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In Search of...
1977 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 7 seasons
Created by Alan Landsburg
In Search of... is a TV series that was broadcast weekly from 1977 to 1982, devoted to mysterious phenomena. It was created after the success of three one-hour TV documentaries produced by creator Alan Landsburg: In Search of Ancient Astronauts in 1973, In Search of Ancient Mysteries and The Outer Space Connection, both in 1975. All three featured narration by Rod Serling, who was the initial choice to host the spin-off show. After Serling's death, Leonard Nimoy was selected to be the host.
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8 comments on Hacker News
There was one Newsweek article about it, and the Leonard Nimoy movie you are talking about is most likely “In Search Of…”, which also covered Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Bermuda Triangle.
Does anyone remember the 70s TV show "In Search of..." hosted by Leonard Nimoy?
I loved that show and I ate up all the literature I could find about the paranormal back then. Kids will believe anything!
> If we didn't downplay "the doom" for years now
We collectively didn't. We did quite the opposite by giving airtime to any quack predicting the end of the world, so much so that encountering "end of the world people" is a common trope in American sitcoms.
(Edit: Hell, watch a documentary from the late '70s on "Global Cooling" to see what I mean. The episode of "In Search Of…" narrated by Leonard Nimoy is my suggestion.)
If the "The End Is Nigh!" people hasn't ever existed, then I think the warnings over the past 4+ decades would have been taken far more seriously.
As it is now, most are afraid of lending an ear to a boy crying "Wolf!". It sucks.
There was more than one mass-market magazine article. There were no mass-market magazine cover stories, and yes there are fakes going around of those. There were also newspaper articles on it regularly throughout the 1970's. As well as numerous works of science fiction, and TV episodes like "in Search of...The Coming Ice Age" from 1978 narrated by Leonard Nimoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGB5MMIAVA.
The science it was based on, of course, was the fact that ice ages are cyclical and we are well towards what would typically be the end of an interglacial period:
"the last four interglacials lasted over ~20,000 years with the warmest portion being a relatively stable period of 10,000 to 15,000 years duration. This is consistent with what is seen in the Vostok ice core from Antarctica and several records of sea level high stands. These data suggest that an equally long duration should be inferred for the current interglacial period as well. Work in progress on Devils Hole data for the period 60,000 to 5,000 years ago indicates that current interglacial temperature conditions may have already persisted for 17,000 years."
-- https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-long-can-we-expect-present-interglacial-period-last
You also had the fact that some of the coldest (and snowiest) winters on record in the US were during the 1970's, most notably during 1977 when it snowed in Miami and the Bahamas for the only time in recorded history, and temperatures in much of the midwest stayed below freezing for over a month. So of course articles about a new ice age would attract readers, even though any return to ice age conditions would happen over centuries, if it wasn't disrupted by humans.
It really was a lot of snow though, we were out of school for like two weeks in the spring of 1978.
> Define "scientific consensus"
If you don't like the term, why did you use it in the first place?
> Oddly missing from that
What does the "that" refer to?
I refer to all papers published in what is generally described as scientific journals during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Since that appeared to be what you were talking about.
> Unless he did more than one, yes
"In Search of..." started with "This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine."
This is the same series that asked if plants respond to people's thoughts, explored the idea that the Nazca Lines landing instructions for UFOs, and searched for several forms of cryptozoology.
That's a show you want as the foundations for your beliefs?
You were gamed by a TV show designed to get viewers by pushing some wacky ideas.
> There was no scientific consensus in favor of global cooling.
Define "scientific consensus", and then step back and ask yourself why anyone would elect to corrupt the scientific process with something so easily gamed. I already hear the cries of "bbbut meta analysis, science is hard!" It has nothing to do with science, it is a political phrase.
> Hardly a consensus.
Oddly missing from that are all the scientists calling both parties out for being unable to accurately predict anything, which is a pretty good sign of inaccurate attribution within the models.
> What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
Unless he did more than one, yes. Also, enjoy the Youtube editorial flag assuring you of the opposite - because this is about science.
> FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
Because scientists aren't playing much of a role in the messaging campaign calling for extra-national economic management.
I haven't heard that bit of AGW FUD in years.
There was no scientific consensus in favor of global cooling.
Quoting https://skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html
> A persistent argument designed to discredit the field of climate science is that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s. So popular in fact that it ranks an impressive #7 in the most cited skeptic arguments. The logic goes that climate scientists got it completely wrong predicting global cooling in the 1970s (it started warming instead). Hence climate science can't be trusted about current global warming predictions. Setting aside the logical flaws of such an ad hominem argument, was there any consensus among 70s climate scientists predicting global cooling?
They cite a paper which looked at the publications during that era, and describe the conclusion as:
>The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 (and in a refreshing change to other similar surveys, lists all the papers). They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.
Hardly a consensus.
And ... Leonard Nimoy, in 1978? What documentary was this, "In Search of..."?
FWIW, Nimoy was never a scientist, so how is that at all relevant?
From your link the baseline average is from "relative to 1951-1980 average". Which was the coldest period of the 20th century. It got so cold in the 70s they were predicting an incoming ice age. It's very dishonest and very wrong to cherry pick the coldest modern period of temperature and then say we have increased by 0.8C from there. Climate is cyclical and there are many Multi-decadal Oscillations in oceans that impact global temperature, rainfall patterns, and overall climate conditions. The AMO, the PDO, not to mention ENSO.
As far as anamolies go, which area is experiencing "cooler than average" (which, as mentioned above, is difficult to do) depends on the year, but here's a map from NOAA showing 2013 temps and clearly shows the Western U.S. experiencing below average temps (from a 1980-2010 baseline): https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-mntp/201301.gif
And to underscore the situation in the 1970s I'm going to link to a documentary that starred Leonard Nemoy as narrator in 1978. Quotes below and link below to clips from:
“In Search of…The Coming Ice Age”, narrated by Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek):
“…sea coasts long free of summer ice, are now blocked year round…” “…the data shows temperatures in the arctic have fallen dramatically over the last 30 years…” “…in most locations the drop has been about 2 degrees Centigrade…”
https://youtu.be/1kGB5MMIAVA
https://youtu.be/mOC7ePWCHGk
GISS also claims to have global temperature data from 1884 that doesn't exist. They interpolate and make up numbers when they go back that far, as we don't have records from much of Asia, Africa, eastern Europe and south America during that time, even huge swaths of Australia were not covered by temperature gauges. We didn't really start getting quality global temperature data until the satellite era.