Global Cooling Retraction Heats up Climate Change Debate

CNS News ^ | 10.26.06 | Randy Hall

[Coleus]

Skeptics of man-made climate change claim that the debate over global warming is heating up following the retraction of a 31-year-old article in one of the nation's weekly news magazines that predicted "catastrophic" results and a "grim reality" would be caused by a phenomenon called global cooling.   On April 28, 1975, Newsweek ran a story entitled "The Cooling World," which stated that "the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend," but "if the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic."

"Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects," the article stated. "They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve."   However, "the longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality," the story said.  More than 31 years later, on Oct. 23, 2006, Newsweek Senior Editor Jerry Adler wrote in an article entitled "Remember Global Cooling?" that the 1975 story was "still being quoted regularly."

"In fact, the story wasn't 'wrong' in the journalistic sense of 'inaccurate,'" Adler said. "Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen -- even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov -- saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production.  "Astronomers have been warning for decades that life on Earth could be wiped out by a collision with a giant meteorite; it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean that journalists have been dupes or alarmists for reporting this news," he added. "Citizens can judge for themselves what constitutes a prudent response."  But Dan Gainor, director of the Business & Media Institute (BMI) - a group dedicated to challenging misconceptions in the media about free enterprise - said that Adler's theory was flawed. BMI is also a division of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of Cybercast News Service

"Citizens can't 'judge for themselves' if they are getting only one theory, whether it is global cooling or global warming," Gainor said. "Newsweek took 31 years to admit they were wrong last time, but their mantra remains: 'Trust us, maybe we'll be right this time.'"
According to the BMI report "Fire and Ice," journalists have been warning about climate change for 100 years, but they can't decide whether we face an ice age or global warming.
Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, quoted extensively from the BMI report during a Sept. 25 speech on the Senate floor.  "The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true," the Oklahoma Republican said. "We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation and the projected death of our oceans.

"None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future," Inhofe added. In his online article, Adler criticized Inhofe's speech.  "The implication he draws is that if you're not worried about being trampled by a stampede of woolly mammoths through downtown Chicago, you don't have to believe what the media is saying about global warming, either," the Newsweek editor said.  "Predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today," Adler noted, because scientists have better tools at their disposal now. However, Marc Morano, communications director for the Senate Environmental & Public Works Committee, told Cybercast News Service that the debate over man-made global warming is not as settled as Adler asserts.

"New NASA satellite temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years, contrary to 'global warming theory' and modeling," Morano said. "This new data may require a name change from 'global warming' to 'Northern Hemisphere warming.'" Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service that the news media are the reason global warming or cooling become such heated public debates.  "It's an unfortunate fact that people can make pretty outlandish hypotheses and emphasize the lurid portions of them, and the media picks them up," Michaels said, but "anybody who is reading the constant avalanche of 'the world is coming to an end' stories has got to be getting tired of it."  Morano said Newsweek's correction was "gratifying," though "Sen. Inhofe now eagerly awaits retractions from the mainstream media for their past 100 years of failed predictions of climate doom alternating between global cooling and warming scares."

"It took Newsweek 31 years to correct its mistakes on global cooling," Gainor noted. "If they want to recant their latest global warming stance and start the calendar today, that means the next correction will run on Oct. 23, 2037." Michaels agreed that someday, "We'll be reading that global warming was overblown, but we won't be reading that until there's another apocalypse to replace it."

[george76]

It is so confusing.

AL Gore said that suv's were the cause of global warming...now cooling ?

/s

[TigersEye]

With all of this modern research the only thing they can say for sure is "the planet gets warmer and then it gets cooler ... and then it gets warmer again." At the very least that was known for sure in the nineteenth century.

[Question_Assumptions]

Sweeping the inconvenient past under the rug. How nice.

[Jaysun]

It wouldn't be hard for me to swallow the idea of human-caused climate change as a Communist conspiracy. The economic repercussions of trying "to do something about it" would be so dire and unrelenting.

