“During the lifetime of our grandchildren, arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our planet into a polar desert,” declares Leonard Nimoy, the host of the docuseries In Search of…, the episode of which called The Coming Ice Age aired in 1978. It is stated in the film that in 1977 the United States was struck with the worst winter in a century and the scientists interviewed by the production team explain that this means the ice age is getting closer and people should prepare.
Here we present the shortened version of the film for a quick review. Full episode can be found online, e.g. here.
What we want to point out here is that this is what the climate discussion looked like 50 years ago. Instead of apocalyptic predictions about global warming, there was fear of cooling, claimed to arrive with similarly harsh consequences. In other words – instead of a bit colder conditions 50 years ago, we now experience warmer conditions, but the message of the coming climate apocalypse remains the same.
Even if this particular film does not exactly claim humans are to blame for all the ice that was then thought to come down on them, there were scientists back then who said exactly that. For example, in April 1970, The Boston Globe newspaper published an article entitled “Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century”. James P. Lodge Jr., also called a pollution expert in the article, said that air pollution could obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century. He also linked this frightening prospect to continued population growth and the Earth's continued consumption of resources at the rate prevalent at the time.
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