As you've no doubt heard, the threat of Natural Global Colding is already showing signs of occurring, like it snowing in May in the midwest — in the middle of a drought, no less — and now the Oklahoma tornadoes being extra-violent because of the extra-cold wind sheer. The following Newsweek article was written before the current rage of twisters, so the author was, indeed, prescient in what he says about them and how, unlike global warming, global colding actually will cause tornadoes and hurricanes to increase in both number and intensity, as his numbers verify.
Pic: This week's issue of Time also covers the subject in depth
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns may have begun 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 drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.
The evidence is support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.
...
Trend: To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. The scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
So that's about as sobering as it gets, folks. Ten years really isn't a very long time.
I originally spotted this alarming article on a very cool AGW site called Real Science.
The original article is here.
Newsweek.
April 28.
1975.
