Can anybody name one scientist or scientific organization that predicted an ice age in the 70's?

Question

I keep hearing that scientists in the 1970's predicted an ice age and now these same scientists are predicting global warming. Can anybody name one scientist that said this. The thing from 70's came from a newsweek article that actually misquoted a scientific journal. Scientists were not predicting an ice age, Newsweek did.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

Answer 1

30 years ago it was understood that we were in an inter-glacial period of a long running ice age. This has not changed, so from trend analysis alone we would expect a cooling or a return to glaciers in the next 5000 to 10000 years. The most recent icesheets retreated 12-15 thousand years ago. For the last few million years this has happened several times and the warming period lasted 15-20 thousand years between ice sheet advances. The precise mechanism of this periodic warming and cooling is not known but theories range from the sun, to the weathering of Himalayas.

What is different now is that we have precise mesurements of carbon in the atmosphere (for the last few million years). At no time in this long running ice age has there been as much carbon in the atmosphere and as much being added. We know that carbon in the form of CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps the sun's heat. The science we have suggests that continuing this output of carbon into the atmosphere will continue to warm the planet. Perhaps interupting the cooling and a return to glaciation in the long run (the next few thousand years), but most definetely melting much of the remaining ice and raising sea levels in the short run (short run being the next 100-150 years).

This short run is very bad for most of the worlds population and the science we have suggests we can mitagate or reverse this short run course by reducing CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Doing so is relatively simple (conservation, cleaner and reduced fossil fuel use, nuclear and alterntive energy, trees and other 'carbon sinks')

Answer 2

Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the self-proclaimed scourge of climate alarmists. Isaac Asimov—saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production. "After all, Ice Ages were common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the exception." In the 1970's, there was a book in the popular press, a few articles in popular magazines, and a small amount of scientific speculation based on the recently discovered glacial cycles and the recent slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking the sunlight. No daily headlines. No avalanche of scientific articles. No United Nations treaties and commissions. No G8 summits on the dangers. Why do we keep thinking we are smarter than we are the earth has been around for a very long time and we have no long term history of weather patterns.

Answer 3

Debunked..

I do know that premise was a cover story of Time Magazine
Another Ice Age?
Monday, Jun. 24, 1974



"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."

and this reason also offered:

"Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A.
Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a
result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating
the surface of the earth."

"Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip
the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age
within only a few hundred years"