- Moderator
- #41
The last time they had a tornado outbreak like this was in the 70's. At that time NOAA predicted an ice age.
What a dumb fuck. That never happened.
Did scientists predict an impending ice age in the 1970s?
In the thirty years leading up to the 1970s, available temperature recordings suggested that there was a cooling trend. As a result some scientists suggested that the current inter-glacial period could rapidly draw to a close, which might result in the Earth plunging into a new ice age over the next few centuries. This idea could have been reinforced by the knowledge that the smog that climatologists call aerosols emitted by human activities into the atmosphere also caused cooling. In fact, as temperature recording has improved in coverage, its become apparent that the cooling trend was most pronounced in northern land areas and that global temperature trends were in fact relatively steady during the period prior to 1970.
At the same time as some scientists were suggesting we might be facing another ice age, a greater number published contradicting studies. Their papers showed that the growing amount of greenhouse gasses that humans were putting into the atmosphere would cause much greater warming warming that would a much greater influence on global temperature than any possible natural or human-caused cooling effects.
By 1980 the predictions about ice ages had ceased, due to the overwhelming evidence contained in an increasing number of reports that warned of global warming. Unfortunately, the small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.
Another Ice Age? - TIME