Steerpike
VIP Member
- Dec 17, 2007
- 1,847
- 182
Please, the scientists were not saying that we were heading into a cooling period in the 1970s. This myth was started by an article that the National Acacemies of Science produced in 1975. It was severly misinterpreted and misread by a Newsweek science writer. Here is a complete report on that issue;
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html
This is the problem with relying on secondary sources and not going to the original science, which is the only way to evaluate this sort of thing.
See for example Quaternary Research, 2, 261- 9, 1972: "The end of the present interglacial," an entire volume of scientific research devoted to looking at the science around the current interglacial period. You will find papers there that do in fact indicate that we're coming out of the current interglacial. Of course, we're talking geologic time periods here, not an end to the interglacial in a few decades.
See also Nature, 1974, v252 p 216-8, which predicts we're leaving the interglacial period and entering a new ice age.
Also look at the book Climatic Change, edited by John Gribbin, 1978, which talks about us having moved into the end period of the current interglacial. Again we're talking geologic timescales.
B. J. Mason, QJRMS, 1976, p 473 (Symons Memorial Lecture) predicted a 1 in 5 chance we were moving into a prolonged cold period, though not into a glacial in the near future.
H. Flohn, Quaternary Research, 4, 385-404, 1974, "Background of a geophysical model of the initiation of the next glaciation," in which it is noted that the end of the current interglacial is 'undoubtedly near.'
And of course a key point to keep in mind is we don't have any certainty on the issue because of the nature of the problem.
But to say that scientists were not saying we were moving into a cooling period in the 1970s is demonstrably false. There were certainly scientists saying just that.