From the American Thinker
The Coming Ice Age
By David Deming
Those who ignore the geologic perspective do so at great risk. In fall of 1985, geologists warned that a Columbian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, was getting ready to erupt. But the volcano had been dormant for 150 years. So government officials and inhabitants of nearby towns did not take the warnings seriously. On the evening of November 13, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, triggering catastrophic mudslides. In the town of Armero, 23,000 people were buried alive in a matter of seconds.
For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth’s climate has been an ice age. Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials. The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago. It began instantaneously. For a hundred-thousand years, temperatures fell and sheets of ice a mile thick grew to envelop much of North America, Europe and Asia. The ice age ended nearly as abruptly as it began. Between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the temperature in Greenland rose more than 50 °F.
We don’t know what causes ice ages to begin or end. In 1875, a janitor turned geologist, James Croll, proposed that small variations in Earth’s orbit around the Sun were responsible for climate change. This idea enjoyed its greatest heyday during the 1970s, when ocean sediment cores appeared to confirm the theory. But in 1992, Ike Winograd and his colleagues at the US Geological Survey falsified the theory by demonstrating that its predictions were inconsistent with new, high-quality data.
The climate of the ice ages is documented in the ice layers of Greenland and Antarctica. We have cored these layers, extracted them, and studied them in the laboratory. Not only were ice ages colder than today, but the climates were considerably more variable. Compared to the norm of the last million years, our climate is remarkably warm, stable and benign. During the last ice age in Greenland abrupt climatic swings of 30 °F were common. Since the ice age ended, variations of 3 °F are uncommon.
For thousands of years, people have learned from experience that cold temperatures are detrimental for human welfare and warm temperatures are beneficial. From about 1300 to 1800 AD, the climate cooled slightly during a period known as the Little Ice Age. In Greenland, the temperature fell by about 4 °F. Although trivial, compared to an ice age cooling of 50 °F, this was nevertheless sufficient to wipe out the Viking colony there.
In northern Europe, the Little Ice Age kicked off with the Great Famine of 1315. Crops failed due to cold temperatures and incessant rain. Desperate and starving, parents ate their children, and people dug up corpses from graves for food. In jails, inmates instantly set upon new prisoners and ate them alive.
The Great Famine was followed by the Black Death, the greatest disaster ever to hit the human race. One-third of the human race died; terror and anarchy prevailed. Human civilization as we know it is only possible in a warm interglacial climate. Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.
The oscillation between ice ages and interglacial periods is the dominant feature of Earth’s climate for the last million years. But the computer models that predict significant global warming from carbon dioxide cannot reproduce these temperature changes. This failure to reproduce the most significant aspect of terrestrial climate reveals an incomplete understanding of the climate system, if not a nearly complete ignorance.
Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models. But our knowledge of ice ages is based on a wide variety of reliable data, including cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. In this case, it would be perspicacious to listen to the geologists, not the meteorologists. By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age. Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the Obama administration’s announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering. Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age. It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.
Earth’s climate is controlled by the Sun. In comparison, every other factor is trivial. The coldest part of the Little Ice Age during the latter half of the seventeenth century was marked by the nearly complete absence of sunspots. And the Sun now appears to be entering a new period of quiescence. August of 2008 was the first month since the year 1913 that no sunspots were observed. As I write, the sun remains quiet. We are in a cooling trend. The areal extent of global sea ice is above the twenty-year mean.
We have heard much of the dangers of global warming due to carbon dioxide. But the potential danger of any potential anthropogenic warming is trivial compared to the risk of entering a new ice age. Public policy decisions should be based on a realistic appraisal that takes both climate scenarios into consideration.
(h/t to Ron de Haan)
David Deming is a geophysicist and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
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Over on IceCap they have an article that talks about the current rapid advancement of some glacier in Alaska.
They point to this site: GlacierResearch.
If you just look at 30 days or even 180 days of history, you see a nice downward sloping line, indicating that the glacier is advancing towards the site where the measuring devices are, I imagine, but if you look at 365 days of history, you see a nice sine wave.
