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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Well said!
This para has a rather Gorian quality to it. Does not seem credible.
“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.”
We’re overdue and any explanation as to how these “ages” can end so abruptly?
Sobering post, thanks. Reminds me of a lecture I recently sat through explaining how the world will end, as the sun ages and grows into a red giant the temperature on earth will approach a thousand degrees thereby obliterating all life. At least the stuff we know of anyway. Seems that if isn’t one thing it’s another.
Any freshman geology student would have learned enough in Earth Science 201 Physical Geology to understand this subject.
Throughout the vast majority of geologic time, year-round ice in the polar regions was the exception, rather than the norm. About every 130 million years the Earth experiences an “Ice Age”…We’re living in an “Ice Age” right now. This “Ice Age” began about 30 million years ago. Over the last 3 million years, the “Ice Age” has gotten colder. As Dr. Demming points out, the Pleistocene has been dominated by ~130,000-year episodes of continental glaciation with brief interglacial periods occurring between the glacials.
We’re fortunate to be living in a particularly warm part of an interglacial. If the ice core CO2 data are correct (they aren’t) and CO2 drives climate (it doesn’t)…It should be a lot warmer now than it was during the last interglacial. But it was actually considerably warmer during the Sangamon interglacial (~130,000 years ago) than it is now…
I “borrowed” this chart from IPCC TAR and “annotated” it…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/IPCCchart.jpg
It doesn’t take much research to figure this out. It’s just that most people haven’t bothered.
But the real question is why the earth entered into this cyclic ice age pattern some 5 million years ago — And why the ice ages come, and go. I bet there is a cycle there worth studying, if mankind can figure out what it is. My guess is CO2 doesn’t have anything to do with it.
I’ve often wondered why more geologists haven’t weighed in on AGW . Perhaps the true believers have been afraid to ask them . By the way , Ian Plimer’s new book is out of print and unavailable – according to Amazon .
Ward:
RE:
“This para has a rather Gorian quality to it. Does not seem credible.
“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.”
Starvation will do strange things to people:
“Uraguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known less formally as the Andes flight disaster, was an airline flight carrying 45 people that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. The event was concluded by December 23, 1972, when the last of 16 survivors were rescued. More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash and several survivors of the initial impact had died of cold and injuries by the next day.
The remaining survivors had very little food and no way to make heat in the harsh climate, over 10,000 feet altitude. Faced with starvation the survivors eventually fed on the dead passengers who were preserved in the snow. Rescue teams were not aware of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 12 day trek across the treacherous Andes mountains, found a Chilean huaso who guided them to safety where help was found for the other survivors still trapped at the crash site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571
Well, whatever we do, don’t send Mr. Gore on any extended speaking tours in Canada or Northern Europe — it’ll take us 100,000 years to recover.
It is not possible for an ice age to begin or end abruptly, Al Gore, the most notable scientist in climatology the world has ever seen says tempreture changes happen slowly over a millennium or more. It’s practically Newtonian.
After all Al Gore has a Bachelor Degree in Art. Who can argue with someone as well educated?
Sarcasm for the WIN! 🙂
In Europe there was already social turbulence prior to 1315. Many institutions were seized by the states at that time – most famously in 1307 and 1312 the Templar’s estates were seized in many nations – they were one of the largest food producers at the time. So, the 1315 famine was certainly triggered by bad weather – but there is a political and social subtext as well – nations were not as robust as they used to be due to internal chaos brought about by poor decision making.
My guess is CO2 doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Don’t be too sure. The geologic history of the earth contains within it the record of progressive CO2 depletion (Coal, Oil, Limestone). The interglacial periods have also gotten shorter. Could there be a connection? Couldn’t this CO2 depletion have cooled the earth?
One could also argue: Shouldn’t we try to put the missing CO2 back where it belongs whenever/however possible?
Ward,
I don’t know about the prevalence of widespread canabalism, but the 1315-1318 Famine is well documented. It all began by a series of intense, largescale cyclones that swept into Northwest Europe. These areas of low pressure, came in from the North Atlantic bringing incessent rains and winds. About 1 storm every 72-96 hours arrived for months on end. From Pentacost through August, farmers watched thier crops wash away or drown under sheets of water. From what I read, entire regions from Brittany-Normandy through the Benelux and Westphalia and Saxony were in knee deep mud. The entire summer wheat harvest and wine crops were ruined. Farmers had to consume thier seed stock just to survive; of course, with thier seedstock gone, they had nothing to plant in 1316. Starvation soon followed.
No one really knows exactly what occured synoptically, but some forensic meterologists surmised cooling waters over the North Atlantic increased the atmospheric temperature gradient, which lead to the disasterous spawning of European storms. The 14ht Century saw wild gyrations in the NAO, as the climate became highly variable (floods one year, drought the next). One thing was for certain, the nearly 500 years of generally hot, benign climate came to an abrupt end in the 14th Century. The Maunder Minimum was still 300 years in the future, and when it arrived only made a bad situation worse.
