By interrupting oceanic streams like the Gulf Stream, Global Warming could very well cause another Ice Age. What would be the effects of a new Ice Age on human civilisation?

Well, we really are all doomed. Even if we learn to live forever, it leaves us in a Universe facing heat death from entropy.

Here’s some good data about the accuracy of current climate models when applied to previous climate cycels between peak temperatures and ice ages. Only models that are accurate at predicting what we already know happened in the past (a process of verification called hindcasting) are used to predict the future of climate variations, so we have every reason to expect these models to be correct.

Searching for serious science that claims that we should worry more about an ice age than runaway global warming, the first reference I found is this from Doug L. Hoffman. Only problem is, he’s not a climatologist. He’s not a scientist of any sort. He’s a business tycoon and unsuccessful congressional candidate running under the Conservative Party banner. Also, the article he cites in the peer reviewed Journal, Science is available only to subscribers for $310 per year unless you are student, post doctoral candidate, or professional member, in which case it’s still $99 for the digital version only. So who knows what that article really says?

Aside from obvious denier sites I find nothing indicating that what the IPCC and climatologists are telling us their models warn of is actually backwards, and we should all be stocking up on space heaters. What makes this cycle different from past CO2/temperature cycles is that never before in Earth’s history were humans adding to the atmosphere 35 billion metric tons of CO2 and ramping up each year. Even with massive shifts in ocean currents, which are a good bet, that does noting to mitigate the continually increasing greenhouse effect of human activity.

The discovery of chaos theory was largely based on the fact that multiple iterations of climate models given trivial differences in initial conditions diverged so rapidly and dramatically that no long term predictions could be made with any certainty whatsoever. I have worked with models like this in the past and this is 100% true they are worthless except in closed controlled systems such as major rivers. Since we can’t trust the climate models we can only STOP DOING DAMAGE to our ecosystem as a precaution. Politics has taken this over and it appears like their only answer is not to really do anything about it except on the surface but to eventually tax the crap out of us. I think we can see there are climate problems brewing. I’ll be honest co2 is unconvincing to me as a cause it’s only ~.04% of our atmo of which we have likely added ~1/10 of a percent of the .04%. Water vapor and methane are more active greenhouse agents and comprise a larger amount by a factor of ten. I don’t think we really know for sure why we are seeing climate change. That should not stop us from living cleaner though. I’m tired of the eco-trendy folks who dictate this and that and don’t realize that the electric car thy are driving gets it’s power from mostly coal and most of the coal plants are horribly inefficient and to top that off the transmission grid is inefficient as well. By the time you put the torque on the motor who knows how many pounds hydrocarbons have been burned. Gas is probably much more efficient than electric for this reason. Hybrids may have a slight advantage but you have to look at the batteries which ARE NOT CLEAN or green at the moment but recyclable in many cases. The impact of the manufacture of the batteries vs oil needs to be looked at also. Shutting down coal plants is not bad just so they are not replaced with nuclear power. I think we have proven time and time again that we are not mature enough to handle the massive responsibility of doing this safely. We don’t have “green” power anywhere near the amounts needed to power our lifestyles. This is the root of the problem that we don’t like to hear. Skeptics and deniers are two animals the term “denier “is a political ploy to demonize anyone who may happen to think differently by insinuating that they know differently but still deny what they know for profit or whatever. When people think in the left-right dichotomy and let politicians lead the arguments we all loose in one way or another.

Fuck, it’s gonna be cold.
what? no short answers?

Fuck, it’s gonna be so damn fucking cold we’re gonna freeze to death!

@ARE_you_kidding_me If climate models are so deeply flawed, why are they able to model past climate changes so accurately? As I noted above they all go through a testing process of hindcasting before they can be trusted to model today’s long-term climate change. I wonder if you are not thinking of weather forecasting models, in which minor stochastic variations do result in dramatic and as-yet-unpredictable outcomes over the short range.

Also, even though the amount of CO2 humans are adding to the atmosphere each year is considerably less than that added by nature, it is a constant and increasing input that nature has now way of removing. It’s upsetting the balance. Look at how atmospheric CO2 and temperature have varied from 1850 to today. Here’s how the two were linked in the past, from 140 thousand years ago to 90 thousand years ago.

