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Science

Global Warming May Trigger Mini-Ice Age 74

Posted by Cliff from the glaciers-over-the-northern-hemisphere dept.
Further information on the consequences of global warming have arisen from a surprising source. Fortune is running an article on how global warming could trigger a massive climate shift in the Northern Hemisphere. According to the article: 'Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point.' and that 'abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future'. One of the consequences of this climate shift might be an ice age, ranging from the severe "Younger Dryas" to the lesser "Little Ice Age", depending on how the North Atlantic "great conveyor" is affected. Such an ice-age would produce huge political upheavals, which are also discussed in the article.
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Global Warming May Trigger Mini-Ice Age More

Global Warming May Trigger Mini-Ice Age

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  • the climate has changed 7 or 8 times since hominids have existed, it has changed over a thousand times since the dawn of life.... but surely because this one is caused by humans it will be the end of the world
    • > times since hominids have existed,
      Congratulations for the australopithecus.

      And how often did it such a massive climate change happen with homo sapiens sapiens? How often with civilisation? And how often happened the change in less than a century?

      > it will be the end of the world

      Who suggests that?
    • You didn't actually RTFA, did you? No, reading before spouting an opinion is apparently forbidden for people who pooh-pooh globabl warming.

      The could be bad because a climate shift will cause the most classic reason for war to happen world-wide (i.e. resource starvation). People will squabble and war -- first economically, then militarily -- over control of the world's arable land and fresh water supply if a new Ice Age happens.

      However, this time, the hominids have nukes.

  • Clarification the article makes vague (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Richard Allen ( 213475 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @05:09PM (#8145951)
    The article does an interesting job of mixing what "climate researchers" are predicting and what the Pentagon is doing. The climate researchers they use as sources, ie- environmentalists, are predicting that we are causing global warming. That's nothing new.

    The pentagon, on the other hand, is not predicting such a thing. They have simply been assigned the task of brain-storming different scenarios, weather related, terrorist related, etc., where the US might be at risk. They aren't necessarily saying that we are causing it. In fact, they are saying it's a natural cyclical occurance and they want to be prepared for it. I thought it was important to stress the difference because yesterday I've seen posts on other boards where people were assuming the pentagon is predicting that we are causing global warming, and therefore, our demise.

    • Re:Clarification the article makes vague (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @05:59PM (#8146231)
      I noticed that, too. Quoth the article:

      "In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities..."

      What, no mention of who sponsored the panel? With what governmental body (UN, etc.) or special interest group (Greenpeace, Sierra Club) they were affiliated? Sure, it's "international", but a convocation of pastry chefs is international if it includes people from multiple nations - and that still doesn't mean that they can make a good crepe.

      The article is interesting wrt the Pentagon's research, but you're right, the propaganda that was mixed in is old and tired.

      • Re:Clarification the article makes vague (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's funny to watch the anti-environment people back pedal. I remember when they said global warming wasn't real and was being faked by scientist with some kind of agenda. It's the same attacks, but only on the cause of global warming. I figure in another five years you'll all be claiming that even though humans cause some global warming there isn't anything that can be done. Why are you so afread to face facts?
      • What, no mention of who sponsored the panel? With what governmental body (UN, etc.) or special interest group

        Who says any of the above? Scientists form panels all the time; they even have conferences together. It's part of the process. This isn't Microsoft paying for a favorable a research study, it's a bunch of world-renowned experts getting together and making their opinions known.

        the propaganda that was mixed in is old and tired.

        Maybe you've heard it a lot because... a lot of well-informed scien

      • Subtler point on vagueness ... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        ... "a panel" refers to science by consensus. The logic seems to be that truth is brought about in some sort of democratic fashion. Ergo the correct theory is the one with the majority vote. Science by politics. Well heck, where there's a bandwagon there's funding. Sign me up.
        • The logic seems to be that truth is brought about in some sort of democratic fashion.

          So what's your alternative? We just listen to you?

          "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
          Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 11, 1947
      • "In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities..."

        What, no mention of who sponsored the panel? With what governmental body (UN, etc.) or special interest group (Greenpeace, Sierra Club) they were affiliated? Sure, it's "international", but a convocation of pastry chefs is international if it includes people from multiple nations - and that still doe

      • Yes, anyone who's a genuine pastry chef, even one from Poland or Japan, _will_ know how to make a crepe, whether they work for Greenpeace or the Walforf Astoria. This is what really pisses me off about you idiots. Greenpeace is ON YOUR SIDE, moron! You're just trying to rip off the rest of us for money, and you're trying to do nothing about a very serious problem that affects the entire fucking human race.

