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Have you ever read the article Global Cooling?

The World of cooling (Blast From The Past Newsweek article archived warning "global cooling")
Newsweek ^ | April 28, 1975

Posted on 10/02/2003 10:21:17 PDT presidio9

There are ominous signs that the Earth's climate began 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 decline in food production could start very soon, perhaps only 10 years. The regions destined to feel its effects are the major wheat producing countries of Canada and the USSR in the North, with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh , Indochina and Indonesia - where the culture depends on the seasonal rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard to keep with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, suffered a total loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tonnes per year. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused worth half a billion dollars in damage in 13 U.S. states.

For scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the signs of fundamental changes in the weather in the world. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If climate change is as profound as some pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a global scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, because the global trends of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the current century.

A survey conducted last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden and significant increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover during winter 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunlight reaching the ground in the continental United States fell 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be very misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin noted that the average temperature of Earth during the great ice ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about one sixth of the way to the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the old "little ice" conditions that brought winters in much of Europe and North America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice when ice boats sail on the Hudson River almost as far south of New York City.

Anything that causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climate change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Acad.