Sobering graphics to scale: ice sheets 21,000 years ago versus today’s skylines.
“Data adapted from ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum’ by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown’ and ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift’.”
h/t to reader “View from the Solent”
Look, this problem of science is pretty simple to figure out.
It’s all about balls.
Let me explain…
Back in the ’70s, our balls were taken away from us in the name of feminism. We were still playing with other balls, though, so we didn’t notice.
Meanwhile, others were growing some. And these were not nice people.
I could go on…
Piper Paul:- very well observed, sad but true!
More funny at ClimateCentral.org
But before you go there imagine what is there for a minute.
It is so predictable.
#164 was better
RE: “thelastdemocrat says:
June 14, 2013 at 6:44 pm
Wait – this is a bit hard to believe. Where does all of that water come from?”
The seas withdrew to the very edge of the continental shelf. New York City, despite Bloomberg’s best efforts, was far from the sea, and the edge of the glaciers plowed across the north side of his city. The Hudson River, it’s waters swollen by the summer melt of a vast ice field, charged past at the bottom of a huge canyon, not so deep as the Grand Canyon, but still 200-300 feet below the docks of the current shoreline, swirling off to the distant sea, which was 300-400 feet lower.
That’s where all the water for such huge glaciers came from.
Sorry, but ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3tqIukBKg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
@JM VanWinkle
It appears that we are halfway down to the cooler part of the earth’s tilt at 23.4 degrees. We are sliding to the 22.1 degree part of the cycle and will hit this in about 10,000 years. We were at the warmest part of this cycle about 10,000 years ago when the Holocene Epoch started. So, glaciation could start at any time, really.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/tilt_graph.html
I began to speculate a short time ago, that the areas we should be most concerned about regarding temperatures are Canada, and the northern regions of Eurasia because these are the areas that were fully “ice-sheeted” during the last glaciation period. When places in these regions start to develop snow all year around, that is the beginning. Perma-snow overlaying permafrost. It is not a pretty picture no matter how white the snow may be.
RE: “starzmom says:
June 14, 2013 at 7:14 pm
Jim wonders what the polar bears did for sea ice, I wonder what the fish in the ocean did. Was there even an ocean??”
This is actually a very interesting topic. With the seas withdrawn to the very edge of the Continental shelf, some of the best fisheries were lost. The Grand Banks were high and either dry, or under ice.
How the heck did fish survive this complete ecological disaster? For tens of thousands of years they had to eek out an existence along a very narrow band of shallow water on the steep edge of the continental shelf.
However, when the waters started to rise again, and the continental shelf submerged, it was party-time for fishes. Or it was until all these starving cave men, deprived of reindeer and polar bear for dinner, looked into the rising water and said, “By Jove! Those little fishies look downright tasty! What do you say, Og? Is it time for us to invent the net?”
(In actual fact, we haven’t a clue what fishes did during the ice age.) (Or humans, for that matter.)
Ric Werme 4:40 pm
The Gore Ice Age!!!!!!! I almost fell out of my chair!!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
XKCD has one of the best cartoons about evil wind turbines:
http://xkcd.com/556
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Hmmm….let me get this straight. Because of CAGW the ice will melt and the oceans will boil. But as the ice melts the land will rise. And of course as the oceans boil the water will turn to vapor rather than remain liquid thus reducing it’s volumn. So …. why are the CAGW’ers worried about sea levels rising? Watched “Water World” one to many times?
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Sorry, Og. Al Gore invented the Net.
The UN building under a mile of ice…. A mile…. Of ice….hmmmmm…
Perhaps a new Ice Age is something we should all wish for….
so much for cell reception…
CAN you hear me NOW?
My 10yr old son asked me about global warming and whether we would be safe from sea level rise. I told him we could easily outrun the ocean, but that in 50,000 years our inland house here in Halifax Canada would probably be under two miles of ice. He was incredulous.
Crap… isn’t it my job to make the young’uns feel safe 🙂
The cartoon is wrong. There is no one to blame.
the thelastdemocrat says:
June 14, 2013 at 6:44 pm
20,000 years ago the North Sea bottom was mostly above water and the English Channel was dry land. Today’s Fishing trawlers are constantly snagging nets on the remains of Stone Age settlements.
” Gunga Din says: June 14, 2013 at 9:10 pm
Hmmm….let me get this straight. Because of CAGW the ice will melt and the oceans will boil. But as the ice melts the land will rise. And of course as the oceans boil the water will turn to vapor rather than remain liquid thus reducing it’s volumn. So …. why are the CAGW’ers worried about sea levels rising? Watched “Water World” one to many times? ”
Naw, nothing like that. It cycles like most of nature. Due to a combination of factors, all natural, the earth swings between ice ages with brief little inter-glacial periods of about 1/5th the time of the ice age. Repeat, repeat, repeat, at least for the last 2-3 million years. Ah for the good old days when CO2 was in the high 3 digit / low 4 digit range, life was bursting everywhere. The biggest threat is CO2 getting too low. Last ice age we almost lost it. At 150 PPM all plant life above the oceans stops (followed soon after by all the animal life). We were within 10% of that level (170) before it turned around. Whew!
See levels drop drastically in ice ages so the warmists have nothing to worry about 🙂
Enjoy it while it lasts folks because our lovely little inter-glacial is about done.
PS. Never seen WaterWorld because the whole concept was so stupid to start with even by Sci-Fi standards. I wouldn’t even classify it as Sci-Fi more like propaganda 101.
Jim says:
June 14, 2013 at 8:40 pm
@JM VanWinkle
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A link i find better to see all the variables in the Milankovitch Theory;
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Milankovitch/milankovitch_3.php
For reasons unknown (as far as i am aware) the glaciation cycle settled into a 41,000 year period some 2 million plus years ago and then about a 800,000 years ago the period changed to about a 100,000 years…i cannot find the article i read a while ago and my present search has found only articles contaminated by CO2.
I ripped open a tea bag and a hot drink is steeping,..
How about another “reel” threat;
A comet strike to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet…surfs up!
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Now I get it! A bottomless shampoo bottle! “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”.
Where was UHI when you needed it?
Thanks for the reply Jim and Kajakuk. Those graphs and all the other graphs I have seen have time axis of thousands of years per division. Further, the theory discussions seem to focus on what starts an interglacial, not what ends one. I guess the blame for that is resting on the large variability in the glacial period duration as compared to the interglacial period. However, it would seem that since we are at the end of the Holocene that we would have what causes the interglacial end timing under a microscope as it is a massively serious issue.
I wonder if Jim’s criteria of summer snow survival will be our only clue. Perhaps cold weather crop failure from frost will also be an indicator. However, if the ice core records could be mapped to obliquity with precision or other potential triggers then perhaps we could see if there are other significant factors.
Somehow the whole climate investigation has been hijacked to focus on our current climate optimum as if it were bad. I look at all the greenery and our bountiful food and wonder how can geologic history be ignored when our cornucopia is at real risk. Thank goodness for our higher CO2.
It is their version of “Great flood theory.” You see we’ve been bad. We built a comfortable civilisation and didn’t live the disease shortened lives of starvation and pain that the Goddess expected us to. Now the Goddess is going to make us pay in the traditional manner – a great flood.
One thing for sure. It’ll be cleansing. It. WILL. Be. No weasel words to cloud the issue. That big, cold scraper will come, and it WILL basically clean it off to bedrock, leaving an astounding terminal moraine full of all that technology wrought. Thos that survive will be packed into the tropics. Pretty sobering. What will the hubrisoids of 2313 AD say THEN?