Global Warming May Trigger Mini-Ice Age

Further information on the consequences of global warming have arisen from a surprising source. Fortune is running an article on how global warming could trigger a massive climate shift in the Northern Hemisphere. According to the article: 'Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point.' and that 'abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future'. One of the consequences of this climate shift might be an ice age, ranging from the severe "Younger Dryas" to the lesser "Little Ice Age", depending on how the North Atlantic "great conveyor" is affected. Such an ice-age would produce huge political upheavals, which are also discussed in the article.

Comments

Clarification the article makes vague

[Richard Allen]

The article does an interesting job of mixing what "climate researchers" are predicting and what the Pentagon is doing. The climate researchers they use as sources, ie- environmentalists, are predicting that we are causing global warming. That's nothing new.

The pentagon, on the other hand, is not predicting such a thing. They have simply been assigned the task of brain-storming different scenarios, weather related, terrorist related, etc., where the US might be at risk. They aren't necessarily saying that we are causing it. In fact, they are saying it's a natural cyclical occurance and they want to be prepared for it. I thought it was important to stress the difference because yesterday I've seen posts on other boards where people were assuming the pentagon is predicting that we are causing global warming, and therefore, our demise.

Re:Clarification the article makes vague

[Dachannien]

I noticed that, too. Quoth the article:

"In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities..."

What, no mention of who sponsored the panel? With what governmental body (UN, etc.) or special interest group (Greenpeace, Sierra Club) they were affiliated? Sure, it's "international", but a convocation of pastry chefs is international if it includes people from multiple nations - and that still doesn't mean that they can make a good crepe.

The article is interesting wrt the Pentagon's research, but you're right, the propaganda that was mixed in is old and tired.

Re:Clarification the article makes vague

[ajagci]

I thought it was important to stress the difference because yesterday I've seen posts on other boards where people were assuming the pentagon is predicting that we are causing global warming, and therefore, our demise.

They probably don't consider "stressing the difference" important because there is no difference. Human carbon dioxide emissions clearly contribute to climate change and they are growing. The only question is when and how human contributions become catastrophic.

And if humans cause an unavoidable ice age to happen just 50 years earlier through excessive carbon dioxide emissions, that in itself would be huge: at the rate at which technology is changing, 50 extra years might allow us to cope with an ice age much better.

Re:Clarification the article makes vague

[Richard Allen]

They probably don't consider "stressing the difference" important because there is no difference.

There are 2 differences.

One, the difference between proving man-made global warming versus natural global warming is huge. That's because if we assume it's manmade and we make lots of legislation because of it, then we're wasting our time if we're wrong. You make an assumption that is "clearly" true, but it's actually highly debated among scientists and policy makers.

The other difference is that if you take the article out of context, which many people have, which is most likely the intent of the authors, you would come to the conclusion that the Pentagon has come to a concensus with environmentalists that their is sufficient evidence that man is to blame for global warming, which they clearly have not done.

The END

[goombah99]

There is a decade old book called "the END" which advances the scientifc case that all ice ages were preceded by globla warming and plant death. Plant death releases avalibale carbon which creates CO2. evidence is seen in pollen abd seed deposits in the beds of lakes and in tree ring records.

The thesis is that to have an ice age you need increaced moisture transport to the polls. with out this it could get cold but it would be dry and no ice age. Once enough ice accumulates the reflectivity of the earth shifts and global warming becomes global cooling. this last for ~90,000 years.

during this time glaciers grind rocks up and create mineral rich soils. When trees return they thrive on this till the nutirents run low which takes about 10,000 years. then plant death starts the cycle.

by the way were about 13000 years since the last ice age.

Ice ages are cyclic like business cycles

[leoaugust]

Here is a nice page from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Ice Ages, that briefly touches upon the cyclicity of Ice Ages. I think they are a little like the business cycles, just a little bit longer.

From the website:

In 1867, James Croll, a self-taught astronomer, compiled information from a variety of sources -- including Isaac Newton's Theory of Radiant Energy. His work led to the development of a sound astronomical theory supporting the idea of cyclic ice ages. Croll's goal was to geologically predict when ice ages would occur and to explain the mechanism that caused them.

If the artists and designers want a heads-up, in case we do end up back in an ice age rather abruptly , here (ice age art) is a good site to brush up on.

Plausible Theory

[shunnicutt]

I'm not a meteorologist or any kind of scientist, but I do know that our planet's weather is a huge system for balancing the heat in the oceans and the atmosphere.

I know that I don't know a lot and there's much I'm glossing over, but that's why the oceans and atmosphere have currents -- cold masses are migrating towards the equator, which receives more direct sunlight, and warm masses generally migrate towards the poles.

At the same time, a lot of heat energy is simply reflected back into space.

Whatever our weather is doing is the result of these processes.

If -- for whatever reason -- less of the heat energy coming from sunlight were reflected into space, our weather system would have to cope with it somehow. To me, it would be obvious that this would make the weather behave unpredictably as the warm and cold masses jockeyed about.

What I read from the article is that the Pentagon isn't so much deciding what's causing climate shift, but rather what might happen politically and how to deal with it. Somebody's taking a longer view and that's not a bad thing.

Finally, I'm really surprised at how callous some posters can be. Suggesting that only the poor people of the world would die off, ruling them expendable and pointing out that then the survivors could expand into their areas? What a horrible perspective.

I can appreciate that this would be a normal result of our global political system, which acts on its own forces as inexorable as the weather, but it's still pretty chilling and even more reason to try to create strategies for coping.

Re:Why fix it?

[presearch]

Why is this modded as troll.
It just states the most common opinion on Global Warming.
Actually, it's the most common opinion on pretty much everything in the U.S.

Part Old Part New

[DynaSoar]

The theory of possible climate reversal from warming to ice age is over 30 years old. What's new, and worth emphasizing, is the possibility of abrupt change. We don't know at what point warming can become a runaway self-enforcing process, but we know it can. We'd probably prefer not to find out by experience.

Apples to watermelons

[Tau Zero]

You're comparing a chaotic system (the weather) with what appears to be a reasonably stable system, albeit with oscillations like El Nino (the climate). Climate is the "average" of weather, so the fact that you cannot predict exactly when the next warm front is going to dump a bunch of freezing rain on you does not mean that you can't project when the ground is going to be up to planting temperature or when your first killing frost will be. The former is an issue for daily conversation, the latter is of vital importance to agriculture in the temperate zone.