Unearthed video: Global warming alarmist Stephen ‘we have to offer up scary scenarios’ Schneider caught on a May 1978 episode of the TV show In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age

Al Gore Lied.com
Monday, Sept 21st, 2009

algorelied.com/

Video part 1: www.youtube.com/watch

Part 2:www.youtube.com/watch

Part 3: www.youtube.com/watch

I’ve unearthed from the YouTube dustbin what I believe to be some significant video of man-made global warming alarmist extraordinaire Stephen Schneider’s  appearance on a May 1978 episode of the old television series, In Search Of….  For this episode, the show was In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age.

I used to watch In Search Of… when I was a kid. I loved it. It was mystery documentary series, and one of the things that made it cool was that it was hosted by Leonard Nimoy, i.e. Spock. In Search Of… did shows on such topics as Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle, UFO captives, and The Ogopogo Monster.  As a skeptic looking back on the show today, I find it hilarious that the show included climate alarmism alongside those campy topics.

The episode in question, titled, The Coming Ice Age, has much that is worthy of discussion, and features several scientists warning of a coming ice age, including Dr. Gifford Miller, Chester Langway, and  Dr. James Hays.  But for the purposes of this post I’ll focus on Stephen Schneider who is featured in Part Three.  Schneider may not cast as large of a shadow in the man-made global warming alarmist crowd as such luminaries as Al Gore and James Hansen, but Schneider has earned a special place in the hearts of man-made global warming skeptics everywhere when he told Discover Magazine in October, 1989:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Schneider’s been trying unsuccessfully to put that genie back in the bottle for years, and his words will live forever in the alarmist Hall of Shame.  The Schneider segment is in Part Three, and his role in the show is to share his opinion on whether or not it would be wise to take measures to stop the predicted coming ice age, or more specifically, using nuclear power to loosen polar icecaps, and helping sea ice melt by covering it with black soot.

On the TV show In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age, Stephen Schneider wonders whether mankind should intervene in staving off a coming ice age. 

Schneider:

Can we do these things? Yes. But will they make things better? I’m not sure.  We can’t predict with any certainty what’s happening to our own climatic future.  How can we come along and intervene then in that ignorance?  You could melt the icecaps.  What would that do to the coastal cities? The cure could be worse than the disease. Would that better or worse than the risk of an ice age?

…

It’s the interaction between people and climate that worries me the most, because with everyone jammed into countries, locked into national boundaries, a change in climate means a redistribution of where the rain is, where the growing seasons are. My worst fear is that the climate could induce a change in some country that could be devastating to their local survivability, and that would lead them to desperate acts that can drag everybody else down.”