http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
To clarify a little: I am interested in "Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's by scientists, in scientific journals?". That means articles in scientific journals and reputable books. I am not particularly interested in what appeared in the popular press or on TV and do not intend to discuss it here (but see context), since I do not regard these as reliable sources for scientific information.
Note that many of the oh-there-was-an-ice-age-predicted type articles tend to focus on non-science articles for their sources: newsweek, for example. This is cheating on their part. Newsweek isn't science, of course. If newsweek was quoting peer-reviewed journals, then they should go back to those.
We also need to know what we mean by "imminent". Since the question arises in the context of the greenhouse gas/climate change debate, "imminent" is a timescale comparable to greenhouse-type timescales: ie, the next century or so. See below for my take on long-term predictions.
Ed. - hyperlinks to scientific articles at site above
NAS Report from 1979 -
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf
In “Climate Science in a Tornado,” George F. Will has completely misrepresented the historical New York Times coverage of the “global cooling” issue. Despite Will’s claim that the New York Times was a “megaphone for the alarmed” during “1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling,” its coverage was actually nuanced and prescient.
On December 21, 1969, the New York Times ran a UPI wire story, “Scientists Caution on Changes In Climate as Result of Pollution,” which reported that scientists discussed the possible threat of manmade global warming at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, with calls for greater monitoring of the climate:
J.O. Fletcher, a physical scientist for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., said that “man had only a few decades to solve the problem of global warming caused by pollution.” Global warming could cause further melting of the polar ice caps and affect the earth’s climate.
On December 29, 1974, the New York Times ran the story, “Forecast for Forecasting: Cloudy.” This article is a long discussion of the state of climate forecasting, and has an extensive discussion of the process of global cooling due to aerosols, and the contrary impact of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and the great difficulty in developing valid and reliable climate forecasting models. The lead paragraph:
EDIT
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/02/28/174267/global-cooling-megaphone/?mobile=nc
he science of climate change is difficult and everyone agrees there are uncertainties and a contested point or two. But some points are asserted over and over again and aren’t really contested. They are just plain false. Yet no matter how often they are refuted they rise again from the dead, true zombie lies. One of the great things about writing on the internet is the ability to link to really excellent pieces and Darksyde over at DailyKos has just such a piece you owe it to yourself to read. It’s not short but not excessively long, either. Just long enough to get the job done. And the job? To put a stake through the heart of this undead right wing talking point:
“In the 70s, all the scientists were predicting a new ice age, so why should we listen to them now.” To hear the usual suspects tell it today, the earth science community was in a fenzied panic, claiming the ice was about the begin another long trek south. Like most zombie lies, this one is based on a few grains of truth, and a whole lotta whoppers:
Despite active efforts to answer these questions, the following pervasive myth arose: there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent. A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth’s basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. (Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Fleck, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus,Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)
If you want the details beneath the details the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that Darksyde links to above will give it to you, but the Darksyde piece is a shorter version and extremely lucid. It supplies the historical context and cites the evidence that there never was a consensus that cooling from anthropogenic sources was more likely than heating (the majority opinion always favored greenhouse effect heating over particulate effect cooling). Since then, advances in climate science and computer power have abundantly confirmed that view.
While not the main point of the piece, he also touches on a number of other issues, such as the causes of previous Ice Ages and the place of the Milankovitch cycle. To True Deniers, this won’t be convincing. They do not live in a Reality-Based World. But one thing is quite clear. The bogus claim amplified by the Right Wing Megaphone that there was an earlier scientific consensus that human activity would bring forth an Ice Age is a myth.
EDIT
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/11/24/the-1970s-ice-age-myth/
= new reply since forum marked as read
