How often do you hear about some dangerous food that will take years off your life if you consume too much of it? How often does it turn out to be something that, ten years prior, we were told we should eat more of? As children, we were told to drink our milk. Now Atkins advises against it.

The moral of the story is, scientists aren’t always right. Bandwagons roll through the scientific community just like any other.

Recently, I discovered this Newsweek article from 1975 that warned of “ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change” and that—get this—the changing patterns were caused by global cooling that could bring about a “little ice age”:

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.

Some of the scientists even proposed solutions to the “grim reality” of global cooling that we’re now told will happen naturally as the result of global warming, “such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers [...]”

A generation ago, scientists warned us against global cooling. Now they’re ringing the alarm bells about global warming. Think about that next time the media hypes The Next Great Crisis.