2 of the 4 Time covers posted here are wrong, but they're wrong in an interesting way.
In the 1970s, some (actually a minority) of climate scientists did begin to question the global warming theory, because temperatures were not rising as quickly as expected. They reached for explanations, including a coming ice age, which would not have been unheard of based on the geological records.
Those predictions, though in a minority, were novel and unexpected, and therefore received increased media attention, which is reflected in those two Time covers, both of which came out in the 1970s (1977 and 1979, to be precise).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643-climate-myths-they-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s/
From the linked article above: "A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then."
The majority of scientists remained pro-warming. They predicted that what appeared to be a level-off in temperatures in the 1970s was a temporary anomaly, and that global warming would again increase in the future just as the prior models projected.
The key paper in that regard was published by Wallace S. Broecker in 1975, and was titled: "Climatic change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
Well, one of those groups of scientists was right.
Look at the chart. Which one?
