Climate of opinion

Philip Stott takes a look at the scientific consensus on apocalytpic climate change that obtained in the 1970s. Remember "global cooling": the idea that a new Ice Age was on the way?

'Global cooling' and 'global warming' represent classic examples of how Barthesian myths, and potentially dangerous grand narratives, gain ascendancy, depending on the political priorities of the age, always, of course, aided and abetted by an uncritical media and apocalyptic journalism of the type espoused by The Independent.

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