If it warms Earth enough to release any significant part of the 1.4 trillions tons of methane and methane clathrates currently frozen in tundras and the cold depths of Earth’s oceans, all bets are off. No model has yet fully addressed what this would do, but atmospheric methane has been increasing since the dawn of the industrial age and that increase appears to be ramping up today.

adding that amount every year, year after year, has resulted in this curve of atmospheric CO2. Notice how closely

They are not really able to without making tweaks here and there, it’s pretty easy to make past data look good with models but predicting the future is still the same, it’s chaos it will diverge. There are just too many changing variables and I don’t think we really know/understand them all. It’s the only tool in the toolbox though so we do the best we can with what we’ve got. We are killing our forests in the third world and that is reducing the ability of the earth to reabsorb this excess CO2 we are creating and even if we did not add co2 the act of deforesting alone is probably plenty to offset the climate balance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are not at least part of the cause I just don’t think we really know what is happening and why. I tend to think that the methane you are speaking of is likely a more reasonable explanation especially since it is a positive feedback loop. With the vast amounts of it locked away in ice and in the ocean floor any disturbance of it could be catastrophic. Co2 over geologic time does not track temperature very well, on the short term levels seem to rise after we see warming so it’s probably an indicator of warming not necessarily the cause of the warming.

Climate over the short term is subject to chaos, but much less so over long, geologic time. If you even get an inkling of the climate forcings interacting with it, the cycle of ice ages and warming between is remarkably stable. The few times it has diverged from that pattern, extraordinary forcing elements such as massive volcanism or the strike of a huge asteroid were at work.

See the link above for how CO2 and temperature tracked over a 50,000 year period. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If it’s concentrations build up in the atmosphere and the natural scrubbing mechanisms of nature can’t remove it at the rate it’s accumulating, why would you think it would NOT impact temperature?

I completely agree that deforestation is making what might be a containable problem an out-of-control one. On all other points, I disagree, and 97.1% of the climatologists who publish in peer reviewed journals also disagree.

As much as we would like to we cannot model future mid-term climate, scientifically it is not possible. We can make a guess and that’s it. Long term trends like in the millions of years you are nearly correct, there are some basic trends but we can’t predict the future based on them, there is still too much variance. Predicting future CHANGE based on basic assumptions of initial conditions is absolutely subject to chaos. Having been a part of the process for writing and reviewing scientific papers in the past I know for a fact that in certain fields and specific issues politics indeed plays a role. You don’t get anything past a handful of gatekeepers. Science is not immune to corruption from outside influence. Politics pollutes the scientific process and it has done so with this. Follow the money here. The only thing that I’m saying is we don’t really know what is causing it. Co2 is a convenient scapegoat because there is money to be made and political power to be gained in its regulation.

@ARE_you_kidding_me OK, I will take up this inane challenge. If politics prevails, what drives politics? Is it not money? Why is it that the $40 trillion per year Fossil Fuel industry is powerless to stem the tide of misinformation that the $250 billion clean and renewable energy market. The obvious answer is it’s absurd to suggest that the world’s oil, coal and gas billionaires are being outflanked by the likes of Al Gore.

@ETpro They stand to profit from both sides, that’s the hook. I think people get lost in the debate over climate change and often fail to see where the debate originates and is leading to. They are setting up a future where not only will they be able to charge more for their products but there will be tax revenue and political power to be gained from its regulation. This is a good example of probable collusion between industry and politics. Most of the energy companies are already positioning themselves to control the “renewable” energy sources as well.

I would expect energy companies to do that. It would be insanity not to.

It looks like nobody but the two of is are following this anymore. I’m going to agree to disagree where we’re divided, salute what we agree on, and move on.

Yeah, I expected this. It’s always where these discussions end. Eventually we’ll know what the truth is and hopefully we will have taken the proper steps.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Roger that.

Ok, globe warming and a new ice age. Well when the new ice age will comes the civilisation of the entire earth as we know it will come to its knees during the ice age. It is will be cold and it will be a horrible living condition to live in but, we wont have to worry about it because by the time cold comes no one will expect it. They will be doing something outside and freeze to death before they get in or they will be inside doing something and the power goes out and they go outside to see what is going on. They would possibly call the power company and get no answer so sooner or later they will freeze inside a house or outside a house.

Hi, @Dreams and welcome to Fluther. It’s unlikely that the changes that global warming is causing right now will trigger an early return of an ice age. However, ice ages do occur on a cyclical basis and no matter how badly we mangle the Earth’s natural greenhouse gas concentrations in our atmosphere, the Earth will eventually correct for that after the effects kill off enough of the human population, and we will experience another ice age. We’ve survived many, and there’s no reason to fear that with our technology advances, we can’t survive one more. I’d place a new ice age low on my list of things to obsess about.