What Happened to Global Cooling?

Here at CARE we have wondered what happened to the “global cooling” alarmists of the 1970’s. We questioned where they are today. We didn’t take the idea further than conversation. We had not yet done the research. But then, a copy of a book landed in our hands that brought an interesting—almost humorous—look to our query.

Read the following endorsement from a book’s back cover. As you read, think about what book it is from.

“The dramatic importance of climatic changes to the world’s future has been dangerously underestimated by many, often because we have been lulled by modern technology into thinking we have conquered nature. But this well-written book points out in clear language that the climatic threat could be as awesome as any we might face, and that massive world-wide actions to hedge against that threat deserve immediate consideration. At a minimum, public awareness of the possibilities must commence…”

You could well assume that this quote is from Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth. It fits doesn’t it? No, it is actually from the book jacket of a book from the 1970’s. The dangerous climatic changes to which it refers is cooling! The book is The Cooling by Lowell Pointe.

Curious, we looked further. We did a quick internet search on the book and its author. That led us to this interesting article written by Joseph Perkins, a former columnist at the San Diego Union Tribune. He’s done the research. Why duplicate his efforts? We share with you, his comments here. While it was written in 2004, the opening paragraph could have been written this week and the rest of the content remains relevant.

On a different note, the above quote is from Dr. Stephen H. Scheinder. The 1970’s book cover says he is Deputy Head, Climate Project, National Center for Atmospheric Research. With as wrong as they were on global cooling, you’d think he’d be serving hamburgers at a fast-food chain—hiding from all connections to the climate change alarmists. But no, he is still in the debate as a professor at Stanford University in the Department of Biological Studies. On his website, you can find a plethora of interesting resources. We believe you may find this article from Charles Krauthammer and Scheinder’s rebuttal to be most enlightening—especially due to their age.

We had fun with this and hope you do! Do you have insights as to the current work of former global cooling alarmists? Please share them with us and, therefore, the world.

Global Warming or Global Cooling?

Joseph Perkins

Wednesday January 21, 2004

A cold wave swept through the nation’s northeast this week, leaving sub-zero temperatures in the wake, from Bangor to Boston, Syracuse to Scranton.

"It hasn’t been this cold in a couple of decades, Mike Jackson, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told The Boston Globe. The curious thing is, not one scientist, not one environmentalist has claimed that the cold snap is prima facie evidence of global "cooling." Not one Chicken Little lawmaker on Capitol Hill, not one United Nations official has insisted that human activity is somehow causing Mother Earth to get the chills.

Yet, if New England experiences a heat wave any time this year, if the mercury rises to levels unseen in the past 10 or 15 or 25 years, you can be almost certain the unusual weather will be attributed to global warming.

Yes, I know the whole climate thing is complex. I know you have to look at the entire picture, and not just a few select pixels. But that’s what the global warming alarmists do.

Indeed, when Europe experienced a rather balmy summer last year, when a supposed 20,000 people suffered heat-related deaths, global warming was identified as the culprit. Yet, no one blamed global cooling for the recent cold spell that swept across Europe, which, according to the BBC News, killed more than 2,500 people in England and Wales last month. Nor has anyone suggested that human activity caused the cold wave that sent the mercury plunging in India, which has claimed the lives of more than 500 people there so far this winter.

The point is that we are always witnessing extremes in weather.

And if it is facile to suggest that the frigid weather in New England, in the United Kingdom and in India portend a new Ice Age, it is absurd to insist that every heat wave and every unusually warm summer presages planetary meltdown.

Three decades ago, climate hysterics issued dire warnings about global cooling — that’s right — much as they are forebodingly warning today of global warming.

"The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind," wrote Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, in a 1975 article for the National Wildlife Federation’s journal, International Wildlife.

Twenty-nine years later, scientists are predicting that global warming spells the wholesale death and misery of more than a million animal and plant species, as recent article in the journal Nature forecasts.

"At this point, the world’s climatologists are agreed: ... Once the freeze starts, it will be too late," wrote Douglas Colligan, in a 1975 article for Science Digest.

Today, claims the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s climatologists are agreed that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are unnaturally high. And that the United States and other industrialized nations must accede to Draconian cuts in emissions, as laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 U.N. global warming treaty, before it’s too late.

"The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations," wrote Lowell Pointe, in his 1976 book The Cooling. "It has already made food and fuel more precious, thus increasing the price of everything we buy. If it continues, and no strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos and probably world war, and this will all come by the year 2000.

"Today, the World Health Organization claims that global warming is killing about 150,000 people a year. And it predicts the yearly death toll will double in the next 30 years, owing to widespread malnutrition and disease.

The American people have been duped before by the false prophets of cataclysmic climate change, who assured them that a new ice age was in the offing.

They should not be fooled again by those false prophets, who are now admonishing them that every time they gas up their car or SUV, every time they switch on their television or power up the computer, they are bringing the planet that much closer to a climatory meltdown.