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 regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the USSR in the North, along with marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

– Newsweek April 28, 1975

This Newsweek article is over 45 years old but is sounds like the beginning of a typical news story today. There is nothing wishy-washy about the assertions in popular press stories on the environment. We’re doomed, damn it, doomed.

No maybes are in the forecast of food shortage by 1985. Newsweek even knows with certainty where the problems will occur. The story is a warning about Global Cooling and the coming Ice Age.

The Newsweek story has science down pat and presents it in a manner that leaves no room for doubt by us simple laymen. The article presents experts to back it up.

A RECENT survey by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a half degree drop in 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.

A study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental US fell by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

There we have it. Those of us who did not starve by 1985 will freeze to death. Now, of course, the solution cannot be left

Now, of course, the solution cannot be left to individual action and the free enterprise system. Newsweek says scientists want to melt the Arctic ice cap by covering it with soot from coal-fired power plants. That would require a huge global bureaucracy and millions in taxes. Global disaster can only be met with global central planning. All this sounds like the politically fashionable scare theme de jour of global warming and its centrally planned solutions.

WE LIVE WITH unprecedented safety, health and comfort. Life spans rose 50% in the last century. Yet we live in fear of disease, crime and the environment.

The environmental movement wants energy planning, wasteful conservation and renewable measures that will raise prices. My fear is the harmful policies coming from their belief in environment doomsday.

Jim Clarkson is an energy consultant and CEO of Resource Supply Management.

Ignore worldly temptations

Drink upstream from the herd. Don’t follow the worldly crowd. Ask God for wholesome, godly friends Those who compromise their standards to be accepted by the world are desperate and weak.

They need to build up more strength, power and self control. Decide if you are going to allow others to use you and jerk you around for their purposes. Be strong.

Fred Kerr, West Columbia