Now, I cannot tell if the article is a parody of the usual AGW approach or the author thinks that that glacier is going to advance at 7′ per day for the next millennium, but it sure reminds me of the approach taken by AGW proponents.
Also, as I was writing this, I noticed that the last entry on the screen said this:
Ahhh, someone who possibly understands. I wonder if they think that about both directions of perturbation or only in the cooling direction?
Putting aside the imminent ice age that may descend upon us due to the sun having a quite period(a breather?), we will end up with the practical equivalent of an ice age if the moronic politicians in various western countries are allowed to proceed with their idiotic plans for intermittent output wind farms and the like, instead of more stable output nuclear and coal burning power stations.
John Edmondson (14:00:45) : “To start an Ice Age, the above parameters cause a lowering of solar radiation in the NH in summer.”
Solar radiation is more or less constant (ask Lief), I believe you are referring to solar isolation, the amount of radiation that hits a certain point on the Earth. The orbital charactaristics described by Milankovitch cycles are the prime drivers of changes in isolation. It takes the conjunction of maximum obliquity, maximum eccentricity with the NH summer solstice at perihelion to bring us out of an ice age. These three conditions coincide about every 100,000 years or so and last happened about 15,000 years ago. We are at the tail end of an interglacial period now with obliquity moving away from maximum, eccentricity changing with summer solstice moving towards aphelion. Fortunately for us, these things take time to come to pass.
References to the Sun driving the VARIATION are easily and mathematically falsified. I do wish this site would stop posting articles that willy nilly point to the Sun as the source of the variation. It makes us look just plain mathematically dense and neanderthal in our brain matter.
Noelene (11:51:54) :
Has anybody seen the diagrams of the multi-storey buildings for growing crops?I don’t know how practical the idea is,but it seems possible.I don’t think people would starve in rich countries,but 3rd world countries would be in for a bad time,especially if the rich countries are busy providing for their people,leaving no time for 3rd world countries”.
Noelene,
The Multi Storage Greenhouse has been developed in the Netherlands.
It’s a closed system and the plants float in a bath of water and fertilizer.
No agents needed to fight insects etc.
The concept generates it’s own energy and reduces land use.
It’s experimental.
The big question is if the next Ice Age will arrive with the same speed as the last one.
The transer interval from warm to cold was very short.
Ample time for preparation.
The Netherlands? Oh. That crop.
Re Smokey (15:56:49) and agendas
There is Harry S. Truman’s comment during Watergate that went along the lines of
When a person does wrong and knows it that’s one thing
When a person does wrong and doesn’t know the difference that’s entirely something else
OT post…..
Regarding Ian Plimer’s book, Amazon.com tells me they’re not sure if they will have more stock.
Amazon UK lists it as temporarily unavailable but looks to be taking orders for it.
There is this seller in Australia….this link is in Cdn. dollars.
http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?currency=CAD&main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=103&zenid=594c3506cb504e2447668
E.M.Smith (12:22:57) :
I don’t think it is a good idea to nuke Panama.
It’s one of the best places to stay.
Besides that it will have NO EFFECT if Nir Sharviv (and Svendsmark e.o) are right.
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
Pamela Gray (17:13:05) :
References to the Sun driving the VARIATION are easily and mathematically falsified. I do wish this site would stop posting articles that willy nilly point to the Sun as the source of the variation
Have you ever suntanned? Tanning proportional to time of exposure
Be as simple as a kid…then wisdom will spring out of your “self”.
Hmm, an ice-age would require technology to strip CO2 from the oceans to feed greenhouses.
This might be relevant/interesting:
Global land environments since the last interglacial
This has to be one of the worst pieces I’ve read here. No mention whatsoever of Milankovitch cycles, something a geophysicist is probably acquainted with. No mention of time scales, horrific stories without reference (how widespread was cannibalism, did it occur every winter, was it a regional or global phenomenon, etc), and plain alarmism but then the other way around. Where are the skeptics tearing this abominably written piece apart?
I’m not sure I would trust a geologist to give an unbiased opinion on the issues with the hypothesis of AGW.
