In the midst of the summer of 1974, going from the ninth to the tenth grade, Time magazine produced it's wonderfully graphic report on the approaching ice age. The title? "Another Ice Age".
I was at the book store in Florence....saw the cover....and impulsively bought the issue. I was mostly a regular reader of Reader's Digest, Argosy and National Geographic.
I read through the article at least three times over that summer period. As the new school year started, I used the meager and marginal library at the school to read up on the topic....discovering that this ice age business was slated to start between 2020 and 2030. The Time piece? It only said 'maybe' and that it might be a couple hundred years.
Trying to discuss this? Well....no other juvenile associates read Time, and the school librarian suggested that it might not be all that bad (she hated hot summer weather).
Around fifteen years would pass, and I kinda noted one day via another Time article....that the glacier age thing was long gone, and 'heat' was now the worry. Facts were facts, I was told. It bothered me....the facts were lined up with an ice age, and then it just disappeared? How was that possible?
Around twenty-five years ago, I came to the realization....doomsday 'chatter' sells magazines, TV news, and newspapers. It also pays for college professors and various research foundations.
So I'm sitting back and wondering....from the kids around in the summer of 1974....how many of them were like me....hyped up on doomsday global cooling, and then let-down on the glacier period never occurring.
