Discover's ice age talk is chilling

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | Thursday, August 22, 2002 | Bill Steigerwald

[Willie Green]

You probably haven

[big'ol_freeper]

So am I toast from global warming or an ice cube from the new ice age?

[M Kehoe]

On a scale of what most likely will kill me, global warming or global cooling are at the bottom.

5.56mm

[dalereed]

The chicken little mantra of global warming has run it's course so the new ice age that they wore out in the 50s and 60s is going to be the new threat since most of the population is too young to have been around the last time, are already dead, or their brains no longer function.

[Larry Lucido]

You'll be a toasty ice-man.

[jigsaw]

I once placed a TIME magazine cover on the bottom of my bird cage and within 24-hours the bird had died of constipation.

Given its content, TIME will eventually perish for the same reason.

[Salman]

!!!EXTRA!!! !!!EXTRA!!!
Stop the presses!

GLOBAL WARMING CAUSING NEW ICE AGE

We're all going to die and it's all your fault. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In other news, Monica is getting another makeover...

[rockprof]

After 60 pages, there is a little sidebar on Bjorn Lomborg, best-selling author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" who argues, as the late Julian Simon did, that worries about deforestation, species extinction and global warming are deliberately exaggerated and based on bad science.

I read the article and saw it for the nonsense it was right away. A lot of people, unfortunately, uncritically believe anything they read in a magazine. Never read Lomborg's book. Anyone here read it? Is it worth getting a hold of?

[alloysteel]

So what happened to global warming? I was hoping all the glaciers would melt, and the polar icecaps would float out to sea, exposing millions of acres of new lands in a temperate heat zone, and general greening of the entire planet. But NOOOOOO. Now the warming theory is being kicked out the door, and we shall all have to huddle near the Equator, shuttling back and forth on the narrow band of open water between the polar ice floes.

[Ditter]

Come on ice age! ***** swelter swelter **** sweat sweat ******* (Those little marks are snow flakes)

[tortoise]

Actually, this article is a really poor presentation of very legitimate science that is coming out of far more places thanP��*Krary to media appearances, scientists in Europe and Asia have been all over this catastrophic cooling trend for some time, and the Woods Hole guys are late to the party. IMHO and the opinion of many other scientists I actually respect, this theory has way more validity than the global warming hysteria. Also, unlike global warming, the models they are using have some predictive value and there is evidence that the transition is already in motion, evidence that is well above the noise floor as such things go (unlike global warming). The exact impact on the climate is speculative, but not totally unfounded either.

The climate has never been stable, and I've subscribed to the rapid cooling trend model as the best hypothesis for some time now. You can dismiss it, but if you had to pick a team to play for, this would be my choice.

[BenLurkin]

Or as a physicist once said regarding an "average" statistic: If you have one foot in a bucket of boiling water and one foot in a bucket of ice water, on average you should be comfortable.

[Politically Correct]

I read the article and saw it for the nonsense it was right away. A lot of people, unfortunately, uncritically believe anything they read in a magazine. Never read Lomborg's book. Anyone here read it? Is it worth getting a hold of?

Yes, an entertaining and fact filled read.

[jonascord]

Does this mean I won't have to go all the way from Oklahoma to Colorado to go skiing? We've got plenty of hills, here, and it has always struck me as a waste that we get about enough snow to screw up traffic for a few days each winter...

[blam]

The 'Little Ice Age' was from 1300-1855AD.

[Mike Darancette]

The shutdown of the Gulf Stream is a real event whose results can be historically documented. If Gulf Stream flow decreases the east coast of N. America could get a climate like Kamchatka and Europe much worse.

[another cricket]

So am I toast from global warming or an ice cube from the new ice age?

With those ears and short coat you had better either be praying for global warming or be moving south.

a.cricket

[DentsRun]

The notion of another Little Ice Age is intriguing. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania (and praying for deep snows and long winters) I couldn't understand why it never seemed very cold or very snowy. I'd look at the paintings of Grandma Moses and Currier & Ives and see all these big snowdrifts and frozen ponds and horse drawn sleighs and wonder what happened to all the snow? At the time I'd never heard of the Little Ice Age that gripped Europe and the United states between 1500 and 1900. All I knew was that I'd hear a song like "Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's house we go..." and they'd be talking about taking a sleigh ride through the woods for Thanksgiving dinner and I'd look out my front window on Thanksgiving and there never was any snow. We were lucky to get it by Christmas. In that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware his coat is shown navigating through chunks of ice. I've seen etchings of the Thames in London, frozen over so solid it was filled with small shops and market stalls.

[Publius6961]

Wait. The above description, facts and effects of the coming ice age — taken with care from Discover magazine´s September cover story, "The New Ice Age" — are accurate.

I love science fiction.
Only not today.

Anybody who would make a prediction (as a flat statement) on the subject is a certifiable idiot ---- I don't care what publication it's published in.

The main characteristic of climate over the entire history of the planet is its constant, complex and infinite variablility.

[Publius6961]

Never read Lomborg's book. Anyone here read it? Is it worth getting a hold of?

Yes and yes.
The most convincing, and intellectually satisfying books are those where the author sets out to prove or compile documentation for the opposite of what he actually finds.