I’m currently taking a geology course, and the professor has a Masters in geology (specializing in hydrology). She is deep into the mantra of global warming, even to tthe point in requiring us to buy a book entitled “Dire Predictions, by none other than Michael Mann. I choked my way through the required advocacy…er…reading….
I have a tough time sitting through classes that cover the disappearing ice caps, the rising sea levels….
Re Plimer’s book, this is the publisher’s site: http://connorcourt.com/catalog1/ Currently they say “5-10 days delay”. Looks as though they have surface mail to the US; you have to click into the ordering section (or “Postage” on the left menu).
Neven
I agree that the piece is both alarmist and inaccurate. However I do remember , from my history lessons, that the great famine resulted in infanticide and cannabalism – these are pretty much uncontroversial history facts.
The story of Hansel and Gretal dates back to this time, when villagers would lead children into the forest if they weren’t able to feed them themselves. Before this happened though, normally, old people would request that they were, effectively, starved so that the children could have their food.
Cannablism was not unknown either – again due to starvation, and people would also dig up graves to find food.
For references wikipedia is probably a start (although, as always, it isn’t a source in itself!).
Adolfo Giurfa (18:03:46) : “Pamela Gray (17:13:05) : References to the Sun driving the VARIATION are easily and mathematically falsified. I do wish this site would stop posting articles that willy nilly point to the Sun as the source of the variation.
Have you ever suntanned? Tanning is proportional to time of exposure”
No, tanning (or burning) is proportional to the amount of radiation your skin absorbs. Here in Florida at this time of year your burn time is anywhere from 6 to 20 minutes depending skin type. At this time in northern states it takes longer for the same amount of tanning or burning due to the angle of the sun in relation to the latitude of the person. Thus it is the shape of the Earth not the variation in the Sun that makes the difference.
Adolfo, were I to subscribe to your notion, my grade school teachers would rise en mass from the grave and haunt me till I die. Once again, the span of temperature variations and trends on Earth CANNOT be accounted for or correlated with the degree of measured Solar variation. On top of which, there are NUMEROUS variables right here on Earth than can and do act upon the constant of Solar heating to account for the variation and trends in temperature we experience on Earth. The Sun’s affect on the temperature trend is so small, it is buried in the standard deviation of the noise. The same is likely the case for CO2’s warming affect. Please refer to your 5th grade Science textbook for further explanation.
I hate to ask this because I may not want to read your answer, but are you really saying that the rise and fall of the temperature anomaly throughout this interglacial period of human habitation is due to Solar variation? Working backwards from your hypothesis, which I hope you will deny, do you understand what you must force the Sun to do in order for your notion to be true? As in for example, you must move the Sun closer to the Earth and then move it back again.
By the way, tanning depends on how much UV gets through the highly VARIABLE atmosphere. The Sun is constant (nearly so). The Earth is not. Why is this so hard?
Re Ian Plimer’s book, try the publisher: http://connorcourt.com. Currently the home page says: “The book has also gone into its fifth print run.”
Carlos (08:49:19) said:
One could also argue: Shouldn’t we try to put the missing CO2 back where it belongs whenever/however possible?
Ironically, anyone making this suggestion can not possibly know how to DO that. I, on the other hand, DO know how to do that. I even have some patents on composite spoolable tubing which will save us from using chrome tubing. My son, a field engineer for a oilfield services company which does “pumping services” like fracturing, can run the staged frac jobs for us.
How much are you paying per ton? As a first-order approximation, I think we can handle it for $100/ton.
Where are you going to get the money? Which is to say, what economic dislocation are you going to perpetuate, and on whom, to get the money to pay the people (e.g. me) who know how to do this? Just curious, because folks who offer suggestions like this USUALLY want to use other folks’ money for this type of scheme. I would prefer that you get it form somewhere far away like Seattle or Boston or maybe Westchester County.
I do have to warn you that my plan for all of this sequestered CO2 is to use it for tertiary production (so called CO2 flood) in some really old oil fields in the Permian basin, so oil production in the area is likely to go UP.
As you can imagine, I will be charging the oil companies for the service, in addition to the $/ton that I am charging you to “sequester” your “problem”. Sorry about that.
