New Ice Age...what would we do?

[Cluricaun]

I don’t suppose that any of you have ever been here in Illinois in the winter. We’d never even notice the differance.

[LonesomePolecat]

@Blake

Agreed. There will be technological changes that will make the green revolution or eletcronics of the past 100 year slook like the inventio of the flint scraper.

There is a reason why the world population has doubled in 50 years and yet the standard of living is higher than at any stage inhuman history. That’s because technology manages to overcome any problom that we encounter.

Well, I don’t share your faith that we will always have wondrous new technologies to solve every problem. At the very least, you’re assuming that we will be able to sustain sufficient political and economic stability to allow dramatic new developments in science and technology, an assumption that strikes me as rather risky. It’s good to be optimistic, but you don’t go into a restaurant planning to pay for your meal with the pearls you’re going to find in your oysters.

As for high standards of living, a huge part of the human race still lives in conditions most Westerners would regard as crushing poverty.

[BlinkingDuck]

I was also under the impression that an ice age could happen extremely fast…like 'flipping a switch". There would be a few decades of the switch flipping back and forth (maybe) but then it would stick and the ice sheets form/advance very rapidly.

However, I am not an expert, just the impression from what I’ve read.

If the above is the case, then I agree with the posters about conflict. The northern idustrialized would put pressure on the 3rd world equitorial ones to give up room. When they didn’t agree/move fast enough/put too many conditions on it and the northern countries got desperate they would move right in, displacing/killing the native population and moving all they could of the population/wealth to it. There could be WWIII if the industrialized nations fight over the equatorial territory.

In addition (again from what I’ve read - no expert here) that an ice age in the equitorial regions is no picnic either. It would be extremely dry with little forests and much desert/savagna (sp?) that wouldn’t be the best crop/livestock land.

[Slypork]

@BlinkingDuck

I was also under the impression that an ice age could happen extremely fast…like 'flipping a switch". There would be a few decades of the switch flipping back and forth (maybe) but then it would stick and the ice sheets form/advance very rapidly.

However, I am not an expert, just the impression from what I’ve read.

If the above is the case, then I agree with the posters about conflict. The northern idustrialized would put pressure on the 3rd world equitorial ones to give up room. When they didn’t agree/move fast enough/put too many conditions on it and the northern countries got desperate they would move right in, displacing/killing the native population and moving all they could of the population/wealth to it. There could be WWIII if the industrialized nations fight over the equatorial territory.

In addition (again from what I’ve read - no expert here) that an ice age in the equitorial regions is no picnic either. It would be extremely dry with little forests and much desert/savagna (sp?) that wouldn’t be the best crop/livestock land.

It can be very fast, like within a couple of decades. According to Woods Hole

Thinking is centered around slow changes to our climate and how they will affect humans and the habitability of our planet. Yet this thinking is flawed: It ignores the well-established fact that Earth’s climate has changed rapidly in the past and could change rapidly in the future. The issue centers around the paradox that global warming could instigate a new Little Ice Age in the northern hemisphere.

Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily apparent in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One sees clear indications of long-term changes discussed above, with CO² and proxy temperature changes associated with the last ice age and its transition into our present interglacial period of warmth. But, in addition, there is a strong chaotic variation of properties with a quasi-period of around 1500 years. We say chaotic because these millennial shifts look like anything but regular oscillations. Rather, they look like rapid, decade-long transitions between cold and warm climates followed by long interludes in one of the two states.

The best known example of these events is the Younger Dryas cooling of about 12,000 years ago, named for arctic wildflower remains identified in northern European sediments. This event began and ended within a decade and for its 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder.

bolding mine. If we had events comparable to the Little Ice Age it would have a devastating effect on current politics and economic stability. Demand for fuel would make the idea of an open war for oil (as opposed to an implied war for oil) a more palatable prospect. People would be behind a government that was willing to invade Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Venezuela just to make sure they wouldn’t freeze during the winter. As glaciers descend further south, the timeframe for crop growth will decrease in the farmlands of the US, Europe and Asia. Equatorial regions, once considered Third World countries, would now be paradise. Disease will spread (the flu virus spreads more easily at lower temp and humidity).