One thing we have in our favor is a highly scientific agricultural segment. The farmers of the 14th century were subsidence farmers, and grew mainly grains. We are forunate that we have hybird seeds that are more drought resistent than what farmers had even 30 years ago. Of course, a late spring frost covering large areas of the Plains would be disasterous. This spring, the farmers are 2-3 weeks behind in planting thier corn. Farmers in my neck of the woods barely have 100 acres planted (out of 10,000 to 15,000 acres total per farm) due to the cold rains. Good thing we live in 2009, and not 1609.
According to this publication, the Russian government is preparing for the next ice age: http://www.iceagenow.com/A_Cold_War_That_Russia_Can_Win.htm
Carlos,
Your speculation has no basis in fact, because CO2 levels follow temperatures, not vice-versa: click
I thought that the Milankovitch Theory explained fairly well the ice ages? Seems to be missing above.
Fantastic piece of common sense & logic. I hadn’t heard of the canabalism before but don’t doubt its accuracy. As someone’s already said starvation does strange things to peoples minds. Looking at the map, the south-west of England could get jolly crowded in the future. Is there a possibility that, if we head for a Little Ice Age due to the quiet Sun, the UN/IPCC could be sued in an international court for negligence & incompetence for failing to take into account a possible cooling of the climate?
Jon H;-)
If Al Gore has an art degree, was it he who coloured in the graphs with pretty colours? If he took a maths degree, he could become one of the world’s greatest computer painters! Anyway there won’t be an ice age for a while with all that hot air circulating at the UN, the IPCC, the EU, & in Tennesse!
BTW it’s very cold in the UK right now, when will this sizzling summer start? We have had the log-burner re-lit several times throughout April & also this May four times.
JP: That was what I was questioning. I am aware of what happened then in terms of climatoligical changes, but had never heard of people eating thier children or digging up graves to eat rotted corpses.
You add some good additional color to the climate side. Thanks.
Ron de Haan (08:56:11) :
Yes, in fact, Putin & Gasprom are banking on it.
The fact that the known universe is expanding and the Sun is ageing may have a cycle that keeps the Earth moving along an ever increasing occurence and depth of Ice Ages.
When people say human life is not consistent with an ice age, don’t they mean ‘human life in high latitudes’?
I can’t believe that you couldn’t live in Tanzania during an ice age. Mightn’t be as hot, but it’d sure be well above freezing. Ditto India. Ditto Australia. Ditto Brazil.
I think we’re equating human life with where a lot of us come from.
Spain might be quite a temperate climate in an Ice Age. How about Egypt? Or Mexico?
Replying to…
P Walker (08:28:47) :
I’ve often wondered why more geologists haven’t weighed in on AGW . Perhaps the true believers have been afraid to ask them . By the way , Ian Plimer’s new book is out of print and unavailable – according to Amazon .
Most geoscientists have real jobs…;)
On Plimer’s book, Amazon says “Out of Print–Limited Availability.”
Maybe that just means they don’t carry it and have to access it from a secondary market. I’ve been meaning to buy a copy of it.
There is a really goo AAPG book, Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change edited by Lee Gerhard, that provides a very good geological perspective.
Regarding the comments on Winograd’s work, this is certainly revisionist and just slightly out of date in terms of when this debate was finished, put to bed and concluded.
The 1992 work of Winograd certainly did present some inconsistencies between different paleoclimate records, yet it’s acceptance is overstated by the author above. An editorial in Science accompaned the publication setting it in context:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/258/5080/220.pdf
It’s clear that something else was needed to settle the debate either way i.e. the coral records. The coral records have come down firmly on the side of the existing theory and the interpretation of the vast body of marine sediment core data:
Author(s): Thompson WG (Thompson, William G.), Goldstein SL (Goldstein, Steven L.)
Source: QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS Volume: 25 Issue: 23-24 Pages: 3207-3215 Published: DEC 2006
And better relation to rate of ice cap loss/accumulation support Milankovitch:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027817.shtml
And from just down the road from Devil’s Hole in CA:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2004.11.005
Author(s): Yang WB, Lowenstein TK, Krouse HR, Spencer RJ, Ku TL
Source: CHEMICAL GEOLOGY Volume: 216 Issue: 1-2 Pages: 99-111 Published: MAR 15 2005
Milankovitch theory remains intact.
Replying to…
Carlos (08:49:19) :
My guess is CO2 doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Don’t be too sure. The geologic history of the earth contains within it the record of progressive CO2 depletion (Coal, Oil, Limestone). The interglacial periods have also gotten shorter. Could there be a connection? Couldn’t this CO2 depletion have cooled the earth?
One could also argue: Shouldn’t we try to put the missing CO2 back where it belongs whenever/however possible?
If there was a connection, there ought to be a long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature. However, there is no such correlation…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/CO_vs_Temp.jpg
By the way , Ian Plimer’s new book is out of print and unavailable – according to Amazon .
I really want to get a copy of Plimer’s book. What’s the story here? Too much demand? Not available in the USA?
Carlos (08:49:19) :
One could also argue: Shouldn’t we try to put the missing CO2 back where it belongs whenever/however possible?
True, one could, if one were an AGW/CC Believer, but once one begins to actually look into the science, one will tend to lose the Faith and embrace science instead.
“Putting the C02 back”, as in geoengineering would be nothing but a fools’ errand, with possibly harmful environmental consequences, in addition to being both useless and expensive.