[font=verdana][color=navy]I came across this
<span style='color:blue'>gem[/font] while browsing my school’s Library. For those of you who don’t have access I’m posting some of the highlights:[/color]</span></span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />
Originally Posted by (NEWSWEEK. APRIL 28 1975) There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production-with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree-a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'> [font=verdana][color=navy]That’s a pretty drastic solution! Given the utter failure of any of the theory’s predictions to materialize – decreased agricultural productivity, increased climatic instability, and steadily dropping global temperatures – I question just how much faith we should place in doomsday theories about the impacts of its modern cousin, “Global Warming,” as well as the proposed solutions.[/font][/color]