Sudden Ice Age Or World Drought Possible, Study Says

National Geographic ^ | 2-02-2002 | Robert C. Cowen

[blam]

.....it's always something.

[Prodigal Daughter]

This article is priceless.

[The Great Satan]

Sudden Ice Age Or World Drought Possible, Study Says

And it's possible that I will float out of this chair I'm sitting in and magically rise up to the ceiling. Possible, but not likely.

[billorites]

".....it's always something."

And the gun owners, somehow, are sure to be blamed.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Someone put in a call to Algore.

[Stentor]

a certain amount of inevitable uncertainty

HUH?

[capt. norm]

I would go the more research route for sure. Too mnay flaky numbers being tossed around. Good research should put a stop to all this wild speculation being pushed by the "Global Warmers". So far the only thing the global warming crowd has going for them is doubt and lack of good data and they attempt to fill in the gaps with their ridiculous scenarios.

[Billthedrill]

Yep. After watching TV for the first time in a long time this holiday I came away convinced that we're all going to die from an asteroid or comet strike, a tsunami, a volcano, a plague, crop failure, drought, flooding, global warming, and global cooling. Folks who don't have trouble tend to borrow trouble, as my late Dad used to complain...

[eno_]

To sum up: "We have no clue, so let's ban things leftists don't like."

More seriously, these "no regrets" approaches studiously avoid accounting for how many poor people starve because of a pseudoscience-based fetish about oil consumption in the developed nations.

[Centurion2000]

Eat more chili and cheese. Methane emissions are greenhouse gasses.

Seriously thought this article is full of crap. And of course gunowners and Christians are to blame.

[xJones]

These data show that the climate can switch abruptly from one mode—such as an ice age—to another, such as a milder interglacial period, climatologists say.

But that's impossible because it's the Greenhouse effect of the last 100 years or so that is warming our earth.....ARRGH! Don't switch theories on me now! (And nobody tell Al Gore.)

[tubebender]

Does this mean the glaciers may disappear from NY,WIS,ILL, ETC??? We must act to save the "chillen". Send money now to the CHILDRENS BALMY WEATHER FUND.

[KC_for_Freedom]

So far the only thing the global warming crowd has going for them is doubt and lack of good data and they attempt to fill in the gaps with their ridiculous scenarios

Quite right. But this article (about climate fluxuations in the past) is one of the main reasons global warming is junk science. If, regardless of what humans do, the climate can change in unexpected ways, and in levels far greater than the global warming models, then what should we do? One thing we should not do is follow every economic change recommended by the warmer alarmers.

[Prodigal Daughter]

All that money wasted on sunscreen.

[cebadams]

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change was created to disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climatic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.  It is not a reactionary group. They just complete a complete review off available scientific measurements of both polar ice caps and have this to say:

"The bottom line of all these studies thus seems to be that we really do not know if there are any long-term positive or negative mass balance changes occurring on either the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.  Hence, it is important that we continue to collect data in these two polar regions, so that someday we will be able to unambiguously discern whatever trends or non-trends are representative of reality.

In the mean time, don't buy into anything about these ice sheets that sounds either too good or too bad to be true.  It likely isn't."

[GOPJ]

I'll still bet on warmer summers and colder winters.

[Bigg Red]

Take no action based on vague fear. Do take actions that will be beneficial, whatever happens. These include measures to curb global warming.

But what if we're headed for a sudden cooling? Now I'm really confused....

[Prodigal Daughter]

A sudden Ice Age? In my mind, I'm picturing people screaming, "Run! Get out of the way! The glaciers are coming."

[Jack Wilson]

Predictions of a new ice age tend to made during the winter. Global warming returns to the headlines during the summer.