Almost Unanimous Consensus Of Scientists

March 16, 1973

“Scientists say signs point to another ice age

BY DONALD C. KIRKMAN Scripps Howard Staff Writer WASHINGTON: A group of scientists say there are disturbing signs that the world’s average temperature has started to decline and that the Earth may face another catastrophic ice age in hundreds or thousands of years.

In a report soon to be released, the scientists say evidence is accumulating that the world has experienced unusually warm temperatures for the last 10,000 years and soon will revert to a colder, more hostile climate that man will find difficult to cope with.

The report is based on the findings of 46 geologists, climatologists and paleontologists who met last year at Brown University, Providence, R.I., to review recent studies of fossils, rock layers, sea sediments and biology.

Almost unanimously, these scientists agreed the world definitely will have another ice age similar to the one that ended 20,000 years ago when vast ice sheets covered large stretches of North America, Europe and Asia.

The only question, they believe is exactly when the new ice age will begin—or whether it already has begun.

“There already are signs the Earth is cooling in a cycle similar to those that heralded earlier great glaciations,” the report says. “And while it may take several centuries before any major global effects are felt and several thousand years before ice sheets reform, preliminary signs are already apparent.”

With the warm age ending, the scientists say the world logically can expect a colder, drier climate to crowd man southwards and reduce the world’s cultivatable land resources. Ice sheets once again could reach as far south as Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago in about 20,000 years.

“In the future, the report says, vast areas of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia increasingly will be affected by dryness of rainfall with its associated scourges—drought, soil erosion and starvation.”

To cope with this harsh, cooler world, man will have to call upon all his ingenuity and resourcefulness.”

Mar 16, 1973, page 25 – The Cincinnati Post at Newspapers.com