1972 - New Ice Age

The “brutal” winter is on the attack again, bringing sleet and heavy snow to the mid-Atlantic region. Previous storms targeted the deep south including Dallas, Texas, and several hammered New England. By March 4, Boston was just 2 inches away from hitting an all-time record for snow, Boston.com reported. It’s a reality more in keeping with media warnings from the 1970s than today’s arguments about global warming. Then, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, the dean of American journalism, was warning about an “ice age.” Cronkite cited scientific claims that the Earth was cooling and “the full extent of the new ice age won’t be reached for 10,000 years.” That’s completely different from the media’s line today that global warming is settled science. NBC Nightly News reported February 23 that Dallas was paralyzed “after an entire season’s worth of sleet and freezing rain, up to two inches, fell in a single day,” causing massive traffic problems. Similar scenes happened in other southern states as the cold swept across the nation. Single-digit temperatures hit New York City and Newark saw temperatures as low as 8 degrees on February 23, NOAA said.

On September 11, 1972, Cronkite cited scientists’ predictions that there was a “new ice age” coming. He called that prediction from British scientist Hubert Lamb “a bit of bad news.”