Ice Age coming...

[dmp]

While watching The Day After Tomorrow, last night something stuck out to me.

There is a scene where Dennis Quaid is in a tent w/ another man, and they are discussing the Current Ice Age which is happening, and they mention nothing like this has happened for 10,000 years. The question is asked "We can survive this, but what can we do to prevent it from happening again?"

"We have to learn from our mistakes..."


Now...I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a bright guy...but...Since this was the SECOND ice age in 10,000 years, what do 'our mistakes' have to do with anything? We were not burning Fossil Fuels before the FIRST Ice Age. We didn't use Freon in our Cars...we weren't cutting down rain forrests, etc.

Should his line have been "Well, this goes to show that if the Planet wants an Ice Age to happen, it will happen in spite of us."?

 

[dilloduck]

Hey---is this one of those disaster movies that you can make fun of all the way through or is it too----liberal?

 

[CSM]

Hey---is this one of those disaster movies that you can make fun of all the way through or is it too----liberal?

Didn't see the movie but read the book based on the movie...the book was run through with tree hugger doctrine and mantra...

 

[dmp]

I'm not trying to shift this into a review of the movie - but to point a question...if we did nothing to 'harm' the evironment 10K years ago, what's to say anything we are doing now will stop or accelerate the 'next' ice age?


The movie isn't too awfully Green, btw...it's got a neat story line about a father's love for his son.

 

[dilloduck]

I'm not trying to shift this into a review of the movie - but to point a question...if we did nothing to 'harm' the evironment 10K years ago, what's to say anything we are doing now will stop or accelerate the 'next' ice age?


The movie isn't too awfully Green, btw...it's got a neat story line about a father's love for his son.

Thanks---I might enjoy it then (thanks for helping me out with the "green" term).

 

[Zhukov]

I'm not trying to shift this into a review of the movie - but to point a question...if we did nothing to 'harm' the evironment 10K years ago, what's to say anything we are doing now will stop or accelerate the 'next' ice age?

Well correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there an 'evil' Vice President in this movie who looks suspiciously like Dick Cheney. That's what I heard at any rate.

I haven't seen the movie but I'll bet you're right; it's probably got more tree-huggin' liberalism than good science.

 

[Isaac Brock]

While watching The Day After Tomorrow, last night something stuck out to me.

There is a scene where Dennis Quaid is in a tent w/ another man, and they are discussing the Current Ice Age which is happening, and they mention nothing like this has happened for 10,000 years. The question is asked "We can survive this, but what can we do to prevent it from happening again?"

"We have to learn from our mistakes..."


Now...I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a bright guy...but...Since this was the SECOND ice age in 10,000 years, what do 'our mistakes' have to do with anything? We were not burning Fossil Fuels before the FIRST Ice Age. We didn't use Freon in our Cars...we weren't cutting down rain forrests, etc.

Should his line have been "Well, this goes to show that if the Planet wants an Ice Age to happen, it will happen in spite of us."?

Well I can tell you what I understand from my Geology courses. Ice ages come and go fairly frequently along the geologic timescale. They have seemed to roughly correspond to what are referred to as Milankovic cycles.

Milankovic cycles describe the orbital variation of the earth due to both 2-D and 3-D inclination with the sun. While geologically this is contreversal for ice ages before 100000, it does provide a fairly good theory for our last ice ages. When the sun is closer to the earth, there is a prelonger warm period called an interglacial period, when it is far, it's a glacial period. The warming occurs becuase the sun warms the soil and air, but that is not the only described mechanism. Warming of the soil released CO2 and methane which produce our greenhouse gases proving a positive feedback look for temperature change. When the sun is far, or when most of the CO2/methane has been released (there is some disagreement to what is the main mechanism), a glaciation period occurs.

The last glacial period ended about 15,000 years ago, but the ice wasn't fully melted till much later. So currently we are in an interglacial period.

However, the main problem does not have to do with the change itself. Change happens as d pointed out. Nor is the problem the current "high" temperature. The problem is speed of variation. Usually climate changes over periods of many hundreds if thousands of years to achieve the ~1C/100 year difference we now are observing. We have never recorder a climate change this quick before in our history, nor glacial ice-core records.

So then what's the deal? Well if CO2 is indeed part of the feedback loop, then we're just feeding an interglaciation period and helping it occur faster.

I'd give a link, but there are so many resources on the net. A casual search will probably give you the scientific theory.

 

[Dave]

Who knows what happened 10,000 years ago, people today still can't even perdict next's weeks weather.

I do believe though that the actions humans are doing today towards the planet are not making for a healthy enviroment.

 

[Merlin1047]

While watching The Day After Tomorrow, last night something stuck out to me.

There is a scene where Dennis Quaid is in a tent w/ another man, and they are discussing the Current Ice Age which is happening, and they mention nothing like this has happened for 10,000 years. The question is asked "We can survive this, but what can we do to prevent it from happening again?"

"We have to learn from our mistakes..."


Now...I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a bright guy...but...Since this was the SECOND ice age in 10,000 years, what do 'our mistakes' have to do with anything? We were not burning Fossil Fuels before the FIRST Ice Age. We didn't use Freon in our Cars...we weren't cutting down rain forrests, etc.

Should his line have been "Well, this goes to show that if the Planet wants an Ice Age to happen, it will happen in spite of us."?

If another ice age does develop William Joyce and Dave should be happy because then everything will be white.

 

[Dave]

If another ice age does develop William Joyce and Dave should be happy because then everything will be white.

A Ice age would be racist because blacks could not sleep in the streets and parks.