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Is the earth really heating up or is it beginning another ice age?

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posted on May, 2 2005 @ 11:27 PM
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Is the earth really heating up or is it beginning another ice age?

Well I just watched a show on ice and it had as a portion the Greenland ice core study. The show had good science to show that maybe the earth is warming not because of man but because of the actual cycle that has been going on for millions of years, lets take a look...

As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn’t about global warming, it was about an imminent ice age. Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider this: There have been more than 20 glacial advances, or ice ages, in just the last two million years. And we know from geological evidence that each glaciation lasted anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 years—no one knows why the disparity—separated by warm periods that last some 10,000 to 15,000 years. What we can be reasonably sure of is that we’re now in one of the warm periods, and this one is already 13,000 years old. Some scientists think it’s at an end and a new ice age is about to begin.



But what is pretty certain is how they take place. It was once common wisdom to believe that the advent of an ice age took place over centuries or even millennia, and that they ended the same way. It was thought that the changes were so slow that, if people were around to witness them, each generation would hardly notice any change. If the next glaciation were to come on slowly, and we recognized it as the beginning of an ice age, maybe there would be time for civilization to adjust: to begin food storage, to develop crop hybrids that will endure shorter growing seasons, to move populations, factories, and technology—the core of our civilization—into southern climates, etc.

But we now have evidence that ice ages come on with an abruptness that will catch us by total surprise. Physical evidence indicates that when the last ice age started, the British Isles went from a temperate climate to being completely covered with glaciers hundreds of feet thick in just 20 years.

Can we stop it? We can’t even stop a single snow storm. Imagine trying to stop an ice age that’s going to go on for tens of thousands of years.

The Coming Ice Age


Now that article seems to have good reasons that we should be worried and the Gulf Stream we all know is vital to Europe and its climate.


Global Warming or Ice Age Coming?

We hear about global warming and in fact, the temperatures seem to be slowly inching up. Whether this is a man made effect or depends on solar activity or other environmental factors outside of our control is an open question. What is new to me is that, even in a scenario of global warming, there could be local flips towards a cold climate.

A mechanism that could bring about such a flip for much of northern Europe is the Gulf Stream, a warm water ocean current, which brings a moderate climate to the western shores of our continent, especially to the areas of France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the British Isles.

The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.

Apparently, similar "flips" have occurred before and caused cool periods in Europe. Due to the non linear nature of such a change, the cooling could come as fast as a decade or two. Watch out.

Global Warming or Ice Age?

This sounds like a recent plot of a scare movie now doesn't it?


Global Warming Will Plunge Britain Into New Ice Age 'Within Decades'

Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.

A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.

The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.

When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.

Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.


Britain Into New Ice Age 'Within Decades'



Is a New Ice Age Underway already?

A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry, anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands), is that the onset of an Ice Age is not marked by global cooling. In fact, the very same astronomical conditions which cause a cooling at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, produce the opposite effect in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is much more ocean to absorb and retain the incoming solar radiation. Thus the global average temperature does not tell us anything of importance.

The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe, or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern. Therefore, the important thing to look at is the climate conditions in northern and far northern regions. Some of the indicators:

• Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)

• A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1965 and 1990 Plant Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or 10°F, between 1965 and 1990.

• Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining since then.

• From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.

• Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere


That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the largest single peak system in the United States.

“The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between 1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters of altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured during intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17 meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during the first decade of the 21st century.”

How to look at Global warming

Well it would seem to me that the Earth has cycles all its own and doesnt need mankinds input to make such a vast difference in climate change. So what is the cause of an Ice Age?

What Causes Ice Ages
These cycles are not mere statistical correlations, as some Wall Street prognosticator working at the modern PC version of a ouija board might spin out. They are determined, with great scientific precision, to correlate with long-term, cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital relationship to the Sun. Three fundamental orbital relationships are involved, each of which contributes to the amount of sunlight received in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. When these cycles combine to reduce the incoming solar radiation (insolation) during summer months, over a number of years, the ice sheets which permanently cover Greenland, parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, begin to advance.

At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature, partly for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick, creeping ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal moraine, stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then up the Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate was buried under one to two miles of ice.

Geologically and climatologically speaking, we are due for another such glacial advance. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but radical shifts in the climate of northern regions can take place suddenly, and in some places may already be taking place.

