Mikey, I hears ya. "epic scale" to describe the situation right now is... rather alarmist, as well.
Chem, you're gonna have to provide better sources for these claims of doom and gloom from the 70's. I honestly remembered some very similar things when reading these old "Science Supplement" books from the late 70s, yearly reports and articles on the science discoveries of the day. I actually still have most of them! And wanting to prove a point to my hippy friends, I went digging into those old books again, found some old climate change articles from those years, but their claims weren't nearly as concrete as you or I remembered. At least the books I was reading! They predicted basically what has happened, that late in the century, early in the next century, glaciers (ice sheets hadn't really entered the lexicon at the time, maybe a leftist invention!?!) would be melting faster, and oceans would be inches higher. *shrug*