Claim: A Time magazine cover from 1977 with the title “The Big Freeze” is an example of media fearmongering over  “global cooling” in the 1970s.
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Global cooling
text: article by David Rose, showing this same cover image, to support his claim that there was as much concern in the 1970s about a "looming 'ice age'" as there was now about global warming. After researching the authenticity of the magazine cover image, in July 2013, Bryan Walsh, a senior editor at "Time", confirmed that the image was a hoax, modified from a 2007 cover story image for "The Global Warming Survival Guide". Global cooling Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. Press

title: Global cooling
text: cooling which did not materialise, therefore there is no need to heed current scientific concerns about climate change. In a 1998 article promoting the Oregon Petition, Fred Singer argued that expert concerns about global warming should be dismissed on the basis that what he called "the same hysterical fears" had supposedly been expressed earlier about global cooling. Illustrating this argument, for several years an image has been circulated of a "Time" magazine cover, supposedly dated 1977, showing a penguin above a cover story title "How to Survive the Coming Ice Age". In March 2013, "The Mail on Sunday" published an

title: George Kukla
text: highlighted the dangers of global cooling in Science magazine and, to President Richard Nixon. The Nixon administration reacted swiftly to their letter, which described calamities such as killer frosts, lower food production and floods, to come. By February 1973, the State Department had established a Panel on the Present Interglacial, which advised Drs. Kukla and Matthews that it "was seized of the matter" and numerous other government agencies were soon included. Kukla was co-author of a chapter in the book "Natural Climate Variability on Decade to Century Time Scales" published by the National Research Council. Kukla believed all glacial periods

title: Global cooling
text: wrong about the near-term future" (though editor Jerry Adler stated that "the story wasn't 'wrong' in the journalistic sense of 'inaccurate.'") Academic analysis of the peer-reviewed studies published at that time shows that most papers examining aspects of climate during the 1970s were either neutral or showed a warming trend. In 1977, a popular book on the topic was published, called "The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age". There were also a US TV show narrated by Leonard Nimoy in the 1977 "In Search of... (TV series)", episode 27, season 2, titled, "The Coming Ice Age: An

title: Global cooling
text: into the public consciousness". In the 1970s, the compilation of records to produce hemispheric, or global, temperature records had just begun. Spencer R. Weart's history of "The Discovery of Global Warming" states that: "While neither scientists nor the public could be sure in the 1970s whether the world was warming or cooling, people were increasingly inclined to believe that global climate was on the move, and in no small way." On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post reported that "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age". In 1972, Emiliani warned "Man's activity may either precipitate this new ice age

title: Media coverage of global warming
text: go through some of them. Almost exactly 30 years ago the world was in another panic about climate change. However, it wasn't the thought of global warming that concerned us. It was the fear of its opposite, global cooling. The doom-sayers were wrong in the past and it's entirely possible they're wrong this time as well." Numerous other examples exist. As McCombs et al.’s 1972 study of the political function of mass media showed, media coverage of an issue can “play an important part in shaping political reality”. Research into media coverage of climate change has demonstrated the significant role

title: History of climate change science
text: which still hold today. Additionally he accurately predicted the rate of global warming for the period between 1972 and 2000. The mainstream news media at the time exaggerated the warnings of the minority who expected imminent cooling. For example, in 1975, "Newsweek" magazine published a story that warned of "ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change." The article continued by stating that evidence of global cooling was so strong that meteorologists were having "a hard time keeping up with it." On 23 October 2006, "Newsweek" issued an update stating that it had been "spectacularly wrong about

title: Media coverage of global warming
text: global cooling. In the 1970s, global cooling, a claim with limited scientific support (even during the height of the media frenzy over global cooling, "the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature") was widely reported in the press. Several media pieces have claimed that, since the even-at-the-time-poorly-supported theory of global cooling was shown to be false, that the well-supported theory of global warming can also be dismissed. For example, an article in "The Hindu" by Kapista and Bashkirtsev wrote: "Who remembers today, they query, that in the 1970s, when global temperatures began to dip, many warned that we faced

title: John D. Hamaker
text: a series of scientific conferences concluded that the world's climate is cooling. Books such as "The Cooling", "The Weather Conspiracy", "The Weather Machine & The Threat Of Ice", "Climates Of Hunger", "Ice Ages" and "Climate: Present, Past & Future", warned of a coming ice age within decades. In 1975, Newsweek ran an article entitled "The Cooling World" that foretold the decimation of agricultural productivity based on a dramatic decrease in the Earth's temperature. and the New York Times published the article "Scientists ask why world is changing; Major cooling may be ahead". In parallel, books such as "A Blueprint for

