The recent acknowledgement by global warming
climate scientists that temperatures worldwide have dropped over the last 20 years reminds me of the previous predictions of devastating climate change: Global cooling.
In 1969 we used to debate about what to do about the apparent cooling trend in the atmosphere, a trend (if I remember correctly) attributed to the use of fossil fuels, which polluted the air, which blocked sunlight, which was continuing unabated, and which would lead to a worldwide winter that few humans would survive. Our only hope back then was that we were running out of fossil fuels, so there was a slim chance that we would run out of gas and oil in time
to save the planet. Of course, there was also a chance that an exchange of nuclear warheads between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would lead us to a nuclear winter.
The concern over the certainty of our approaching demise became so wide-spread that even Time magazine picked up on in a few years later.
I don’t recall how the global winter
hysteria died out (going with a whimper, and not a bang, as these things usually do). It turns out we still have massive fossil fuel reserves, and the U.S.S.R. is no longer.
Somewhere along the way, global warming
became the new thing. It made guest appearances in movie plots for decades before going mainstream. Even NASA supported the notion of global warming
until very recently. (One mustn’t read too much into the juxtaposition of the fact that the sitting President stands to make billions of dollars if enough global warming
hysteria can be created, and the fact that NASA is starved for funds.)
Like global winter
before it, global warming
is reverting to the mean. At first, it attempted to survive by re-inventing itself as climate change,
but even that seems to have gone by the wayside lately for those who are paying attention.
It makes you wonder how much longer before we’ll again be seeing allusions to the threat of global cooling?
