Posted on 04/28/2013 8:00:37 AM PDT by blam
How Does An Ice Age Start? With One Snowflake
Illustration by Brian Zinchuk
The Empire has decided to invade the ice plant of Earth.
April 17, 2013
By Brian Zinchuk
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. So looking back several decades, the scientists agreed – if they had to pick a date when it all started, it was 2013.
Thirteen is aptly considered unlucky, for it was the year with no summer. Scratch that. It was the first year with no summer.
Moods were glum throughout Western Canada that spring. April showers were supposed to bring May flowers. Instead, all the precipitation would come as the “white stuff.” Regina kept reporting another centimetre every few days. Roofs started collapsing. Brendenbury lost the roof of its rink. Still, these things can happen any given year.
But by the May long weekend, people really began to worry. There was still snow on the ground. No farmer could plant a crop. Half-million dollar tractor-and-air seeder combinations sat idle. Premiers called emergency cabinet sessions to deal with the crisis. Without a spring planting, for anyone, the economy wasn’t just going to take a tailspin, it was going to crash and burn much worse than the 1930s. Farmers not seeding meant the base industry was in total collapse. While that was hard on the pocketbooks, it was worse for the stomach.
While much of the people’s food was imported– vegetables from California, fruit from overseas, you couldn’t truck in enough hay to feed the beef industry, nor grain to feed the pigs. With no hay crop that year, and a severe drought in the United States the previous year, there was no surplus to feed the animals. By July, three-year-old bales that were used for wind protection were fetching $200 a piece, if you could find them. By September, the beef herd had been culled by 75 per cent. There was no food, anywhere, to feed the cattle. After a brief time when stores couldn’t give away all the recently slaughtered beef, and pork, North America suddenly found itself on a vegan diet, deprived of most of its milk, too. After all, you couldn’t drink milk if you couldn’t feed the cows.
World grain prices quadrupled over four months with the realization that there would be no grain production from the Canadian West, and substantially less from the American plains.
Natural gas prices also shot up, well beyond their 2007 peaks. With people running their furnaces year round, stockpiles dried up and, by fall, drilling resumed in earnest.
“Climate change,” the people were told. “This is what happens when we drive gas-guzzling SUVs and burn coal. The world is getting warmer.”
But it wasn’t.
Statistical arguments can be made for anything, given enough numbers. For the past 30 years, climate scientists told anyone who would listen that the world was going to warm up. Sea levels would rise. Coastal populations would flee inland as massive cities the world over became inundated. But what they neglected to mention was that back in the 1970s, the same scientists had other concerns. Back then, they were concerned about another ice age coming.
What is an ice age? The math was simple, really. It snows more than it melts, and the snow stays year over year. Eventually it accumulates to form ice sheets. Over thousands of years, these ice sheets grow to be miles thick. Precious little can live on them, and nothing can live under them.
Yet this was the natural state for nearly all of Canada for roughly 80,000 of the past 100,000 years, and countless cycles before that. Mankind, for all of its recorded history from the time Abraham left Ur in Mesopotamia, had been living during the peak of the interglacial period. No one had written on clay tablets of the great ice age. So it was conveniently forgotten, even though the evidence of it was all around. Nearly every piece of land north of the 49th parallel around the world had been sculpted by those massive glaciers, everything from the hills to the rivers that flowed from them.
This time, the scientists could be more definitive. It started in 2013, when the snow stayed. The high reflectivity of snow prevented the ground’s absorption of the sun’s rays. The air is warmed by the ground radiating heat originally absorbed from the sun. The result was snow instead of rain.
Three years on, Canada was a shambles. Two thirds of the nation was out of work and on the run, almost all of them to the south. The rest were packing. The Americans welcomed them with open arms, at first. After all, if a million or so Mexicans came across the Rio Grande every year, surely they could absorb some Canucks. But they faced pressures too. With a shortened growing season, corn, one of the most caloric-intense foods on the planet, and the staple of the American diet, could no longer be grown. Millions would go hungry.
Of the Canadians who remained, they soon realized it was a losing battle. There’s only so much snow you can push. You can only build a snowblower so big. All trains were equipped with massive snowblowers, the types that previously had been seen only in the mountains. A few years later, trains could no longer run. The snow and ice had accumulated to the point where a track was simply a blown-in tunnel in a 15-foot tall snow bank.
By 2020, 85 per cent of Canada was no longer inhabitable. The capital for those that remained was moved to Vancouver. Most provinces ceased to exist, their borders erased by the ice sheets.
The funny thing is, in the earlier years, popular culture was enthralled with zombie apocalypses. Too bad they never realized the simple snow flake was their undoing. Like a zombie, it, too, would never yield.
