Our planet Earth has experienced a devastating Ice Age more than 1 million year, and it killed off many species. Will another one of these frightening Ice Ages come in the next few years or decades? Some scientists believe that it will, although it will be a small one, it's going to start in North America. And some even have substantial evidence that suggest global warming is causing this potentially upcoming Ice Age. In addition, I have noticed and observed some really weird climate changes in the past one or two years in this southern part of Canada. The winter season has been exceptionally long, it was still snowing in April, and the leaves did not start growing out of tree branches until the start of May. On the other hand, the summer season has become rather shorter than what it was three years ago.
Is this true? Are we really going to get another Ice Age in the next few years or decades? If so, do you think it's going to significantly affect the human species or any other animal species, to the point of extinction even?

Please let me know your opinions, looking forward to any response or comment :)
Thanks

I dont think there will be one. There will be some time, but not soon. I dont understand how global warming is causing this? DOesn't that make things warmer? I think that we can survive it. Yes it will be an adjustment, but with all our technology, i think that it wouldn't be that hard. Just have lots of insulation and heaters.

Here are a couple of threads already under way concerning this subject. The second one has more data, I believe.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=34939

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=33986

I think your post touches on some interesting and controversial stuff. There are those who feel the data points to no cause for alarm, others who see otherwise. The complacency theorists hold inordinate power here on sciforums IMHO so look deep to see the data beyond all the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" stuff.

Mr. Chips, thanks for the sites, I was not aware that there are other threads on this subject too.
Originally posted by Jack_Quack:
I dont understand how global warming is causing this? DOesn't that make things warmer?
Jack_Quack, evidence suggests that global warming may cause Ice age. This may sound weird, but the reasoning behind that is actually quite logical and convincing. To explain why global warming may be causing ice age in few sentences, it's just that as the climate of Earth becomes hotter, it melts massive amounts of glaciers in the Arctic. When the melted cold water enters the Atlantic Ocean which contains warm water, a lot of turbulence is going to happen, and this impact will eventually grow big enough to affect most of N. America and then the world. Because the water in all oceans interact with one another, this effect could be carried to other parts of world.
Yes it will be an adjustment, but with all our technology, i think that it wouldn't be that hard. Just have lots of insulation and heaters.
Our energy industry would be hammered. There would be an extremely high demand of energy, but the industries cannot produce it quickly. Because of the low temperature, hydro-power would not be possible, and power transportation would be more difficult, think about hydro wires coated with 10-cm thick ice...

Ice age?
To date we have no idea what the "ice age" was really about and most certainly not about ice in the first place. No, there will be no new ice age since there was no old one.

The reality may be much more "scary" but we won't live to witness it.

Confusing? Try:

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/thread-view.asp?threadid=5846&start=1
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/thread-view.asp?threadid=3880&start=1
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/thread-view.asp?threadid=9075&start=1

and some dozens more.

Just heard a report on the radio, 16 inches of snow are predicted shortly for the Rockies and the upper plain states.

The thing is, we currently ARE in an ice age right now. So long as there's glaciers on the earth, the earth is in an ice age. What you probably mean are glacials, the period when half of the northern hemisphere is covered in ice. That, may not come soon as we are still in the process of melting from the last glacial. We are in fact just heading into the interglacial periods.

We only get out of this "ice age" maybe in another few tens of millions of years, when the whole world warms up so that even the polar regions experience tropical climates.

Sudden "events" like snow falling in May in Florida are just "freak weather accidents" rather than "signs" of an incoming glacial period. :)

The processes and changes of Ice ages are so gradual that it's not something even our 100x-great-grandchildren would worry about.

Just heard a report on the radio, 16 inches of snow are predicted shortly for the Rockies and the upper plain states.
Wow, that's a lot of crazy snow

none,
Yes, some places on our planet is still covered with ice, but those places are rarely occupied by humans. I am talking about a possible small ice age in North America or even a global ice age. Also, evidence suggest that it is the melting of the glaciers in the arctic that can really cause some problems in the oceans, thus leading to a significant climate change. If global warming continues and persists, the glaciers are going to melt faster...

