The End of the Last Ice Age

Avocet · November 21, 2004, 8:35pm

Around 12,000 years ago the ice started retreating very rapidly from northern Europe and North America. At about the same time, one spring, what was probably the last mammoths were almost suddenly deep frozen in northern Siberia.

The end of the Ice Age is ‘accepted’ fact. The evidence for the mammoths consists, among other things, of a mammoth recently (30 years ago?) found coming out of the base of a glacier, it’s meat being fresh enough to be eaten by wolves, with buttercups in it’s mouth.

The only ways I can conceive of these two events occurring is that either the poles of the planet shifted or part of the crust of the earth moved 1,000 miles or so overnight. It occurs to me that if either have happened once they may happen again. This could quite upset my day. Any other ideas?

Future_Man · November 22, 2004, 7:49pm

the next ice age that WILL come VERY soon will be a result of the stopping of the atlantic conveyor, a heat mover and dispenser that moves equatorial heat into the northern hemisphere.

the water in the atlantic off the coast of south america by the equator gets real hot, swishes up some hurricanes and sends tons and tons of heat north with an ocean current traveling on the surface that heats up america and, to a larger extent, england and iceland. english and icelandic beaches are at the same lattitude as polar bears in canada.

when the water is sent up there to the north sea whereabouts, it gets cold and sinks. there is a current on the bottom of the ocean that starts up there and sends cold water underneath the hot back to the equator for reheating. this spreads out the climatic extremes over a larger, more temperately bearable area. i imagine there are similar currents elsewhere.

the ten hottest years on record have all happened since 1987 with that pestering annoyance called global warming. nobody cares about global warming because they think the problem is that the world will get so hot that we cant live, but that seems to far away and people like the tropical climate in the meantime. it wouldnt surprise me if plenty of people didnt care if global warming ‘happened’ because they think well just never see winter again.

what GW does is melt ice. theres a ton of ice called the greenland ice cap. this ice melts and flows south, directly in the opposite direction of the atlantic conveyor. it is theorized that the conveyor is slowing down and will stop. if this happens, hot weather around the equator will stay around the equator and not distribute up about the northern areas. new york and london and neighbors will look like greenland, not green.

it is theorized through analysis of ice drill cylinder things 3 miles deep that the temperature has changed 20 degress in 20 years at some point in the past, assumedly because of the stopping of the atlantic conveyor for some reason.

all that scientists are sure of is that if the coveyor stopped, its a big ice age for western civilization particularly, global warming is causing something that may slow the conveyor, and this particular climatic disaster, if it happens, will happen much faster than climate changes are typically assumed to happen.

our fate rests on an array of buoys recently put in place that will detect if the atlantic conveyor is slowing. i think it will take a little while to map out the patterns of its movement and whatnot before we actually know whats happening to it. if it is slowing, we either leave our favorite cities behind or start building sky-igloos. if its not, its only a small matter of time unless we get our fossil fuel energy elsewhere.

Avocet · November 25, 2004, 2:55pm

I take your point, understand and agree that it will get very cold in the N. Atlantic area. However I don’t see an Ice sheet as far south as London. And it still leaves those mammoths strolling around in a Siberian spring.

zenofeller · November 26, 2004, 2:00pm

future man, you mix truths and errors.

It is true that global warming is occuring at this point, even if you dont offer much proof. not much proof is needed, from my point of view, because i have known the matter independently. indeed ice drilling has shown changes in patterns of seasonal temperatures at both poles, and a rise in average temperatures. indeed various measurements, of the radiant properties of the ionosphere, of the surface of ice at the poles, of many other things show that overall the air temperature is on an average on a rise.

there exists even a model to explain this phenomena on an energy-balance approach, namely the green house effect. at least in its main points, this is correct.

however, we do not know at the present time precisely how normal this is for earth. remember we are essentially just visitors here. we didnt build the thing. we have only been to any meaningfull purpose studying it for a few thousand years, and that is really exagerating alot. to force an analogy, is like trying to predict if somebody likes orange juice by watching them for a bit under 200 miliseconds. a difficult task at best. and yes, to decide wether they like orange juice not wether they are criminals, because wether the temperature of the atmosphere on earts is an average 15 degrees or 30 degrees is entirely a minute point from the earth perspective. it would just as happily go about its business as the moon does, and the moon doesnt even have an air temperature. because it doesnt have an atmosphere, at all. its not like the earth will even notice if suddenly it cooks all of us into nice pot steak. and yes, under a second, considering the relative duration of the planet earth, a millenia or two are about what a fifth of a second is to a human being.

