Global warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists
By Cher Thornhill
Last updated at 5:06 PM on 13th November 2008



It has plagued scientists and politicians for decades, but scientists now say global warming is not the problem.

We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim.

British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.

Most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England could be covered in 3,000ft-thick ice fields.

The expanses could reach 6,000ft from Aberdeen to Kent – towering above Ben Nevis, Britain’s tallest mountain.

And what's more, the experts blame the global change on falling - rather than climbing - levels of greenhouse gases.

Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide – could actually be the key to averting the chill.

The warning, published in the authoritative journal Nature, is based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth’s shifting orbit.


The Big chill: Experts warn that 3,000ft ice sheets could cover most of Britain

The Earth has seen dramatic climate fluctuations – veering between cold and warm extremes - over the past three million years, the researchers say.

And changes in the Earth’s orbit and slowly falling levels of carbon dioxide are the cause.

The team says we are approaching a turning point, in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years, which will lead to the new ice sheets smothering much of Europe, Asia and South America.

The theory, which is based on computer models, suggests ice sheets will also slash sea levels by up to 300m, so Russia and Alaska will be connected by land.

The North Sea will become part of a huge glacier stretching from Holland and Scandinavia to the Russian Far East.


Stark: Computer modelling suggests 'a rapid transition into the glacial state,' the researchers say

Professor Crowley said the stark findings do not mean we should stop fighting warming.

But he urged: ‘Don’t push the panic button.’

‘There’s no excuse for saying “we’ve got to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,”’ he told Reuters.

‘Geologically it’s tomorrow, but we have lots of time to argue about the appropriate level of greenhouse gases.’

simplefrench wrote:

Perhaps but explain me why glaciers melt in europe ?. And a lot. Example France

Earth would be heading to a freeze without CO2 emissions

Scheduled shifts in Earth's orbit should plunge the planet into an enduring Ice Age thousands of years from now but the event will probably be averted because of man-made greenhouse gases, scientists said Wednesday.

They cautioned, though, that this news is not an argument in favour of global warming, which is driving imminent and potentially far-reaching damage to the climate system.

Earth has experienced long periods of extreme cold over the billions of years of its history.

The big freezes are interspersed with "interglacial" periods of relative warmth, of the kind we have experienced since the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 years ago.

These climate swings have natural causes, believed to be rooted particularly in changes in Earth's orbit and axis that, while minute, have a powerful effect on how much solar heat falls on the planet.

Two researchers built a high-powered computer model to take a closer look at these intriguing phases of cooling and warmth.

In addition to the planetary shifts, they also factored in levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), found in tiny bubbles in ice cores, that provide an indicator of temperature spanning hundreds of thousands of years.

They found dramatic swings in climate, including changes when Earth flipped from one state to the other in a relatively short time, said one of the authors, geoscientist Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

These shifts, called "bifurcations," appear to happen in abrupt series, which is counter-intuitive to the idea that the planet cools or warms gradually.

"You had a big change about a million years ago, then a second change around 650,000 years ago, when you had bigger glaciations, then 450,000 years ago, when you started to get more repeated glaciations," Thomas told AFP.

"What's also interesting is that the inter-glaciations also became warmer."

According to the model, published in the British journal Nature by Crowley and physicist William Hyde of Toronto University, Canada, the next "bifurcation" would normally be due between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now.

The chill would induce a long, stable period of glaciation in the mid-latitudes, smothering Europe, Asia and North America to about 45-50 degrees latitude with a thick sheet of ice.

However, there is now so much CO2 in the air, as a result of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation, that this adds a heat-trapping greenhouse effect that will offset the cooling impacts of orbital shift, said Crowley.

"Even the level that we have there now is more than sufficient to reach that critical state seen in the model," he said. "If we cut back [on CO2] some, that would probably still be enough."

In September, a scientific research consortium called the Global Carbon Project (GCP) said that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 reached 383 parts per million (ppm) in 2007, or 37 percent above pre-industrial levels.

Present concentrations are "the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years," the report said.

Crowley cautioned those who would seize on the new study to say "'carbon dioxide is now good, it prevents us from walking the plank into this deep glaciation'."

"We don't want to give people that impression," he said. "(...) You can't use this argument to justify [man-made] global warming."

Last year, the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that greenhouse-gas emissions were already inflicting visible changes to the climate system, especially on ice and snow.

Left unchecked, climate change could inflict widespread drought and flooding by the end of the century, translating into hunger, homelessness and other stresses for millions of people.

© 2008 AFP

Dewi_Sant wrote:

please notice the good lord left his garden of Wales out of it

frederick wrote:

GreyUhu,

People on the Left like simplefrench are only going to give you a political answer, not a scientific one. The "facts" that they have stored in their minds are like a rolodex of cards with talking points and politically correct slogans flipping as the need arises, with no real logic connecting them.

Simple asks "Perhaps but explain me why glaciers melt in europe ?. And a lot. Example France"

simplefrench wrote:

PS: you know Kilimangaro ? the highest mountain of all africa ?

They had always eternal snows. Now,it is almost not anymore the case. The snow melts in the summit.

Global Warming Not Behind Kilimanjaro Meltdown
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 11 June 2007 05:14 pm ET

It's bad science to use Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro as a poster child for global warming’s nefarious effects, two researchers say, pointing to other mechanisms causing the melt of the tropical glacier at the mountain’s summit.

Kilimanjaro’s ice has been melting away for more than a century, and most of that melt occurred before 1953, prior to the period where science begins to be conclusive about atmospheric warming in that region, according to Philip Mote of the University of Washington and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Also, as a tropical glacier, the processes governing ice melt on Kilimanjaro (located in Tanzania) are different than those on other mid-latitude glaciers located closer to the Earth’s poles.

These other mid-latitude glaciers become warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, while the air around Kilimanjaro’s 19,340-foot peak (the tallest in Africa) is generally well below freezing.

Instead, melt on Kilimanjaro is caused by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures—essentially the glacier gets a giant case of moisture-sapping freezer burn.

In an article in the July-August edition of American Scientist, Mote and Kaser also cited decreased snowfall in the area as a driver of melt because bright, white snow reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere; if there’s not new snow, sunlight gets absorbed and melts the ice.

frederick wrote:

The warming trend stopped in 1998. That was a decade ago.

GreyUhu wrote:

[q=Dewi_Sant]please notice the good lord left his garden of Wales out of it