The Next Ice Age

American Thinker ^ | April 22, 2009 | Bruce Walker

[GOPJ]

I'm going to assume the earth is self correcting -

if it wasn't it wouldn't have survived millions of years.

The arrogance of assuming WE have the power to destroy the system with our puny output of pollution -

(nothing compared to major volcanos)

- is amazing.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[DuncanWaring]

At this point, there hasn't been a single sunspot in almost two months.

Not true.

There's one that popped up yesterday, and appears to be fading out today, for a lifespan of less than 24 hours.

Spaceweather.

There was another short-lived one about three weeks ago, and another a few weeks before that.

This particular minimum between cycles is dragging out far longer than they typically do, though.

[urtax$@work]

Read "Not By Fire, But By Ice" , Robert Felix

Basically, the ice age commeth, because it came before(many times), and its cyclical. They are still trying to figure out why. Many theories explored.

also he states: We are wasting resources on global warming and should be planning for ice.

[lentulusgracchus]

Re the actual cause of Pleistocene glaciation, which is the real "boogeyman" in climate change, this Brown University dissertation should help clarify matters. The study that the dissertation reports represents a large incremental improvement in correlation and interpretation of paleotemperature data series based on oxygen-isotope data from a considerable number of sample sites collected over the last 40-odd years:

http://lorraine-lisiecki.com/thesis_abstract.html

Here is her money quote, which puts away the CO₂ crowd, for anyone who cares to read the scientific literature:

The relative phases of obliquity and precession response in the LR04 stack [defined as "{a} 5.3-Myr stack of 57 aligned benthic d¹⁸O records {i.e. marine paleotemperature proxy records}....which describes changes in global ice volume and deep ocean temperature and an improved d¹⁸O age model"] suggest that northern insolation has been the major driver of d¹⁸O change since at least 4.1 Ma and that some change in the phase of precession or obliquity response occurred at approximately 1.4 Ma.

[lentulusgracchus]

Basically, the ice age commeth, because it came before(many times), and its cyclical.

Based on my own inspection of paleotemp data published by the Geological Society of America a dozen years ago in the introductory section of their Thesis on North American Geology (a multivolume heavyweight study), the interglacials are very prominent and show similar development patterns.

Onset is accompanied by relatively high temperatures similar to the "Climatic Optimum" of 5000+ years ago, when temps were several degrees higher than now, and forests extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Later on, temperatures gradually decline (while exhibiting many short swings that give the overall curve a "cockscomb" look) and then suddenly roll off and crash, leading with very little warning into another multimillennial full-glacial episode.

Looking at how much time has elapsed since the end of the last full glacial, I estimate that we have about 600-1800 years left, with 1200 years a decent median estimate.

(Which may not have anything to do with Nostradamus's saying he "lost signal" after the 37th century, although he continued to get impressions of humanity coming from sources in the constellations Aquarius or Sagittarius, and Cancer -- without saying why he should get impressions of people from the Zodiac.)

What's ironic is that, while having a mile of ice on top of some of your best cropland might well ruin your day, it isn't the cold or the ice that is liable to get us. It's the aridity -- the sparseness of rainfall during pleniglacials, when so much of the earth's water is tied up in vast glaciers. During the Wisconsinian Glacial, the Brazilian rain forest, the mato grosso, didn't exist -- the Amazon Basin was an open parkland similar to East Africa today, the Mississippi River was a braided stream about 25 miles across at Memphis, the biggest tree on most of the North American High Plains was probably a juniper, and the prevailing weather pattern was driven by very dry polar easterlies across much of North America and Eurasia.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Whatever our unpredictable future, only one thing is sure: man, the adaptable and rugged animal

I'm not an animal.

[jonrick46]

You are correct. Methanol is needed in the production of algae-oil derived diesel. Cellulose derived methanol can be integrated into algae-oil production in a multitude of ways. One source that I have thought of would be the use of forest undergrowth which has been a major cause of forest fires. How much CO2 is released from a major forest fire?

[Myrddin]

A recent estimate using soy beans as a source of oil would require only 79,000 square miles under constant cultivation to service our needs. That's about the size of the state of Minnesota. Of course that ignores the volume of water necessary to grow and process that resource. It's not a scalable approach.

[Myrddin]

The physical cycles impressed upon the earth by virtue of it's orbit around the sun and the movement of our solar system through the galaxy are the driving and unchangeable factors in climate cycles.

SirKit and I have proposed that if we do have a minimum, it should be named for Algore, and another freeper suggested Hansen, so we think it should be called the Hansen-Gore minimum, to cement for posterity the utter idiocy of those two men.

I think the Hansen-Gore-Obama Dark Ages is a more fitting memorial. The science of detailing the physical cycles should be credited to those who did the work, not those who denied it.

[SuziQ]

I stand corrected, but the idea holds that with a bare minimum of sunspots, there is the danger of Global Cooling. Oh, and was this sunspot a Cycle 23 or 24?

[SuziQ]

Yeah! what you said! ;o)

[DuncanWaring]

This one is a Cycle 24 spot.

It’ll probably be gone tomorrow.

I hope I live long enough to hear al-Gore proclaim “This is more proof of Global Warming” before I starve to death after massive cooling-induced crop failure.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[Monkey Face]

I just saw a tape on YouTube by George Carlin about Earth Day. He says it well! (Remember he WAS George Carlin, so there is some offensive language.)

As usual, he was spot-on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjfiIow-eW0

[DuncanWaring]

Yesterday’s sunspot is gone today.

From http://www.spaceweather.com

(sunspot-less days)
Current Stretch: 1 days
2009 total: 98 days (88%)
Since 2004: 609 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days