title: Media coverage of global warming
text: a new ice age? An editorial in The Time magazine on June 24, 1974, quoted concerned scientists as voicing alarm over the atmosphere 'growing gradually cooler for the past three decades', 'the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland,' and other harbingers of an ice age that could prove 'catastrophic.' Man was blamed for global cooling as he is blamed today for global warming"., and the "Irish Independent" published an article claiming that "The widespread alarm over global warming is only the latest scare about the environment to come our way since the 1960s. Let's

title: Hockey stick controversy
text: its own limitations and must unreservedly admit to problems, warts and all." On 11 May, contrarian Pat Michaels objected to press headlines such as "Proof of Greenhouse Warming" and "1990s Warmest Since 1400" in a feature he titled "Science Pundits Miss Big Picture "Again"" published on his Western Fuels Association funded World Climate Report website. He asserted that "almost all of the warming described in the article took place before 1935–long before major changes to the greenhouse effect–and the scientific methodology guarantees that the early 1990s should appear as the warmest years", citing the papers by Jones to support his

title: Michael Crichton
text: "This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis" (1969, p. 3). Many of Crichton's publicly expressed views, particularly on subjects like the global warming controversy, have been contested by a number of scientists and commentators. An example is meteorologist Jeffrey Masters's review of "State of Fear": Peter Doran, author of the paper in the January 2002 issue of "Nature," which reported the finding referred to above that some areas of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000, wrote an opinion piece in the July 27, 2006, "The New York Times" in which he stated "Our results

title: Antarctica cooling controversy
text: between 1986 and 2000, with similar pronounced seasonal trends... Continental Antarctic cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change. In response to Crichton, the lead author of the research paper, Peter Doran, published a statement in "The New York Times" stating, "... our results have been misused as 'evidence' against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel "State of Fear"... Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper

title: Global cooling
text: Global cooling Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. Press reports at the time did not accurately reflect the full scope of the debate in the scientific literature. The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth underwent global warming throughout the 20th century and continues to warm. By the 1970s, scientists were becoming increasingly aware that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945, as well as the possibility of large scale warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. In

title: J. Murray Mitchell
text: the public to issues of global warming. In 1976 he described the conjecture of global cooling as irresponsible, and around that time supported other scientists in warning of the damaging effects of increasing in the atmosphere. In 1978 he became executive editor of "Weatherwise" magazine. He was a member of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1982, and Chairman of the Committee on Polar Regions and Climatic Change from 1979 to 1984. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee to the Division of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF)

title: Global cooling
text: important that this knowledge be acquired as soon as possible." For that reason, it stated, "the time has now come to initiate a broad and coordinated attack on the problem of climate and climatic change." While these discussions were ongoing in scientific circles, other accounts appeared in the popular media. In their June 24, 1974 issue, "Time" presented an article titled "Another Ice Age?" that noted "the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades" but noted that "Some scientists... think that the cooling trend may be only temporary." An April 28, 1975 article in "Newsweek" magazine

title: Polar seas
text: decline of arctic ocean summer ice coverage was assumed to be one such sign, however, the reversal of that trend leaves the question open as the origins of the now reversed 30 year trend. In 1979, the cover of Time magazine was illustrated with an image of arctic ice covering and expanding BEYOND the arctic basin, opinion seems to have little value. Real data reveal the trend of ice coverage to be on the increase. If this increase will continue, only time will tell. Developed nations ceased the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons and the atmospheric abundance and consequent ozone

title: Global cooling
text: cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming). This peaking concern is partially attributable to the fact much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Climate scientists were aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference). Despite that, in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports, and "unusually severe winters in Asia and parts of North America in 1972 and 1973...pushed the issue

title: Nuclear Freeze campaign
text: cope with radiation poisoning and nuclear winter as a result of fallout. This film deeply impacted the psyche of Reagan, who personally believed in the abolition of all nuclear weapons. He held a screening event for the film, yet it was scarcely attended. The campaign pulled on notable works from outside the U.S. for support. These works include “"Unforgettable Fire",” a Japanese collection of illustrations of the Hiroshima bombing aftermath created by survivors. This project began in 1976 as an initiative from the Japanese public-broadcasting network NHK to collect illustrated accounts from bombing survivors. Six years later the collection was

title: The Day After Tomorrow
text: novel, "Ice!", and Douglas Orgill and John Gribbin's "The Sixth Winter" (published in 1979) have similar themes. Before and during the film's release, members of environmental and political advocacy groups distributed pamphlets to moviegoers describing the possible effects of global warming. Although the film depicts effects of global warming predicted by scientists (such as rising sea levels, more destructive storms, and disruption of ocean currents and weather patterns), it depicts their occurrence more rapidly and severely than what is considered scientifically plausible; the theory that a superstorm could create rapid worldwide climate change does not appear in the scientific literature.