What Causes Ice Ages


Now to be fair some scientists think that we are speeding up this process alas the movie I just spoke of. Me personally I am not convinced either way. I feel that we might be delaying as ice age as much as we may be causing it. In the end, I think that the Earth will continue as it has the last thousands of years, man might be playing a part, but I feel that it may be a small one at that.

How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...

Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years.

And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years.

What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will happen sooner rather than later.


How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...



Now just to throw a kink into both sides of the issue, what if a 'space' phenomenon were to plunge us into an ice age and we need more 'greenhouse' effect to starve? What do we do then?



In the blink of an eye, a young aspiring astronomer, Dr. Galley Pruitt, discovers an ominous cloud of dense stardust moving into our Solar System. Upon further examination, he finds that it will quickly move between the Earth and its Sun, eclipsing our life-giving light for months. He predicts the Endlight Event, an E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event). A new ice age is imminent. Earth’s SOS is transmitted into the cosmos from Arecibo’s 1000-foot radio telescope.

Meanwhile, an eccentric billionaire executes his plan to save life on Earth with a futuristic deep-earth Noah’s Ark. A response to our SOS is arriving. But then the Earth’s crust begins to freeze catastrophically, the Ark witnesses mysterious murders, a suicide and sabotage and the sky yields a kind intelligence.

THE ENDLIGHT EVENT : A NEW ICE AGE IS COMING...TOMORROW


Admittedly this is only fiction, but does it not also have merit? Could that also have been a reason for violent climate change on the Earth?



posted on May, 2 2005 @ 11:33 PM
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The talk still hasn't changed. Watch the Discovery channel on glacers, ice or something. They always mention that we're in the middle of an ice age. Looking at our planet's history, we come out of ice ages with a wee bit of warmth. However, humanity is extremely arrogant, so we've taken it upon ourselves to take credit for that.



posted on May, 2 2005 @ 11:48 PM
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Originally posted by junglejake
The talk still hasn't changed. Watch the Discovery channel on glacers, ice or something. They always mention that we're in the middle of an ice age. Looking at our planet's history, we come out of ice ages with a wee bit of warmth. However, humanity is extremely arrogant, so we've taken it upon ourselves to take credit for that.


So you would at least entertain the thought that by the added greenhouse gases we are delaying the next one?



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 12:02 AM
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Originally posted by edsinger
So you would at least entertain the thought that by the added greenhouse gases we are delaying the next one?


If anything it would be accelerating our move towards the next ice age. I'll post more in a bit. In the middle of a project at the very moment.



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 12:06 AM
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Originally posted by Indy

Originally posted by edsinger
So you would at least entertain the thought that by the added greenhouse gases we are delaying the next one?


If anything it would be accelerating our move towards the next ice age. I'll post more in a bit. In the middle of a project at the very moment.


That very idea was in the articles I posted. Thats why I can not be sure of what the exact issue is as science hasn't made up its mind yet.



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 12:49 AM
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Just found my favorite stat on the "horrors" of Man-made global warming.


Periodic ice ages going back 10,000 years show extreme temperature swings, exceeding 6 degrees Celsius within 50 years in some cases, said Richard Sommerville, meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

By contrast, human-induced climate change is thought to have raised global temperatures just 0.6 degrees Celsius during the past 150 years.


So a temperature change of 1/'30 what has naturally happened is going to threaten us all.



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 11:11 AM
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To tell you the truth I don't think anybody really knows exactly what is going to happen. I am by no means an expert in this area but I've talked with several guys who work in climate change reseach at my Uni, over coffee and what not.

The thing they are worried about is that the climate change may not be gradual, i.e just increasing at a linear rate. They think that it may get to a point, that tips things over the "edge" as it were, and the climate will change very dramitically in a short space. A bit like the "day after tommorow scenario" but not as dramatic.



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 11:13 AM
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The heating up is what causes the Ice age, its a cycle.



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 11:56 AM
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Originally posted by SpittinCobra
The heating up is what causes the Ice age, its a cycle.


SpittingCobra is correct, the more our planet heats up the more fresh water gets dumped into the ocean, in turn messing with the currents by cooling them down and diluting the salinity thus slowing down and even stopping the heat current that is keeping Britain warm. The UK is at the same Latitude as spenglar island and that island is a frozen tundra. If the Altantic current shuts down it could plunge Europe into an IceAge that will eventually spread throughout the northern/southern hemispheres.

