No, a Time magazine cover didn’t tell readers “how to survive the coming Ice Age”

Motor City Madman Ted Nugent isn’t shy about sharing his disdain for "the scam of so-called global warming" and the "global warming a--holes" who perpetuate what he calls a hoax. So it tracks that he would share an image that casts doubt on climate change.

"When the exact same group of ‘experts’ who claimed it was global cooling in 1977 now claim it’s global warming you can see why I am easily skeptical," reads the text flanking what appear to be two Time magazine covers that Nugent posted to Facebook on May 20. The first, which the post says is from 1977, shows a penguin in snow and the headline: "How To Survive The Coming Ice Age." The second, which the post says is from 2008, is an illustration that shows the men from the iconic Iwo Jima photograph lifting a Redwood tree instead of the American flag in the original image from 1945. The cover story from that issue? "How to Win The War on Global Warming."

This post, which had been shared more than 8,400 times by May 22, was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

That’s because though the 2008 cover is real, the 1977 cover is a fake. And it’s not a new one.

Back in 2013, Time published a story debunking it.

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"Sorry," the headline of writer Bryan Walsh’s story says, "a TIME magazine cover did not predict a coming Ice Age." He notes that the fake 1977 cover is a doctored version of a cover from 2007 with the same penguin picture but a different title: "The Global Warming Survival Guide."

"Apparently the hoax cover has been floating around the Internet for at least a few years," Walsh says in the story. "Kudos to whoever initially put the fake cover together. That’s some pretty good photoshopping."

Walsh notes that Time did, in 1974, run a story about the possibility of another Ice Age.

"The reality is that scientists in the 1970s were just beginning to understand how climate change and aerosol pollution might impact global temperature," Walsh says. "Add in the media-hype cycle — which was true then as it is now — and you have some coverage that turned out wrong. But thanks to the Internet, those stories stay undead, recycled by notorious climate skeptics like George Will. Pay no attention to Photoshop. It’s the science we should heed — and the science says man-made climate change is real and very, very worrying."

We rate this Facebook post as False.

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2019-05-23 18:37:03 UTC

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"How to Survive The Coming Ice Age" was a Time magazine cover story in 1977.

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Monday, May 20, 2019

2019-05-20

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