    • Re:Clarification the article makes vague (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajagci ( 737734 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:44PM (#8146799)
      I thought it was important to stress the difference because yesterday I've seen posts on other boards where people were assuming the pentagon is predicting that we are causing global warming, and therefore, our demise.

      They probably don't consider "stressing the difference" important because there is no difference. Human carbon dioxide emissions clearly contribute to climate change and they are growing. The only question is when and how human contributions become catastrophic.

      And if humans cause an unavoidable ice age to happen just 50 years earlier through excessive carbon dioxide emissions, that in itself would be huge: at the rate at which technology is changing, 50 extra years might allow us to cope with an ice age much better.

      • Re:Clarification the article makes vague (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Richard Allen ( 213475 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:52PM (#8146834)
        They probably don't consider "stressing the difference" important because there is no difference.

        There are 2 differences.

        One, the difference between proving man-made global warming versus natural global warming is huge. That's because if we assume it's manmade and we make lots of legislation because of it, then we're wasting our time if we're wrong. You make an assumption that is "clearly" true, but it's actually highly debated among scientists and policy makers.

        The other difference is that if you take the article out of context, which many people have, which is most likely the intent of the authors, you would come to the conclusion that the Pentagon has come to a concensus with environmentalists that their is sufficient evidence that man is to blame for global warming, which they clearly have not done.
        • There are errors in your post:

          (1) It's not highly debated among scientists. It's hotly debated amoung ideologues. Those who know climatology are pretty clear on what is and is not understood, and the implications thereof.

          (2) On if we make lots of legislation, but on assumptions that prove to be wrong, we're wasting our time: I'd better go cancel my health insurance policy then. Something horribly terrible, with a low probability of occurring, can still be worth avoiding even if it turns out not to happen.
          • (1) It's not highly debated among scientists. It's hotly debated amoung ideologues. Those who know climatology are pretty clear on what is and is not understood, and the implications thereof.

            Global warming due to mans efforts has not been proven mathematically. I realize you may not agree, but it is highly debated among scientists. In fact, Slashdot has posted mathematical proofs and a thread to the contrary.
            http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/ 0 4/2010235&mode=thread&tid=134

            2) On

            • The poster's comments about ideologues is dead-on. The scientific consensus is that much of the effect of global warming is due to man's civilization. That does not mean there are no dissenters, or that various scientistics do not dispute various details. That's the way science works. Note the "increasingly strong evidence" phrase.

              As for your comment "not been proven mathematically" - proof is a word that is most apt to describe the mathematical chain of reasoning used. Does it follow accepted mathem

  • The END (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @05:11PM (#8145968)
    There is a decade old book called "the END" which advances the scientifc case that all ice ages were preceded by globla warming and plant death. Plant death releases avalibale carbon which creates CO2. evidence is seen in pollen abd seed deposits in the beds of lakes and in tree ring records.

    The thesis is that to have an ice age you need increaced moisture transport to the polls. with out this it could get cold but it would be dry and no ice age. Once enough ice accumulates the reflectivity of the earth shifts and global warming becomes global cooling. this last for ~90,000 years.

    during this time glaciers grind rocks up and create mineral rich soils. When trees return they thrive on this till the nutirents run low which takes about 10,000 years. then plant death starts the cycle.

    by the way were about 13000 years since the last ice age.

    • so basically, we're going to have a several hundred year period of dark-ages weather. after all that clears up and the oceans straighten themselves back out, we got a couple thousand years until we're really screwed? man, this civilization thing would be a lot easier if mother nature wasn't so nuts. invest in coats & batteries.

    • The thesis is that to have an ice age you need increaced moisture transport to the polls. with out this it could get cold but it would be dry and no ice age. Once enough ice accumulates the reflectivity of the earth shifts and global warming becomes global cooling. this last for ~90,000 years.

      If that thesis is correct, it appears to be a simple matter to over-ride the trend and force the ice back: put soot on the ice [bbc.co.uk]. Maybe campfires have been keeping the ice at bay for the past few thousand years; woul

      • Mineral nutrients in the soil come from two sources, glaciers and microbes that eat rocks. 100,000 years of glaciation is a daunting thing to try to make up for with egineering.

        On the otherhand rock eating microbes are now sterilized from farmland soil due to the ammonia fertilizers and pesticides used. So that source of mineralization is gone as well. and this is affecting forest and streams as well.

        I would be a little skeptical we could finely balance the large offsetting rate terms in global warmin

        • ... because the engineer knows that we're already doing these things on the sort of scale we'd need, and how to do more or less of it. The scientist is the guy who has to find out how much needs to be done, and put the error bars on it.