And the reason why we are not seeing a dramatic warming on the surface is because of one simple reason. The Oceans are a giant heatsink, add in more C02 into the mixture and the capabilities of the Oceans to radiate that trapped heat into space gets messed with. We are current at an Energy Imbalance within our planet, and it's not arrogance that is telling us that we are having an affect, it's pure science.

[edit on 3-5-2005 by sardion2000]



posted on May, 3 2005 @ 12:28 PM
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Very good posts guys. I compliment you on your writing. Think about how a flash works for a camera. If you listen carefully you can hear it charging for a new flash. And once it is charge it can release all that energy in a single shot (flash). I think that is what will happen with the oceans. I had seen somewhere that like the top 10 feet of the ocean holds more energy than the entire atmosphere. So imagine charging 10 feet, 100 feet or even 1000 feet with energy. And then releasing all that energy in one great shot. Look at a mild el nino and what it does to global weather. Now imagine this on a much greater scale and instead of having a mild el nino you have a severe one. Even without a failed gulf stream you have a serious problem. Imagine the current has failed and you unleash this energy into the atmosphere. Even if the current doesn't fail we will have the unthinkable effects of a massive global el nino type event. A failed current will just be the icing on the cake.



posted on May, 5 2005 @ 10:03 PM
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We're heading towards another ice age. That's what scientists had originally concluded in the 1970's -- before the global warming fad began.

Now that we've had a few of the coldest, harshest winters on record in the U.S. in the last few years, people are beginning to have doubts about the global warming they've been told about for years.

So what do the global warming advocates do? They change the name of the alleged problem. If you look around, you'll notice that it's not called "global warming" anymore -- it's called "climate change" now.

To put it another way, as my friend who has a B.S. in Geology said, "Mother Earth can shake off humanity like a bad cold."



posted on May, 14 2005 @ 12:44 AM
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Personally I think it is all the sheep farts in New Zealand. They pump out more gas than all the US coal plants...




Disclaimer:Browneyes



posted on May, 14 2005 @ 12:51 AM
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Edsinger, still you don't seem to understand what the consecuences of global warming are. The effects of global warming would be the cooling of many areas around the planet, and an ice age in the northern regions of the Earth.

This has been discussed quite a few times already.



posted on May, 14 2005 @ 12:56 AM
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Originally posted by edsinger
Personally I think it is all the sheep farts in New Zealand. They pump out more gas than all the US coal plants...




Disclaimer:Browneyes


It is actually everything at once, all the gases and chemicals that we pump into the atmosphere and the oceans in the world. All the cattle's farts that we have to feed people from all over the world, etc, etc. All of this together is making the climate change faster, but you are right, climate change is a natural cycle.



posted on May, 14 2005 @ 10:34 AM
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Assuming that the Cambridge Unversity report is correct and the sinking of the waters in the Northern Atlantic are indeed 25% of their strength only 5 years ago and assuming that this will cause the current to fail and assuming that this creates at minimum little ice ages I think we will know the answer to all the questions in a couple of years.



posted on May, 15 2005 @ 05:14 PM
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Well i too support the notion that a new Ice Age is comming. I have studied environmental studies at degree level and i looked at both sides of the arguement and i come down on the side of the Ice Age brigade. However what concerns me is that noone has seemed to take into account all the nuclear bomb tests above ground in the 1950's/early 60's. Surely this had a detrimental effect on the global climate? Could this have been responsible for the Ozone layer holes and global warming



posted on May, 15 2005 @ 05:33 PM
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It has already started!!! look at the weather in scandinavia.
particularely in norway. believe it.



posted on May, 17 2005 @ 10:38 PM
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What is happening in Norway? I haven't heard. I know there was that really bad storm in the past 12 months that was much like a hurricane.



posted on May, 18 2005 @ 07:39 AM
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we had a snowstorm here where i live just a few days ago. micro tornadoes was seen south in norway. seems like over the past 15 years the climate has radically changed. btw, we don't have polarbears in the streets here


[edit on 18-5-2005 by darkspace]


E_T

posted on May, 20 2005 @ 02:43 AM
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Originally posted by darkspace
we had a snowstorm here where i live just a few days ago. micro tornadoes was seen south in norway. seems like over the past 15 years the climate has radically changed.
It has changed lot also in southern Finland.


Looks like erratic weather will continue. Cold polar air is still reaching down to nordic countries and Atlantic side of Europe.

500&850 hPa maps, which correspond roughly to ~5 km/1.5km altitudes, show it clearly.
www.wetterzentrale.de...



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