— Pipeline News editor Brian Zinchuk drives a gas-guzzling SUV and lives within six miles of two coal-fired power plants, yet he still has nearly two feet of snow in his front yard. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
Can you just start planting corn or soybeans on lands that had been under a salty ocean for the last 10,000 years?
“Also, the Persian Gulf was completely dry during the Ice Age.”
XLNT!!!! Less chance of getting swarmed by Iranian small boats loaded with VBIEDs....or attacked with their ASCMs.
Plus it is too hot up there in the Spring thru Fall.
Most scientists believe the worlds oceans dropped by 400 ft during the last Ice Age. I once had a map that showed the effect worldwide with a 400 ft (I believe it was 500 ft) drop in the oceans. Big Difference in the land mass.
Then you have Sundarland where I believe most of the worldwide human population lived and thrived during the Ice Age. The Bible will record the refugees from Sunderland as the wise men from the east, IMO.
I expect you'll find an answer here:
We could reclaim a lot of fertile submerged delta land.
IIRC, a drop of 200 ft. in sea level will roughly double the size of Florida. It should be very good land for crops. The problem is that it will take many years of rain to wash the salt out of it.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Apparently not as long as we think...I just read this from the ZuiderZee article from Holland:
"The stations, completed in February 1930, managed to drain the polder after six months of continuous pumping. "Drained" in this context does not mean the land was wholly dry; extensive pools of shallow water still littered the muddy landscape. To make the soil usable it had to be further drained by a network of drainage canals. Small ditches were dug leading to larger watercourses, which in turn transported their water to the main drainage canals. These canals, dredged when the polder was still filled with water, conducted surplus water to the pumping stations. The resulting dehydration caused the former seabed to sink by over a metre in some places. Once the ground had settled, the smaller ditches were replaced with underground drainage tubes, which would be used for the normal drainage of the polder."
"With the hydrological infrastructure in place, the virgin land was developed to prepare for its later cultivation. The first plant to establish itself, though more so in the later polders than in the Wieringermeer, was reed, sown from the air by plane onto the muddy flats while the polder was still being drained. This sturdy plant helped evaporate the water and bring air into the soil, thereby solidifying its structure and further preventing the emergence of unwanted weeds."
"After the first infrastructure was put in place, the reed was burnt and replaced by rapeseed, turning the newborn polder into a yellow sea of flowers in spring. These crops were succeeded by various grains. In the Wieringermeer the first was rye, but the later polders plant wheat, then barley, and finally oats. This process took years, but once finished allowed planting other crops. At the same time, other infrastructure such as roads and housing were built."
Interesting link. I prefer global warming to ice age since I live in Minnesota.
Not very fertile after spending thousands of years under salt water.
It doesn’t matter whether we are in for global warming or another ice age. Either way it is Bush’s fault and the only solution is more taxes.
Go on Google Earth and see how much of the continental shelf around Florida is less than 200 feet in depth. Florida's area would expand about 50%
See post #26. Doesn’t matter how many years it’s been under salt water. What matters is how much rain it gets, and how good the drainage is. Salt dissolves ready in water, and the rain will wash it away.
Thanks for the ping, Twotone!
Around here In the Permian Basin we have salt scalds, I have two on my place. They’re caused when a well blows out and floods the surface with salt water. The oldest one is 70 years old and still nothing will seed out in it.
Sea levels reduced by 394 feet.(above)
Notice there's no Persian Gulf at all and the Red Sea is land locked and probably dried up too.
Sea travel west of Indonesia was blocked until the sea levels rose enough to open up the Straits Of Malacca about 7,000 years ago.
Sea levels today.
Climate scientists come to terms with the lack of global warming
Canadian Minister: Put Up Or Shut Up On Keystone XL
Global Warming on Free Republic
Not necessarily. If it becomes incontrovertible that an Ice Age has begun, I think that geological engineering will be applied. Specifically, it is very easy to increase the greenhouse effect. Probable candidate...sulfur hexafluoride dispersed in the stratosphere from high-flying jets. VERY stable molecule, 24,000 times more "greenhouse intensive" than CO2.
Uh-oh.... Now you done did it.
Hope you enjoy your 'welcome' to Free Republic.
That puts you around west Texas or eastern New Mexico. How much rainfall (compared to Florida) and how good is the drainage?
Yep right in the middle of the Permian Basin. Rain is hit or miss, in the last two years I’ve caught less than 15 inches about 5 years ago I caught over 40 inches. On the average I’ll get 14 to 16 inches per year. I’d rather have an oil spill than a saltwater spill, oil does far less damage.
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