Scientists stirred to ridicule ice age claims

The New Scientist ^ | 19:00 15 April 04 | Fred Pearce

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Scientists stirred to ridicule ice age claims

19:00 15 April 04

NewScientist.com news service

Climate scientists have been stirred to ridicule claims in an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster that global warming could trigger a new ice age, a scenario also put forward in a controversial report to the US military.

The $125-million epic, The Day After Tomorrow, opens worldwide in May. It will show Manhattan frozen solid after the warm ocean current known as the Gulf Stream shuts down.

The movie's release will come soon after a report to the US Department of Defense (DoD) in February predicting that such a shutdown could put the northern hemisphere into a deep freeze and trigger global famine within 15 years.

But in the journal Science on Thursday, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, surveys the current research and concludes "it is safe to say that global warming will not lead to the onset of a new ice age".

Salty water

The DoD's doomsday scenario, which is very similar to that in the film, was drawn up by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of the San Francisco-based Global Business Network. Neither is a climate scientist.

The scenario suggests that as global warming melts Arctic ice packs, the North Atlantic will become less salty. This would shut down a global ocean circulation system that is driven by dense, salty water falling to the bottom of the north Atlantic and that ultimately produces the Gulf Stream.

This much is respectable scientific theory, and some researchers believe it could happen for real in 100 years or so. But the film-makers and DoD authors go further.

They say it could happen very soon. And that if it did, the northern hemisphere would cool so much that that ice sheets would start to grow, creating a catastrophic new ice age.

This is too much even for sympathetic climatologists. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, whose own models say the Gulf Stream could shut down within a century, told New Scientist: "The DoD scenario is extreme and highly unlikely."

Achilles heel

And Wallace Broecker of Columbia University, New York, US, who has warned for two decades that the Atlantic circulation is "the Achilles heel of our climate system", seriously questions both the speed and severity of the changes proposed.

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	Related Stories Greenland ice cap 'doomed to meltdown' 7 April 2004 Big chill killed off the Neanderthals 21 January 2004 Plankton may protect Earth from icy fate 31 October 2003 For more related stories search the print edition Archive Weblinks Climate modelling group, University of Victoria Geochemistry, LDEO, Columbia University Abrupt Climate Change report, Global Business Network The Day After Tomorrow movie Science

In a letter to Science, he accuses the DoD authors of making exaggerated claims that "only intensify the existing polarisation over global warming". He adds: "What is needed is not more words but rather a means to shut down CO₂ emissions." Such action could avert any Gulf Stream shutdown in the next 100 years.

Schwartz defends his scenario, saying that while it is "not the most likely scenario, it is plausible, and would challenge US national security in ways that should be considered immediately".

Weaver notes that the movie's budget "would fund my entire research group for my entire life, 10 times over". That might even allow him to discover which scenarios are most plausible.

But there are no sour grapes. "I will be one of the first to see the movie.," he says. "It'll be the Towering Inferno of climate - extremely entertaining." It will not confuse the public, he thinks, but it will not help them understand climate science either.

Fred Pearce

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Pan_Yans Wife]

The sky is falling PING

[F14 Pilot]

Bump!

[Republic_of_Secession.]

There is even a theory suggesting that the poles have shifted in the past & that there might once again be another pole shift.

[fire_eye]

What I'm curious about, is the truth or falsehood of the oft-stated "fact" that ice ages can and do occur precipitously, developing within a period of 5 to 20 years.

(Needless to say, whatever came out of Holeywood on the subject is absolute trash by definition... but I'm just curious about that one issue...)

[Mathlete]

Earth heats up, more water evaporates, more clouds form, more sun rays reflected, Earth cools down. Homeostasis!

[HitmanLV]

The Day After Tomorrow is the name of the film, huh?

Man, I thought the suits wisened up to giving films names that can easily be made fun of in movie reviews - that is, go see The Day After Tomorrow fast, because the title is a tip-off as to when it will be out of theaters!

[Mathlete]

Cool Earth:

Warm Earth:

Dark oceans absorb radiation.
White clouds reflect reflect it.

[lelio]

Putting aside the science, what is going on with movie production costs? $125M to make a picture about a frozen city? Today's WSJ had bits on top movies for the summer and they were all over $100M. How on earth did they spend that much money to make The Alamo? What is in that thing to make it so expensive?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

No idea!

[AdmSmith]

Perhaps the salaries to the actors? Remedy: Use new actors and pay them less.

[JRandomFreeper]

Develop automated crawlers that burn old tires and spread the resulting carbon across the ice fields. Solar insolation should take care of the ice.

Next world crises, please. I'm on a roll.

/john

[Straight Vermonter]

WHERE'S THE HEAT?

From Junkscience, 16 January 2001
http://www.junkscience.com

Now even models suggest that warmer ocean temperatures induce more
evaporation, leading to more cloud formation and subsequent surface cooling!
This is one of the great problems with the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis -
the so-called positive feedback of increased evaporation (water vapor is the
major greenhouse gas) inevitably results in the negative feedback of
increased albedo (reflection of solar radiation) due to increased cloud
formation, damping rather than enhancing the negligible warming influence
possible from anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 addition. Parenthetically, this
piece alludes to a global decadal trend of +0.1°C since 1950 although such a
figure is extremely dubious. The contiguous US composite record makes a fair
to muddling proxy for global temperature trends over the period, so judge
for yourself. Hard to pick a decadal trend of +0.1°C since 1950 isn't it?
These fanciful figures are enabled by using estimates of proxies for air
temperature. Over 7-10ths of the Earth's surface is composed of the oceans,
this means using ocean 'surface' temperatures (everything from 'bucket on a
rope' to ships' engine coolant water manifold temperatures) as a proxy for
air temperature. If you think this might be a less-than-reliable means of
establishing Earth temperature trends you are not alone.

[DustyMoment]

What is in that thing to make it so expensive?

Disingenuous crap for the mini-minds who think that Hollyweird is the intellectual center of the universe. It takes longer to make these films (thus the higher costs) because the actors and crew can't stop laughing for long enough periods to film a complete scene - so there are increased editing costs. In addition, it costs more to make a film about junk science because it takes more effort to find a writer with a lobotomy capable of writing the script while the production crew is still alive.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The Day After Tomorrow"

Ah, anyone remember "Waterworld"?? Does this POS star Kevin Costner???

[Fzob]

Climate scientists have been stirred to ridicule claims in an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster that global warming could trigger a new ice age....

Note to climate scientist...... It's a movie

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL!!!

[Dog Gone]

I guess I'm confused. If the melting of the arctic icepack could lead to a new ice age, wouldn't that ice age rebuild the arctic icepack?

It seems self-correcting to me.

[null and void]