The processes and changes of Ice ages are so gradual that it's not something even our 100x-great-grandchildren would worry about.
No actually, in the last ice age, it happened so rapidly that many species did not have the time to adapt and evolve so they got wiped out by the cold climate. Also evidence suggest that if all theories are correct, an ice age should come pretty soon (like several decades or a century from now), not 100 millions years later.

actually the studies of the Greenland ice (deep ice probes) show that the last ice age stepped in in just a couple of decades. (or so I saw on the Discovery channel)

I live in Alaska, and glaciers are melting faster than ever, glaciers are calving more than ever, the permafrost is melting, the winters are shorter and more mild, the summers longer and the springs warmer.

I think it can be said without doubt that humans affect the weather. However, it would be very difficult to predict how we influence the weather. Weather is very hard to predict, what with chaos and stuff.

When that permafrost goes, one of the most powerful green house gases gets released quickly, methane, considered to be about twenty times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, molecule for molecule. I believe I have seen some speculate that melting of the permafrost basically becomes such a momentous event that the climate then quickly cascades with little we can do about it. There is also speculation that some of the past mass extinctions on the planet were caused by huge amounts of methane being released for some reason or other from within the oceans.

The way I simplify considering how many could come to the idea that greenhouse gases trigger ice age conditions is that it drives more moisture into the atmosphere as well as pollutants from fires. A greenhouse heats up because the sunlight comes in, is converted to infrared and then cannot go back out through the glass. Make the glass ever more opaque or reflective with a coating of ice (such as is the nature of high altitude moisture in our atmosphere) and/or particulate pollution and you can end up with more reflection of the sunlight and subsequent greater net cooling of the environs.

I think that man-made extinction will occur first.

96 months to go
:)

I have witnessed about 6 or 7 acopalipses by now (or at least prophesed ones)
what's with the 96 months?

96 months.... if by then you havn't kissed your arse goodbye, then....

It is written.... look to the great earthquakes to come and the spin axis shift, tidal waves many kilometers high and then the ice age.... we live in interesting times....
all this is precipitated by humans and his science and his total arrogance and the total lack of understanding of the consequences of his lust for imaginary money....

Good luck, but I will have left long before this.....

hahahaha, well good luck to you
I'll be alive and kicking even after your 96 months
1. earthquakes don't happen at my geographical location
2. axis shift won't be instantanious and it has happened many times before. the worst thing that can happen is:
*magnetic compasses won't work correctly
*some migrating birds will be confused
*some sattelites might be kicked out for some time
3. tidal waves? we'll see, but I don't live by the world ocean
4. ice age? :( damn it, I'll go and chop some firewood then :D

>> axis shift won't be instantanious and it has happened many times before. the worst thing that can happen is:

well I did say a spin axis shift, the magnetic axis shift is incidental.

so good luck again........

ahhh, spin axis :)
what on earth will cause that?

Earth spin axis is shifting continuously just about as long as the world exists. It's called "precession of the equinoxes"

http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sprecess.htm

Our planet Earth has experienced a devastating Ice Age more than 1 million year, and it killed off many species. Will another one of these frightening Ice Ages come in the next few years or decades? Some scientists believe that it will, although it will be a small one, it's going to start in North America. And some even have substantial evidence that suggest global warming is causing this potentially upcoming Ice Age. In addition, I have noticed and observed some really weird climate changes in the past one or two years in this southern part of Canada. The winter season has been exceptionally long, it was still snowing in April, and the leaves did not start growing out of tree branches until the start of May. On the other hand, the summer season has become rather shorter than what it was three years ago.
Is this true? Are we really going to get another Ice Age in the next few years or decades? If so, do you think it's going to significantly affect the human species or any other animal species, to the point of extinction even?

Please let me know your opinions, looking forward to any response or comment :)
Thanks

