Is the earth really heating up or is it beginning another ice age?
Well I just watched a show on ice and it had as a portion the Greenland ice core study. The show had good science to show that maybe the earth is
warming not because of man but because of the actual cycle that has been going on for millions of years, lets take a look...
As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn’t about global warming, it was about an imminent ice age. Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider
this: There have been more than 20 glacial advances, or ice ages, in just the last two million years. And we know from geological evidence that each
glaciation lasted anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 years—no one knows why the disparity—separated by warm periods that last some 10,000 to 15,000
years. What we can be reasonably sure of is that we’re now in one of the warm periods, and this one is already 13,000 years old. Some scientists
think it’s at an end and a new ice age is about to begin.
But what is pretty certain is how they take place. It was once common wisdom to believe that the advent of an ice age took place over centuries or
even millennia, and that they ended the same way. It was thought that the changes were so slow that, if people were around to witness them, each
generation would hardly notice any change. If the next glaciation were to come on slowly, and we recognized it as the beginning of an ice age, maybe
there would be time for civilization to adjust: to begin food storage, to develop crop hybrids that will endure shorter growing seasons, to move
populations, factories, and technology—the core of our civilization—into southern climates, etc.
But we now have evidence that ice ages come on with an abruptness that will catch us by total surprise. Physical evidence indicates that when the last
ice age started, the British Isles went from a temperate climate to being completely covered with glaciers hundreds of feet thick in just 20 years.
Can we stop it? We can’t even stop a single snow storm. Imagine trying to stop an ice age that’s going to go on for tens of thousands of years.
The Coming Ice Age
Now that article seems to have good reasons that we should be worried and the Gulf Stream we all know is vital to Europe and its climate.
Global Warming or Ice Age Coming?
We hear about global warming and in fact, the temperatures seem to be slowly inching up. Whether this is a man made effect or depends on solar
activity or other environmental factors outside of our control is an open question. What is new to me is that, even in a scenario of global warming,
there could be local flips towards a cold climate.
A mechanism that could bring about such a flip for much of northern Europe is the Gulf Stream, a warm water ocean current, which brings a moderate
climate to the western shores of our continent, especially to the areas of France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the British Isles.
The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in
temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
Apparently, similar "flips" have occurred before and caused cool periods in Europe. Due to the non linear nature of such a change, the cooling could
come as fast as a decade or two. Watch out.
Global Warming or Ice Age?
This sounds like a recent plot of a scare movie now doesn't it?
Global Warming Will Plunge Britain Into New Ice Age 'Within Decades'
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.
A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the
waters of the North Atlantic.
The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch
and turns on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.
When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze
Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe
could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the
disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.
Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering"
between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and
civilisation.
Britain Into New Ice Age 'Within Decades'
Is a New Ice Age Underway already?
A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry,
anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands), is that the onset of an Ice Age is not marked by global cooling. In fact, the very same astronomical conditions which cause a cooling at
high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, produce the opposite effect in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is much more ocean to absorb and retain
the incoming solar radiation. Thus the global average temperature does not tell us anything of importance.
The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe,
or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern. Therefore, the important thing to look at is the
climate conditions in northern and far northern regions. Some of the indicators:
• Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in
Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)
• A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1965 and 1990 Plant Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or
10°F, between 1965 and 1990.
• Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature
decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining
since then.
• From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.
• Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere
That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest point
in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the largest single peak system in the United States.
“The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between 1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters
of altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured
during intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17 meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during
the first decade of the 21st century.”
How to look at Global warming
Well it would seem to me that the Earth has cycles all its own and doesnt need mankinds input to make such a vast difference in climate change. So
what is the cause of an Ice Age?
What Causes Ice Ages
These cycles are not mere statistical correlations, as some Wall Street prognosticator working at the modern PC version of a ouija board might spin
out. They are determined, with great scientific precision, to correlate with long-term, cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital relationship to the
Sun. Three fundamental orbital relationships are involved, each of which contributes to the amount of sunlight received in high latitudes of the
Northern Hemisphere. When these cycles combine to reduce the incoming solar radiation (insolation) during summer months, over a number of years, the
ice sheets which permanently cover Greenland, parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, begin to advance.
At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature,
partly for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick,
creeping ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal
moraine, stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then
up the Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate was buried under one to two miles of ice.
Geologically and climatologically speaking, we are due for another such glacial advance. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but radical shifts in
the climate of northern regions can take place suddenly, and in some places may already be taking place.
What Causes Ice Ages
Now to be fair some scientists think that we are speeding up this process alas the movie I just spoke of. Me personally I am not convinced either
way. I feel that we might be delaying as ice age as much as we may be causing it. In the end, I think that the Earth will continue as it has the last
thousands of years, man might be playing a part, but I feel that it may be a small one at that.
How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...
Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack
and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch
to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years.
And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last
decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations
from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years.
What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will happen sooner rather than later.
How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...
Now just to throw a kink into both sides of the issue, what if a 'space' phenomenon were to plunge us into an ice age and we need more
'greenhouse' effect to starve? What do we do then?
In the blink of an eye, a young aspiring astronomer, Dr. Galley Pruitt, discovers an ominous cloud of dense stardust moving into our Solar System.
Upon further examination, he finds that it will quickly move between the Earth and its Sun, eclipsing our life-giving light for months. He predicts
the Endlight Event, an E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event). A new ice age is imminent. Earth’s SOS is transmitted into the cosmos from Arecibo’s
1000-foot radio telescope.
Meanwhile, an eccentric billionaire executes his plan to save life on Earth with a futuristic deep-earth Noah’s Ark. A response to our SOS is
arriving. But then the Earth’s crust begins to freeze catastrophically, the Ark witnesses mysterious murders, a suicide and sabotage and the sky
yields a kind intelligence.
THE ENDLIGHT EVENT : A NEW ICE AGE IS COMING...TOMORROW
Admittedly this is only fiction, but does it not also have merit? Could that also have been a reason for violent climate change on the Earth?