The Next ICE Age

[reisei]

Yea but that article was just an example, its not exactly what im talking about, im mostly talking about the idea of the ice age, when it will be and are we really going to wait to the last minute till something is actually done to realise how close we really are?

[Thorne]

Yea but that article was just an example, its not exactly what im talking about, im mostly talking about the idea of the ice age, when it will be and are we really going to wait to the last minute till something is actually done to realise how close we really are?

One problem with stories like "The Day After Tomorrow," which portrayed the start of an ice age happening within a matter of days, is that they make great movies but lousy science. The probability of something like that occurring would have to be so remote as to be virtually impossible.

One thing these alarmists fail to consider is the sheer inertia of the planet's ecosystem. The ocean is so vast that it would take decades for any changes to travel from one end of the globe to the other. The same with the atmosphere. And the whole planet works in harmony to dampen and minimize changes. An increase in CO2 will cause a rise in temperature, which causes an increase in evaporation of water, which causes an increase in cloud cover, which eventually causes an increase in rainfall which helps scrub the CO2 out of the atmosphere. This is VERY simplified, but it's a fairly close approximation. Higher temperatures will tend to cause more, and larger, hurricanes, which in turn cause temperatures to fall again.

True, we could reach a "tipping point" where the changes are so great that the ecosystem can no longer compensate properly. That will result in a new balance point eventually, either with a higher or lower average temperature. But it's not going to happen overnight.

As for waiting until the last minute, well, that's pretty much how the human race seems to work. Why give up our comforts and lifestyles for some obscure, unreachable future. Let our kids take care of that. They're the ones who will be affected, after all. Just like we have learned to live with the problems OUR parents passed on to us, our children will learn to live with those problems which WE pass on to THEM.