Global Warming: No Match for the Coming Ice Age

The Skeptical Optimist ^ | October 8, 2007 | The Skeptical Optimist

[SauronOfMordor]

The premise that mankind will not have a technology to prevent ice ages seems absurd. Compare the technology of 1907 with 2007 and note that the rate of technology advance is increasing. Earth will never again get too hot or too cold, will never be hit by another large meteor, and as long as we're around animal extinctions will be a thing of the past. It is very likely we'll bring many now extinct animals back to life.

Right now we have the technology to put huge solar mirrors into orbit, using reflective metal fabric a micron thick and miles wide. We could focus sunlight on the northern areas that we wanted to stay temperate

[Myrddin]

Didn’t Whitley Strieber publish a book in 1970s about how he went joy riding with aliens? ( and I am not talking about the kind that “do jobs Americans won’t do”!)

That's the same guy. That's why I lumped his book under the "entertainment" category. The scientific underpinnings of the book are tied to woolly mammoth carcasses recovered from ice. The frozen critters had food in their stomachs that is only found in the Spring. The suggestion is that the switch from Spring type weather to completely frozen happened very quickly and hasn't reversed since the time it occurred.

Whitley takes advantage of the factual parts of his work as a springboard to push his global warming BS. He's in the camp that believes that global warming is man-made and will press "the environment" more quickly toward a repeat of the factual events he cites in his book. It's a huge leap of speculation.

[coydog]

Fallen Angels is available in Baen’s free library at their site:

http://www.baen.com

[Rokurota]

The best way to prepare for an ice age is to take all the socialist restraints and government ropes off of the world’s economies.

That...or buy some ice-skates, snow shoes and a sled.

[RightWhale]

• we have the technology to

  There's a lot of things we could do if we didn't have to worry about cost and unintended consequences.

[clyde asbury]

bttt

[the final gentleman]

Sir Fred Hoyle in his excellent 1980 book “ICE” warned that when the next Ice Age comes it will come with a fury and in a hurry; maybe a hundred years. It seems that the moderating mechanism for our planet is the heat stored in the depths of the oceans. As it stands today ocean currents from the tropics warm the northern climes and then cool and sink the bottom of the sea near the Equator and by thereby pushes warmer cold water to the surface where it is further warmed by the equatorial sun. This is the engine for circulation. But because the engine is fueled by the temperature differentiation and is only superficially directed by the Coriolis effect the upwelling stops during a Glacial Period and so a worldwide freeze sets in.

Fred calculated that it might take 500 years of pumping warm water back into the deep seas to store enough heat to avert the advent of the coming Ice Age.

We’d better start now.

[America_Right]

There was a SF story from a while back (”Fallen Angels” Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), set in a future where the environmentalists finally get CO2 emissions down to the point where they stop Global Warming — only to find out that was the only thing holding off the Ice Age

Thanks! Reading it now. I am up to the point of the government guys trying to decide who will get the credit for finding the Angels, what they will do to get them, etc. (all the stuff big bureaucracies do before actually doing anything). I love how Niven and Pournelle just keep slamming big government and greenie-weenies in this book. I have read a LOT of their stuff, and I don't remember them being so right-wing. This is GREAT!

[VeniVidiVici]

YES!! Looks like my move to Florida is going to pay off!

[RobFromGa]

Does anyone know what happens to the level of the oceans during an ice age?

[JustDoItAlways]

We will have lots of warning that an ice age is about to start.

For North America, the snow does not melt in the summer in the Arctic islands and northern Quebec. If this happens for several years in a row, then the glaciers will start building up.

It will then take about 2,000 years before the glaciers move far enough south to start taking out any human settlements, 10,000 years for New York.

Right now, the snow melts in these northern latitudes from June through September. It will take a lot of cooling before there is no melt in the long summer sunshine months.

[SunkenCiv]

Most of the time, life and volcanoes play a huge role.

Thanks. That quote's total BS though.

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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith

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[SunkenCiv]

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[oh8eleven]

[AFPhys]

Ocean levels are MUCH lower during an Ice Age - hundreds of feet, if I recall correctly. The major reason they are still rising these last millenia is that we’re still recovering from the latest Ice Age.

[kabar]

Not by Fire but by Ice THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

[SunkenCiv]

while looking for an old topic related to a different new topic, came across this:

“The walk ended at the edge of the lava rock field that resulted from the last time Kilimanjaro exploded. This field looks red with different size lava rocks (some as big as a washing machine) strewed all over. When you look and see how far away from the volcano you are, it just makes it seem all the more incredibly awesome. We did get one picture of Kilimanjaro sticking up through the clouds but before we left Africa we did get one helluva view of it, but more about that later. Blast line from Kilimanjaro - see where the rocks stopped falling.”

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g232/wifey_only/5a-Blastline.jpg

American Family Vacation African Safari Spring 2006 Kenya and Zanzibar
Personal letters home to US friends and family | April 5th, 2006 | schwing_wifey
Posted on 04/05/2006 4:16:28 PM EDT by schwing_wifey
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1609804/posts

[listenhillary]

I can’t catch either of these and didn’t see any later shows.

Tuesday, October 09
8 am How the Earth Was Made:

Tuesday, October 09
2 pm How the Earth Was Made:

http://www.history.com/search.do?action=scheduleSearch&searchText=How+the+Earth+Was+Made

[RightWhale]

A runaway process is happening on Iapetus now and is the subject of intensive study. Something like this might cause sudden glaciation on earth once it starts.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0710/08iapetus/

Kind of lengthy story.

[colorado tanker]

Most of the time, life and volcanoes play a huge role.

Not my quote!