          Suppose you spread ajust a wee bit too much soot. how would you know and how would you undo it?

          You'd know because too much ice melted too fast, and you'd spread less next year. The soot washes off with the meltwater and is removed from the equation every spring, so you ha

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • "The thesis is that to have an ice age you need increaced moisture transport to the polls."

      Thats a great idea, so it can vote out the current administration in november :)

      (I think you mean poles...

  • Here is a nice page from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Ice Ages [army.mil], that briefly touches upon the cyclicity of Ice Ages. I think they are a little like the business cycles, just a little bit longer.

    From the website:

    In 1867, James Croll, a self-taught astronomer, compiled information from a variety of sources -- including Isaac Newton's Theory of Radiant Energy. His work led to the development of a sound astronomical theory supporting the idea of cyclic ice ages. Croll's goal was to geologically predict when ice ages would occur and to explain the mechanism that caused them.

    If the artists and designers want a heads-up, in case we do end up back in an ice age rather abruptly , here (ice age art) [humanities...active.org] is a good site to brush up on.

  • Younger Dryas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @05:20PM (#8146022)
    This is not really news, as it has occured previously [google.com].
  • Is there anything it can't do?


  • FWIW, this hypothesis has bee around for years. I've mentioned in in previous Slashdot discussions of global warming.

  • Plausible Theory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shunnicutt ( 561059 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:50PM (#8146824)
    I'm not a meteorologist or any kind of scientist, but I do know that our planet's weather is a huge system for balancing the heat in the oceans and the atmosphere.

    I know that I don't know a lot and there's much I'm glossing over, but that's why the oceans and atmosphere have currents -- cold masses are migrating towards the equator, which receives more direct sunlight, and warm masses generally migrate towards the poles.

    At the same time, a lot of heat energy is simply reflected back into space.

    Whatever our weather is doing is the result of these processes.

    If -- for whatever reason -- less of the heat energy coming from sunlight were reflected into space, our weather system would have to cope with it somehow. To me, it would be obvious that this would make the weather behave unpredictably as the warm and cold masses jockeyed about.

    What I read from the article is that the Pentagon isn't so much deciding what's causing climate shift, but rather what might happen politically and how to deal with it. Somebody's taking a longer view and that's not a bad thing.

    Finally, I'm really surprised at how callous some posters can be. Suggesting that only the poor people of the world would die off, ruling them expendable and pointing out that then the survivors could expand into their areas? What a horrible perspective.

    I can appreciate that this would be a normal result of our global political system, which acts on its own forces as inexorable as the weather, but it's still pretty chilling and even more reason to try to create strategies for coping.

  • Part Old Part New (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @10:28PM (#8147700) Journal
    The theory of possible climate reversal from warming to ice age is over 30 years old. What's new, and worth emphasizing, is the possibility of abrupt change. We don't know at what point warming can become a runaway self-enforcing process, but we know it can. We'd probably prefer not to find out by experience.

  • Ok, let's say global warming triggers another ice age or mini-ice age. Then what? Do we try and pump huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? Drop carbon black on the ice caps? Try to warm our toasty little planets toes?
    • Even if something like this happened a hundred years from now I don't think we would be sufficiently technologically advanced to try and control the weather, or alter it in a predictable manner. We would essentially have to sit back, try to keep warm, and decide if we really screwed ourselves or if it was a natural cycle that caused the climate change --- so we could try and avoid causing such an change in the future, if we were the cause. Either that or we all just learn to love the cold and the dust...

  • Look to sci-fi for suggestions (Score:3, Informative)

    by JohnQPublic ( 158027 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @11:22PM (#8147971)
    This sounds very much like the scenario in S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers [amazon.com]. Long story short, the British Raj takes on a completely different tone as the ruling classes of England move to India en masse, where it's no longer "beastly hot", while merry old England becomes an Arctic waste zone.
  • that an ice-age is imminent?
  • ...I did do two work terms with some in '97 and this scenario was old news/conventional wisdom even then.

    What really gets me is the number of people who I would normally assume to be right-wing "I only care about me" types who brush global warming off as being none of their problem.

    I personally kind of like pandas and parrots and cute little animals but even if I preferred my wildlife fried-up rather than free-roam I'd still care a great deal about global warming.

    Environmentalists whine "We are ruin
  • 18 years ago, when my father was co-author of a report for the Department of Energy on the possible effects of global warming on American crops, we had a conversation that went something like this:

    Me: So, global warming means that the Earth will eventually wind up like Venus, because the increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to keep heat in?

    Him: Well, not exactly. The increase in greenhouse gases (not only CO2 but methane [CH4]) in the atmosphere means that the climate will become more

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