Remember This??? Another Ice Age????
Time Magazine from June 1974……..
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the
waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the
Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is
at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite
weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had
suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered
year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable
expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that
sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of
cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa’s drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds
and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other droughtridden
areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds
have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the
same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the
winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is
pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air
masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest’s recent
rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.
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The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at
least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as
high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of
another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one
or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food
stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president
of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the
Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe
that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
In 1974 they reported that there wasn’t much time…… The ice age was coming……. We’re all DOOMED!!!!!!
Does this sound familiar????????