[XT]

@BrainGlutton

Well, yes, it might – or, at any rate, throw off the schedule. Remember, the changes in the atmosphere caused by the Industrial Revolution are without precedent in Earth’s history.

:dubious: I can think of several periods where atmospheric changes have been much more pronounced than has happened since the Industrial Revolution. The very air we breath came about from one of these changes.

I don’t know if you meant this hyperbolically or if you meant it to be taken literally…but if the latter you are incorrect. While the changes to the atmosphere during the IR have been significant they aren’t ‘without precedent in Earth’s history’ by any stretch of the imagination.
As for throwing off the schedule of the next ice age…the guy on the show I was watching seemed to disagree with you. Myself, I don’t know…maybe you are right and GW will prevent or at least post-pone the next major ice age. Since an ice age would arguably be worst than the effects of GW most likely it seems a wash. At any rate, I just wanted to discuss what would happen to humans IF such a thing occurred…not necessarily if it’s plausible.

-XT

[jshore]

@Blake

Nope. All the evidence suggests that the change happens extremely rapidly. Just have a look at the last cold snap. Temperatures seem to have plummeted 2-3^oC in just a coople of centuries at most. In reality we don’t know how fast it actually happened, it may well have been in a matter of decades. But certainly claiming that it will take millenia for such changes to occur isn’t true.

It is probably worth making a distinction here between climate shifts that cause dramatic shifts in various locations but don’t have a large effect on the global temperature vs. climate shifts that have a large effect on the global temperature. It is my understanding (although I admit to being a bit hazy on it) that the evidence is that global temperature shifts are generally pretty gradual, e.g., on the order of about 0.1 C per century. The shifts that can happen rapidly are changes in local climates. It is thought that these might be due to things like sudden shifts in ocean currents, which change the distribution of temperature on the planet without dramatically changing the global average.

[marshmallow]

@BrainGlutton

Remember, the changes in the atmosphere caused by the Industrial Revolution are without precedent in Earth’s history.

This is just blatantly false and I am honestly surprised to see it coming from someone like you who is a believer in AGW. Don’t you know that a common refrain from AGW deniers is to point to geologic history and list examples of much more catastrophic events of extinction level status and then claim that AGW is small potatoes in comparison so we don’t need to worry? Aren’t you aware that we are, historically speaking, in a very low period of CO2 concentrations? Even if 50%+ of all life on Earth dies and the ocean is a giant acidic dead zone and the temperature at the equator goes up by 8 C…well, that still wouldn’t be unprecedented. Just par for the course.

What you’re supposed to say is that yes, it’s not as big a deal as these past events but we should be interested in maintaining the present atmospheric balance because we are acclimated to it and if it changes even a little it could be quite bad for us. That’s what the script says, anyway.

As for the OP, if the ice caps threaten civilization: hey, we have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Or space mirrors. No problem, eh?

[Squink]

@marshmallow

As for the OP, if the ice caps threaten civilization: hey, we have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Not anymore. The Damned Republicans want us to freeze our balls off:
Bush Orders Cuts in Nuclear Weapons

President Bush has approved “a significant reduction” in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, cutting it to less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War, the White House said Tuesday.

[RTFirefly]

What should we do in the face of a potential new ice age?

Dig up a shitload of coal and burn it, I expect. It’s working now, isn’t it?

[ParentalAdvisory]

@RTFirefly

What should we do in the face of a potential new ice age?

Dig up a shitload of coal and burn it, I expect. It’s working now, isn’t it?

Which may, or may not delay the inevitable. IMO, it would delay.

[BrainGlutton]

@xtisme

:dubious: I can think of several periods where atmospheric changes have been much more pronounced than has happened since the Industrial Revolution. The very air we breath came about from one of these changes.

