It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of 'geologists.' Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming -- it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age. The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be 'wiped out' or lower crop yields would mean 'billions will die.' Just as the weather has changed over time, so has the reporting -- blowing hot or cold with short-term changes in temperature. Following the ice age threats from the late 1800s, fears of an imminent and icy catastrophe were compounded in the 1920s by Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan and an obsession with the news of his polar expedition. As the Times put it on Feb. 24, 1895, 'Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.'
Those concerns lasted well into the late 1920s. But when the earth's surface warmed less than half a degree, newspapers and magazines responded with stories about the new threat. Once again the Times was out in front, cautioning 'the earth is steadily growing warmer.' After a while, that second phase of climate cautions began to fade. By 1954, Fortune magazine was warming to another cooling trend and ran an article titled 'Climate – the Heat May Be Off.' As the United States and the old Soviet Union faced off, the media joined them with reports of a more dangerous Cold War of Man vs. Nature. The New York Times ran warming stories into the late 1950s, but it too came around to the new fears. Just three decades ago, in 1975, the paper reported: 'A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.'"
They have graphic portrayals of newspaper covers and magazine covers. Here's Science News, March 1, 1975, with Manhattan being enveloped by a glacier. "The future looked cold and ominous with this science depiction from March 1, 1975." Then TIME Magazine, June 24, 1974, story showed how arctic snow and ice had grown from 1968 to 1974. I don't know if it's the cover, might just be the story, but it had a graphic here of the expanding North Pole. New York Times timeline. September 18th, 1924, "MacMillan reports signs of new ice age." March 27, 1933, "America in longest warm spell since 1776." "Temperature line records a 25-year rise." Now, from 1924, we're talking about a new ice age and nine years later they're warning us of global warming in the New York Times, from '33 to 1975, "Scientists ponder why world's climate is changing. A major cooling widely considered to be inevitable. Global cooling was all the rage, all the magazines and newspapers back in '75 through '79. December 27, 2005, 'Past hot times hold few reasons to relax about new warming.
These days "global warming" is a very powerful and popular tool of a left leaning political persuasion.
After all, who would dare question something so noble as "save the planet"?
I see more evidence of propaganda than global disaster.