. But only as worse as usual. Finally, we came to believe that if only we would do what Carl Sagan said, and avoid a nuclear explosion, things might be okay. We did avoid a nuclear explosion. But things were crappy anyway. It was cold. Finally, we concluded that winter is just a part of our climate. Like the elders said. See you on the ice.News_{April 13, 2012
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Thanks of correcting the record and acknowledging the error. That is a sign of the good scholarship that is exhibited here. The National Science Board report was interesting. While it does say that a cooling should be expected, it did offer teh possibility of warming. From page 55:
Judging from the past record of the interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now. However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path. For instance, widespread deforestation in recent centuries, especially in Europe and North America, together with increased atmospheric opacity due to man-made dust storms and industrial wastes should have increased the earth's reflectivity. At the same time, increasing concentration of industrial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should lead to a temperature increase by absorption of infrared radiation from the earth's surface. When the human factors are added to other natural factors as volcanic eruptions, changes in solar activity, and resonances within the hydro-atmosphere, their effect can only be estimated in terms of direction, not of amount.
It is interesting to see the warming narrative already making an appearance 40 years ago. That whole section of the report really seems to equivocate between the so-called evidence for cooling and the also so-called evidence for warming. They really want to have it both ways at the same time.Mike LaFontaine_{April 13, 2012
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I remember as a kid in Toronto seeing in our school library forever a article about the coming ice age. Now the coming hot age! These people are useless and i don't just mean the journalists covering these subjects. They can't get their facts straight or would recognize the facts. Thats why destroying the error of evolution really shouldn't be that hard. If it ain't true it couldn't possibly have weighty evidence behind it or any. A line of reasoning.Robert Byers_{April 13, 2012
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