A little history

Some of us recall the Newsweek cover of the mid-1970s that showed the Earth covered with ice. Global cooling was the fad.

Randall Holcombe poses the question in the Fall 2006 Independent Review, "Should We Have Acted Thirty Years Ago to Prevent Global Climate Change?" To ask the question is to anwer it.

Likewise, Kevin Shapiro asks, in the September Commentary, "Global Warming: Apocalypse Now?"

Patrick J. Michaels in Cato Policy Analysis No. 576 wonders, Is the Sky Really Falling? A Review of Recent Global Warming Scare Stories.

Part of the current discussion is the ineluctable demand for bad-news-coupled-to-feel-good-policy-antidotes. The science is being debated on terms that are beyond many lay people. The policy stuff elicits yawns. Perhaps evoking the global cooling discussion is useful.

Nothing like a little recent history.