AbstractIn February 1972, earth-orbiting artificial satellites revealed the existence of a greatly increased area of the snow and ice cover of the north polar cap as compared to all previous years of space-age observations. Some scientists believe that this may have presaged the onset of the dramatic climate anomalies of 1972 that brought far-reaching adversities to the world's peoples. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the bad climate of 1972 may be the forerunner of a long series of less favourable agricultural crop years that lie ahead for most world societies. Thus widespread food shortages threaten at a time when world population is increasing rapidly. Indeed, less favourable climate may be the new global norm. The Earth may have entered a new ‘little ice age’. Perhaps this future period will not be so extreme as it was at the beginning of the 18th Century, but it seen likely, at least, to be a cooler period resembling the hemispheric climatic regimes of the period from 1880–1920.