Top Science Advisor Warned In 1971 that a New Ice Age Was an Imminent Threat

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Washington's Blog | Mar 23, 2014

Obama’s Science Advisor Has Been “Catastrophizing” For 43 Years 

In the 1970s, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent ice age.   Obama’s top science advisor – John Holdren – was one of them.

Holdren and some other scientists proposed pouring soot over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded ice age.

Holdren warned of dire consequences if mankind did not rally on an emergency basis to stop the coming ice age.

New York Times science columnist John Tierney noted in 2009:

In 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay [titled] “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.

They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:

The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.