Eddymrsci there may be a probem with "ice age" theory

In the book "Cataclysim" the authors make an exhaustive study that seriiously questions the existence of "ine ages" in general and for certain the last one did not happen. I am discussing their point of view. There are a number of facts that argue against the ice ages as claimed by those accepting the reality of 'ice ages"'. For instance to ceate the huge mass of ice requires not a temperature drop, but a temparature increase to heat the oceans sufficiently to obtain the moisture. Erratics, huge stone masses thousand of tuns in weight are distrbuted widely and are used by ice age theorist as an example of the ice motion on the surface of the planet. The probklem is that for ice to move it needs height. Nothing else will work. and height in themiddle of flat plains America, well they're ain't none. There were pocket of claime dglacial activity in some areas that had to be spotty. Siberia th ecoldest place on the planet even today has no evidence of gl;acial activity. Some argue that the height could come from rapid rise of mountains in the arctic regions. This means the mountains come and go when the ice caps need some height to move. Also, the erratics has striartions that cannot be accounted for by scrapping due to ice motion. There is some that calulated tha any more pressure on theice than seven miles long would crumble the ice making it inneficient at as "mover" along the ground.
A history of the science can be traced to the middle of the 1800 when Agassiz published his theory. Lyle the leading naturalist of the time agreed but said the ice ages were part of the slow moving activity of nature, where Aga ssis thought in terms of sudden and abrupt changes. Lyle was the biggest dog on the block and to get published Agassis relented.
There are a number of questions , to me the most difficklt is the claimed periodic nature of the ice ages that came about where some discioverd warm weather plants where an "ice age" should have been. The theor was then changed to include a "series of ice ages" as the explanation.

The event of 15000 years ago was very peculiar. The bones of widely divergent animal and human life wer found crammed into the same space in various cave ariound the glebe as if crammed dthere by a sudden and overwheming force, some attrbute to the "flood" and where some attribute to the ice.

The book I was referring to is: Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B. C.
by D. S. Allan, J. B. Delair

Look inside this book
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Edition: Paperback
No serious Ice Ager should be without this book.
Cheers.


:p

geistkiesel

There were a number of mamouths, saber toothed tigers and other animals that seemed to disappear around 15000years ago.

Almost. It was just around 11,670 before past or rougly 11.724 years ago. But the Sabretooth tiger was believed to be extinct a little bit earlier.

In the lottyhern(??) latitudes many animals were quick frozen at such a rate that their "lunch" had not digested" before they were frozen solid to less than 40 degrees below zero. This was at a few hundred miles from the north pole

Not exactly. It was more like this:

http://www.yukonmuseums.ca/mammoth/abstrmol-mor.htm (second abstract 1/3 down the page) But indeed the Mammoth is stubbornly not listening to the ice age theory at all.

It's widely thought that the ice ages are triggered by cyclic changes in the orbit and rotation of our planet, and of the Sun's energy output. Sometimes cycles are in sync and sometimes they're not. The last time that these cycles were in the configuration they're in today was about 400,000 years ago. Then the Earth experienced and interglacial period which lasted 30,000 years. Therefore it is likely that we can expect the current interglacial to persist for another 20,000 years or so. But that's ignoring the prospect of human-induced climate change (something which I am totally undecided on).

geistkiesel



Almost. It was just around 11,670 before past or rougly 11.724 years ago. But the Sabretooth tiger was believed to be extinct a little bit earlier.



Not exactly. It was more like this:

http://www.yukonmuseums.ca/mammoth/abstrmol-mor.htm (second abstract 1/3 down the page) But indeed the Mammoth is stubbornly not listening to the ice age theory at all.

Andre
Apologies for being so spontaneous an unprepared. Someone "borrowed" my Cataclysm" book, so my references stink. I will amend my questions, but the mostr fascinating: How are the findings of warm blooded animals a few hundred miles from the north pole explained in modern times. I saw a comparison of mamouths whose skin (outer layer) wasn't particularly adapted for cold climates.

Also, I understand the postulate that the "standard model" has a number of "ice ages" inferred, at least partially, plant life where "ice" was predicted.

How do the postulates handle sources of necessary height for ice flow in flat mid_America, (or any other "flat" land) ;

and how is the necessity for relatively high temperatures as critical for ocean water evaporation to supply all the ice? The last question, of course, is the apparent contradiction of cold tenperature and warm weather, both critical for ice age formation.

In checking you response, how do the prevailing ice agers handle the "stubborn mamouth"?
Thanx :cool:

A lot of questions but the explanation of the Mammoths who did not want to listen to the ice age theory is attempted by Dale Guthrie with the Mammoth steppe idea.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF15/1591.html

Grass can handle freezing without problem. So a relative dry climate with little or no snow in the wintertime some moisture in the spring would yield grass available almost throughout the year.