I don’t know if you meant this hyperbolically or if you meant it to be taken literally…but if the latter you are incorrect. While the changes to the atmosphere during the IR have been significant they aren’t ‘without precedent in Earth’s history’ by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course there have been changes, some more profound, some less, but nothing like what we’re doing now, in terms of the content of the additions to the atmosphere and the pace of introduction. It’s entirely unique because it requires a sentient species with an industrial civilization to do it. And that means climatologists can’t go entirely by past examples in predicting its effects.

[dropzone]

@kniz

“Just a few years” is still to long to leave fresh flowers (or even wilted ones) in a mammoth’s stomach. :dubious:

You haven’t seen Kevin Trudeau’s infomercials? We are ALL carrying ten kilos* of undigested food that’s been stuck in our bowels for decades so I would imagine a mammoth would have TONNES* of it. Just don’t expect me to hang around when one comes in for cleansing.

• • Metric values used in preparation for the coming invasion of the Canadian hordes as advancing glaciers drive them from their homeland.

[XT]

@BrainGlutton

Of course there have been changes, some more profound, some less, but nothing like what we’re doing now, in terms of the content of the additions to the atmosphere and the pace of introduction. It’s entirely unique because it requires a sentient species with an industrial civilization to do it. And that means climatologists can’t go entirely by past examples in predicting its effects.

:dubious: Cite? CO2 and other green house gases are nothing new…and even the pace has been greater in the past afaik. The pace? There have been times when radical changes to the content of the atmosphere have occured in very short periods of time.

And why does it matter if it’s the byproduct of an organism or if its the byproduct of industrialization…or if it’s a shift in climate or whatever? The only thing unique is that instead of it being an unconscious byproduct or natural shift in climate that triggers atmospheric change it is being done deliberately. So what?

-XT

[jshore]

@xtisme

:dubious: Cite? CO2 and other green house gases are nothing new…and even the pace has been greater in the past afaik. The pace? There have been times when radical changes to the content of the atmosphere have occured in very short periods of time.

Actually, I don’t think this can really be resolved either way because we only have the sort of good high-resolution data from ice core measurements for CO2 going back 800,000. So, what we can say is that the current CO2 levels…and I believe also the rate of change…are unprecedented in the past 800,000 years. Going back further than that, we know there have been times when the levels were much higher but I don’t think we know much about the rates of change.

[XT]

Out of curiosity, why only 800,000 years? I thought some of the ice has been about for a couple of million at least.

I understand what you are saying there…that there is no way to know. Again, my understanding of this is at the Discovery Channel level. From what I’ve seen, there have been many periods of radical change (like during the ending of the Cryogenian period or say transition from the Permian to Triassic. Hopefully I’m not butchering these names too badly and I’m recalling them right).

I was simply saying that the current period, at least to date, is far from ‘unprecedented’ in Earths history…which is what BG was stating.

-XT

[jshore]

@xtisme

Out of curiosity, why only 800,000 years? I thought some of the ice has been about for a couple of million at least.

I wasn’t able to find a good answer to this. Here is about the best that I can find:

Well so far we’ve gone back 800,000 years. I think there is older ice around in the Antarctic, and we’d like to look at it but that’s as old as we’ve found so far.

[XT]

Thanks for the article jshore! I found the final paragraph especially interesting:

Eric - There are certainly natural cycles in the climate and nobody’s claiming that all climate change is man made. And in a certain way it almost doesn’t matter whether the change is man made or natural. If we were coming out of an ice age you might be living in a village in what’s now the English Channel. The fact is that all climate change is pretty bad for people. What people have done in the past is to move to places that suit their lifestyle better. Unfortunately now we have a very crowded planet and there’s really nowhere for people to move to. So we’re going to have to deal with this in a different way.

I suppose it goes the other way to. If we DO have another ice age we are just going to have to deal with it the best way we can a few thousand or 10’s of thousands of years down the pike. It’s the huge population that makes climate shift so potentially deadly I think…but whether man made or natural climate shift seems to be something that happens fairly regularly on Earth, so we need to figure out ways to deal with it.

-XT