Some guy wrote a book - and spawned a whole bunch of "single book fanatics" who went around preaching "Global Cooling". Nobody but a few counter-culture folks took it seriously.

Of course the Global Cooling fanatics studied the news and other information to cherry pick "proof" from local weather - just as Climate Change Deniers do today.

So, no, it wasn't a big deal, there wasn't enough overall evidence to spawn a batch of "deniers" to make sure it stayed in the news.