All this talk of ice ages, and the adaptations required to survive reminds me that a critical issue is the lower sea level as the glaciers form. There is an interesting graph of sea level vs time on Goddard Institute for Space Studies
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/
That link has a graph that shows sea level was 120 meters lower than today. That is roughly 400 feet for those (like me) who struggle with SI meters and such. (Warning: the giss author V. Gornitz has consumed the AGW kool-aid, but the graph is pretty).
The impact on our world trade caused by sea levels that drop that far will be immense. Existing ports will be high and dry. New seaports will be required at the water’s edge, along with roads and railroads extended out to the water’s edge.
The Straits of Malacca will be water-free, as presently they are only about 40 to 50 feet deep. Commercial shipping traffic will be re-routed accordingly.
Those precious tidepools along California’s coast will be dry, too. I for one cannot wait to see the complete hissy fits the greenies throw over that one. (note for non-USA readers, a hissy fit is a major-league temper tantrum by humans who appear to be grown-ups). We will finally be able to drill for oil west of Santa Barbara, as it will be dry land. DRY LAND folks, no more Santa Barbara beaches to worry about.
San Francisco Bay will be a dry valley, which will cause some problems for shipping.
New York City will no longer have a harbor, and Long Island will likely not be an island. Chesapeake Bay may become a valley (not sure how deep the bay actually is). Miami will become an inland city, or perhaps will just build more beachfront homes further and further east as the ocean retreats. New Orleans will no longer have to worry about hurricane surges.
These are things one never reads about, instead, the AGWers have monopolized the governmental concern with how to contend with a few feet of sea level rise. How’s about assessing the needs for a 400-foot sea level drop? And who is to say there will be only 400 foot drop this time? We could be in for a humdinger of an ice age, with 500 foot or more drop in sea level.
from Shaviv and Veizer (GSA Today 2003) re the cause of Ice Ages::
ABSTRACT
Atmospheric levels of CO2 are commonly
assumed to be a main driver of
global climate. Independent empirical evidence
suggests that the galactic cosmic
ray flux (CRF) is linked to climate variability.
Both drivers are presently discussed
in the context of daily to millennial variations,
although they should also operate
over geological time scales. Here we analyze
the reconstructed seawater paleotemperature
record for the Phanerozoic (past
545 m.y.), and compare it with the variable
CRF reaching Earth and with the
reconstructed partial pressure of atmospheric
CO2 (p2).
NOTE HERE
We find that at least
66% of the variance in the paleotemperature
trend could be attributed to CRF variations
likely due to solar system passages
through the spiral arms of the galaxy.
Assuming that the entire residual variance
in temperature is due solely to the CO2
greenhouse effect, we propose a tentative
upper limit to the long-term “equilibrium”
warming effect of CO2, one which is potentially
lower than that based on general
circulation models.
__________________________
There was an attempt to shout down Veizer and Shaviv, especially in the journal EOS. To my knowledge, that attempt failed.
Regards, Allan
A warning, about not heeding a warning; seems out of place here, somehow.
When I sat in a geology classroom, Continental Drift was only a theory. There were many good arguments for it. But it hadn’t been proven yet.
Milankovitch, a Serbian school teacher, proved (using logarithms!) that the small orbital changes could explain the ice ages.
Last I heard, we will have another 16,000 years in our interglacial. And that’s easily extended, with just a little global warming.
E.M.Smith (12:22:57) :
Also realize that ice ages START fast (in geologic terms) but the ice proceeds to grow more or less linearly (with wobbles) for 100,000 years. … If you walk 801 feet south each year, you outrun the ice age… (call it 250 meters…)
I don’t think so. Only the growth up (accumulation) of the ice cap would be semi-linear. Most of the outward growth would be nearly immediate – (non-coastal) Canada could be gone in a year (the mammoth-freezing scenario) to a few decades, depending on circumstances. I expect ADM would soon be getting taxpayer subsidies for high-protein blackflies from the Iowa tundra/taiga.
I can think of one thing with linear outward growth in the sense you describe – every year, more continental shelf will be exposed as more ocean evaporates and is deposited on the ice caps.