Time magazine’s alleged cover of the impending ice age is fabricated

Time magazine’s alleged cover of the impending ice age is fabricated

CLAIM: A 1977 Time magazine cover featured a photo of a penguin with the headline “How to Survive the Next Ice Age.”

AP RATING: Photo altered. It’s a fake cover, the magazine confirmed when the fake image circulated online in 2013. A real cover featuring the penguin’s photo in 2007 featured the headline, “The Global Warming Survival Guide.”

THE FACTS: A years-old manipulated image of a Time magazine Global climate change coverage is circulating again this week on social media.

The manipulated image, designed to look like an actual Time magazine cover dated April 8, 1977, features a photo of a penguin on a block of ice with the caption, “How to Survive the Next Ice Age: 51 Things You Can Do About It.” make the difference .”

A tweet shared more than 3,000 times on Monday shows the edited image alongside criticism of Twitter’s content moderation under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The tweet reads: “If Facebook, YouTube, or Jack Dorsey’s version of Twitter existed in 1977, they would have suspended anyone who denied an ice age was coming, calling them climate deniers.”

However, a reverse image search reveals that the widely shared cover is not authentic. Time magazine wrote an article in 2013 dismissing the image as a “hoax”, writing that at the time, it had already been circulating online for at least a few years.

“Though kudos to whoever originally put the fake cover together,” the Time story read. “It’s really good photoshop.”

The magazine relaunched his report five years ago, after Politico reported that an adviser to former President Donald Trump presented him with the fake image. The story was again reposted in 2019.

Time magazine pointed out in its report that the image did not match the style of the magazine’s covers in 1977. A look at the magazine archives of this year shows that he did not publish an April 8 edition.

The image of the penguin appeared on realtime coverage on April 9, 2007, with the title “The Global Warming Survival Guide: 51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference”.

True, some scientists expressed concern about “global cooling” in the 1970s, according to reports from the time, including from Time magazine.

However, the concept did not make the front page of Time magazine, nor the leading scientific theory at the time. A literature review 2008 Busting the 1970s “global cooling consensus” myth revealed that most peer-reviewed research between 1965 and 1979 predicted global warming, not cooling.

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This is part of AP’s efforts to combat widely shared misinformation, including working with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

Amanda P. Whitten