Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming

“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.’

This is the first paragraph of…

“Fire and Ice”

By R. Warren Anderson
Research Analyst
Dan Gainor
The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow

Please view this piece. Great read! It’s long, so I suggest printing the pdf. version and reading it at you leisure.