Keep a'Coolin', Baby

There's a persistent belief that scientists used to believe that an ice-age was imminent, and now they believe that the Earth is warming. The subtext is that scientists can't make their minds up and clearly can be ignored as hysterical lunatics. I've mentioned before that this is not true; there was no general belief amongst scientists in the seventies that the Earth was cooling. In that piece I mentioned a round up of texts from the time published on the web as "Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No."

There's now a newer review of the literature out. What's their conclusion?

The team’s survey of major journal papers published between 1965 and 1979 found that only seven articles predicted that global average temperature would continue to cool. During the same period, 44 journal papers indicated that the average temperature would rise and 20 were neutral or made no climate predictions. The findings were “a surprise to us,” Peterson says. For decades the “skeptics had repeated their argument so often and so strongly that we misremembered the tenor of the times.”

Their report is published in in the September Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and there is a write-up of the paper in Science News: Cooling climate ‘consensus’ of 1970s never was.

Soylent Green (1973)

I saw Soylent Green tonight – odd that I've never seen it before. I thought I had; it may just be that everyone references it so often (and shouts the last lines so often) that it's become part of the culture. However, it's worth actually watching rather than just assuming , as I did, that you have watched it. The Pastorale scene [1] is quite as moving as critics said it was and a good half of the forecasts seem to have come true. (Possibly this is due to Harry Harrison, the writer of the seed idea for the film, a story called Make Room, Make Room, rather than the Hollywood script writers).

In the miss column, we have to admit that the future has not been full of Eames furniture, Eero Saarinen chairs and acrylic hangings. Pity, because they are quite nice. The strange and venemous-looking foxtail-based ten-legged furry spidery decoration never came to pass either, for which I am truly thankful. Young women provided as part of the furniture of a furnished luxury apartment – well, I think that's close enough to true to count.

The oddest thing in the 'hit' column is hearing the characters come out with a brief buzzword-bingo explanation of Global Warming, and why it's a Bad Thing. It's odd because the film was released in 1973 and if you read conservative columns written in 2006 and 2007 attempting to refute Al Gore's various scenarios, there's one thing they always say. They always say, "We're not falling for this Global Warming crap. Why, in the seventies, so-called climate scientists were predicting a New Ice Age. The idiots knew nothing then and know nothing now. Ha ha ha." Actually, they sound more stilted and hysterical than that, but that's roughly what they say.

If you read a column in the future that says scientists in the seventies predicted an Ice Age, kidnap the columnist and force them to watch Soylent Green, with their eyes propped open like in A Clockwork Orange, so that they can see what people really thought in 1973.

Edited to Add: My lawyer says I can't advocate kidnapping people even if they are stupid, so don't. Instead, when some idiot tells you that scientists in the seventies predicted an Ice Age, not Global Warming, send them this article. It's called, "Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No." I think that title about covers it. You can send them a copy of Soylent Green as well if you like.

But watch Soylent Green anyway. Even if you don't like the message, you'll probably like the chairs.

[1] Google tells me that the scenes of the world before overpopulation are accompanied by extracts from Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and Edvard Greig's Peer Gynt suite as well as extracts from Beethoven's Pastorale.