There are some problems with that since grass does need some higher temperatures to grow and such a delicate cold dry climate must have been stable to maintain those conditions for as long as the Mammoths roamed in the northernmost parts of Siberia between 55,000 and 10,000 years ago. But climate was heavily fluctuating througout that whole period, So I'm afraid things don't add up at all

Hi Andre ... long time no speak.

I never quite understood your theory. Mea culpa.

Do you then say variations in sea levels over time did not exist?

I am no friend of the snowball theory (wander of magnetic north does not prove tropics were once covered by glaciers) ...

;)

Hi Cat

My hypothesis is about a design flaw of terrestial planets. They should have been created solid instead of partly fluid. Together with gyroscopic features of the spinning of the Earth and external precession forces a complicated response emerges from internal upheavel. The idea both explains planet Venus mysteries and the ice ages on Earth, that's about it. And a thousend pages of proof of course. The Mammoth being in the top ten of evidence exhibits. But we have to wait at least 20 years before this idea gets some acceptance since it's extremely "counter intuitive".

There were a lot of sea level variations but most certainly not in line with the classic ice sheet melting freezing yoyo. There are many more exceptions than concurrences that seem to be very puzzling, yet they fit in nicely with the hypothesis I mentioned.

I thought that snowball world had melted some years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1857545.stm

Yet with inclinations of Earth's axis around 50 degrees very odd things happen, the equator getting less solar energy than the poles

Andre

Have you seen this?

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=99

Thanks for the link, Cat.

Notice how they struggle trying to explain all that contradicting evidence. But of course their perception is lacking the clathrate gun and the RTPW, since it is not in the textbooks.

the way an iceage works as far as i know is that: when the heat has killed watever caused it there is no source of heat at all and earth eventually cools down until it reaches an ice age.

we die if we pollute to little but die also if we pollute too much

Andre

Another for you.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/040517/040517-13.html


Hapgood was a little late!

Rapid climate change has been a perfectly normal characteristic of the last million years or so; every glacial period has started and finished with rapid sea-level changes and biome displacement.

This current period of warming may well be caused by humans, but it is unlikely to be any worse than those rapid climate changes that have happened naturally.

What will make it very bad for the population of the world is the way that civilised humanity has set down roots and divided the land into portions, marking out its territory; this rigid demarkation of territory will not respond well to rapid sea level change.
When humanity was organised into tribes and bands, with a nomadic lifestyle or following the great mammal herds, climate change was easy to accomodate; now trillions of dollars of land is owned by the inhabitants of the coastal regions of the world. Global warming (and perhaps regional cooling caused by the reversal of the Atlantic currents) will cause financial and social chaos to a civlised world, while a nomadic world of neandertals and cro-magnons would adapt.

Worse, the barriers set up by worldwide agriculture will prevent the very biomes of our world from shifting in a natural fashion; not the end of the world by a long way, but a bad thing in my opinion.

------------
SF worldbuilding at
www.orionsarm.com

Thanks again, Cat

Yes, we're getting there slowly.

every glacial period has started and finished with rapid sea-level changes and biome displacement.

Quite right. But isn,t it odd that in North Siberia the last "glacial" period ended (11,500 years ago) with a landscape change from steppe (capable of sustained large and diverse herbivores: horses, woolly rhino's, buffalo's, mammoths, etc), to marshes and swamps in the early holocene and eventually to arctic tundra as it is now? Doesn't really look like an end of an ice age, more like the start of one.

It's widely thought that the ice ages are triggered by cyclic changes in the orbit and rotation of our planet, and of the Sun's energy output. Sometimes cycles are in sync and sometimes they're not. The last time that these cycles were in the configuration they're in today was about 400,000 years ago. Then the Earth experienced and interglacial period which lasted 30,000 years. Therefore it is likely that we can expect the current interglacial to persist for another 20,000 years or so. But that's ignoring the prospect of human-induced climate change (something which I am totally undecided on).


What kind of cyclic changes are you discussing?

That would be the milankovitch cycles. Everything on the Earth orbit and movement is cycling.

These links may help:
http://deschutes.gso.uri.edu/~rutherfo/milankovitch.html
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm

However, evidence is accumulating that those cycles are not really the cause of ice ages:

http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Causality.pdf