Andre said:
...The point is if you can and will complete the scientific method on this hypothesis. If the idea calls for asymmetric ice ages per hemisphere, then there should be easily assessable evidence. I'm afraid that I'm not optimistic.
Nor am I. You have slightly misunderstood me and
Dark Visitor
I am NOT suggesting a new cause for the Ice Ages that have occurred in History of the Earth. Thus, there is no need to look for evidence of past “asymmetric ice ages.” I am aware that the evidence points to fact that both hemispheres had “in phase” Ice Ages. - In fact this seems to me to be a great problem for all the “cause theories” that place emphases on the tilt of Earth axis etc. - Part of the reason I agree with you that we really do not have an adequate understanding of the actual Ice Ages. Again let me note that the asymmetric Ice Age of
Dark Visitor is IMHO better understood, and fundamentally different. As you understand climate better than most here, I would like your opinion about the climate mechanism of the
Dark Visitor Ice Age. Especially the idea that WARMER winters (followed by colder summers) in a slightly more elliptic Earth orbit may produce the
Dark Visitor type asymmetric Ice Age.
I am not even seriously suggesting that one is about to begin in the Northern Hemisphere's winter of 2008, although that is the prediction in
Dark Visitor.
Dark Visitor was written because I am very concerned about the jobs opportunities that will be open in US for my grandchildren and the economic health of the US in general. It is a recruiting tool for science students. About 4 years ago, there was an article in my alumna magazine that told of a grant to many students of "account money"* for investment in the stock market and gave some results, one of which was "too much" for me - Almost all of the science students who had participated, had selected carriers in the financial field after graduation. Although I, retired physics professor, recognized that there was little I could do, I decided to "strike back" as best as I could.
I wrote
Dark Visitor with first four chapters mainly a story of the background of the principles characters as a "hook" to get non-science students to read it. (My target readers would never knowingly open a science book.) All of the science is woven into the story of a coming cosmic disaster so as to not lose these readers before I scare them so much that they may at least be interested in learning if it is possibly true that the Northern Hemisphere will be covered by deep ice before the make their first million as a stock broker or corporation lawyer, etc. For example, all of Keplers laws are in the book, explained and numerically illustrated, but to avoid appearing to be "teaching physics" they are not named, but only come up naturally in the story as the astronomer (who is too busy to write the book while looking for gravitational lens effects as the Dark Visitor passes in front of stars so his rough trajectory data, computed from his analysis of small perturbations of Pluto's orbit, can become precise.) explains to his friend, a history Ph.D. and former college roommate, who is writting the book and needs help understanding some of the physical effects that will cause the worst disaster in human history.
The reason I think that
Dark Visitor may recruit a few science students is that it is not "science fiction," in the usual sense. - It is entirely possible that the Earth may/can be plunged into the "one hemisphere Ice Age" I describe in the book. That is, these non-science students will not find any physical errors that allow them to dismiss the basic facts of the story. I used Orson Well's "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast as the guiding model for
Dark Visitor. If you are too young to know what panic that broadcast provoked see:
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds_2.htm
The home page of the set of web sites under my name gives more details (now three years old) of why I think US needs to stop depending, as it currently does to large extent, on the hard-working, bright, mainly oriental science students, who will soon being going home as the US economic mess will no longer be able to support science as it has in the past. (China is building 50 "Harvard or better" university centers, and paying higher than US salaries to attract world-class, experienced professors to staff them from all over the world, US included.) US science heed to be based more on native students so the now "reverse brain drain" will not be the disaster I expect it will be despite my feeble efforts with
Dark Visitor
------------------------------
*Participants got to keep half of the profits they made, and other half went to a schollarship fund. (A bribe to the university, IMHO, to allow the use of student lists etc.) Sponsor "ate" all loses. - Funds were actually invested, not like the investment game thread active here.