[festus]

And whether the world is getting colder or warmer we always have to do the same thing to prevent it.

Quit using oil and become communists.

Go figure.

[Echo Talon]

it has been COLD AS HECK up here in MN for about a month already if global warming is real tell it to hurry up!
we have a low of 34degrees tonight and its not even Halloween yet... it has already snowed a couple times(although it hasn't stuck around to long)

[jwalburg]

I remember my dire junior high science classes in the 70s warning about this, and overpopulation, and pollution so thick we'd have to wear gas masks to go outside. They were fear-mongers then; they are fear-mongers now, and all they do is warn against Bush's "fear-mongering." They have been the experts of fear peddling for 40 years.

[aligncare]

Yes, folks. This year's lack of a significant hurricane season, and the early snow and extreme cold hitting parts of the US, is further proof of the Bush administration's callous inattention to global warming and to the SUV's devastating effects on weather...Film at eleven.

[Daaave]

Republican Sen. James Inhofe

"My recent speeches detailing the embarrassing 100 year history of the media's relentless climate hype and its flip flopping between global cooling and warming scares must have struck a nerve in the old gray lady of the New York Times....A significant portion of my 50 minute Senate floor speech on September 25th was devoted to the New York Times history of swinging between promoting fears of a coming ice age to promoting fears of global warming."

"Now, fast forward to August 19, 2000, the New York Times was so eager to promote fears of the Arctic melting that it cheapened itself with a comical article declaring 'The North Pole is Melting.' The Times reporter, John Noble Wilford, noted that tourists visiting the North Pole saw open water and declared that 'The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water, was more than 50 million years ago.'

"Wow. Pretty convincing stuff -- that is until the Times was forced to retract the story 10 days later and admit nothing unusual had occurred at the pole. No wonder today's Times editorial felt compelled to accuse me of 'a hysteria of doubt,' it was no doubt a clumsy attempt to distract from their climate reporting legacy of hysteria."

newsbusters.org/

[TBP]

First they told us we were facing an impending Ice Age, tehn they told us we ar eall going to burn up. they were wrong both times, but the whole thing was political, not scientific.

[Nathan Zachary]

"And whether the world is getting colder or warmer we always have to do the same thing to prevent it. Quit using oil and become communists. Go figure.

Can't we become Omish instead? At least they have heaters in their buggies.

[Nathan Zachary]

"it has been COLD AS HECK up here in MN for about a month already if global warming is real tell it to hurry up! we have a low of 34degrees tonight and its not even Halloween yet... it has already snowed a couple times(although it hasn't stuck around to long)"

Same as here in ND. Maybe the global cooling article 31 years ago was right??
/s

[Nathan Zachary]

"'The North Pole is Melting.' The Times reporter, John Noble Wilford, noted that tourists visiting the North Pole saw open water and declared that 'The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water, was more than 50 million years ago.'"

Dear NYT;

Could you please be so kind as to provide me with the name of your travel agent you use to visit the North pole? I've inquired everywhere, but can't sem to find any that have a tourist package to the north pole.
Nathan

Idiots.

[StACase]

http://www.arcticodysseys.com/l_north_pole.html

http://www.cruisenorway.com/northpole.html

[mutley]

That article from 1975 does indeed make the current global warming crowd (cult) seem just as ridiculous. Because it's the same exact situation.

[JoeGar]

If one Googles "ice age", he will be led to a discussion of ice ages by the Illinois State Museum which states, "If 'ice age' is used to refer to long, generally cool, intervals during which glaciers advance and retreat, we are still in one today. Our modern climate represents a very short, warm period between glacial advances."

[Echo Talon]

Same as here in ND. Maybe the global cooling article 31 years ago was right?? /s

brrrr.... not looking forward to winter...

[TigersEye]

Sen. Inhofe is a jewel. No wonder we don't hear much about him. He so succinctly deflates the balloons of liberal BS the MSM must avoid him like a vampire avoids a mirror.