that aside, what you say about the atlantic conveyor is corect, in as much that it does move heat (not tons of it tho, heat is not measured in tons, it is measured in joules) from the warm south to the cold north. that is a classic convection current. what you do not understand (and the conveyor belt metahpore, in fact a very bad metaphore, hides from you) is what came first. see a conveyor belt uses the energy of an external engine to move about bulks from here to there. if the engine stops, the belt stops and the bulks sit. which is what you seem to be thinking could happen.

however, the convection current in the atlantic is not a conveyor belt. it is the very engine. it moves BECAUSE there is a difference of temperature (as any thermic engine works). anytime there is a difference of temperature, it moves. the greater the difference of temperature, the faster it moves. so it can not stop, unless the two ends arrive at the same temperature. but if one side gets hotter and another stays at current temperature the thing will move faster. so what you talk about, the stopping of the convection in spite of temeperatures reaching extreme differences is plain impossible, and contradicts thermodynamics.

what could happen (and what the buoys are really there to determine) is that the current could change its path. since the ocean is big, and its shores even bigger, for whatever arcane reasons of thermodynamics, the current might chose another starting and destination point. which is not at all a problem from the climatic perspective, because if it changes, it can only change to convey EVEN MORE heat. it cant change to convey less, or at least not significantly less. however, from a human perspective this could be catastrophic, because you can’t just move london a few thousand miles arround just because the climate decided to.

this is what is ment by climate change due to global warming, not the fact that the planet will freeze or cook in any total sense, just that whats temperate and whats hot and whats freezing might get shifted around. if for instance the climates of us and canada were to simply switch (which from a global-conservation position is relatively possible) this would present a serious problem for the 1/4 billion people that are in a possition now, that if they want to continue their lives as they did a year ago, they have to move, with the buildings and roads and telegraph poles, a couple thousand miles north. or maybe south.

Future_Man · November 28, 2004, 6:18am

i dont know, but i think if it changed direction, it would take a while. in the meantime, the current could slow down due to the sudden increased heat at the poles. if we all lived at the poles, wed be shitting our pants and boycotting suv’s.

the temperature on earth has changed 1 degree or 1 degree a year i forget. the point is its mainly not noticeable at temperate climates. the problem is that it IS noticeable at the poles. the arctic winter comes weeks earlier, they are actually worried about polar bears not getting enough fat for hibernation. they have most certainly documented alarming temperature and seasonal changes.

if they worry about that, theyve been worrying about abnormal glacial melting for a while. if the earth created this problem on its own, that will surprise many scientists who say things like CO that we spew is a greenhouse gas for example. physics says that it is.

i do remember specifically hearing the documentary refer to the slowing of the current. without a doubt, the current would re-establish itself somewhere, if not in the same exact path as i would guess. the problem is that it wont do this fast enough to prevent an ice age that will disrupt us, since earth moves super slow as you say.

where does the evidence come from that says we arent actually hurting the environment specifically via greenhouse gases? link please? are they funded by the republican party?

zenofeller · November 28, 2004, 10:33am

since it seems you cant be bothered to actually read and understand my post, here is in summary :

we cant at the same time overheat and have an ice age. pick one.
the atlantic current will not slow down but accelerate inasmuch as the present differences of temperatures rise
3.the likely way you could get lower temperatures in currently populated zone is if the atlantic current changes its path

i never said we are or are not hurting the earth. i doubt we can hurt the earth seeing its this bulk of amorphous matter. you propose the equivalent of hurting a rock, only much bigger. hurt a rock for me and i will discuss the matter further.

inasmuch as you talk about we hurting ourselves by terraforming the earth in a damaging way for us, this may be so or not, i do not know, and you offer no good proof. the objection is twofold,

that the earth might be getting warmer by itself, as part of some mechanism that it is part of, and we are to small to even grasp let alone influence. in short, this might be normal evolution for earth. consider an ant pushing at a stick that you pick up and throw away. while it is unquestionable the ant was pushing the stick, it thinking “oh god how powerfull i am, look how far i can thwor a stick” would be nothing short of ridiculous.
that while we have definitely an influence on the total balance of greenhouse gases, it might be that the earth has mechanisms to account for those. consider the earth is also a producer of greenhouse gases all by itself (each volcano for instance is the equivalent of a very big town with respect to emissions). preciselly how important greenhouse gases are in the earth energy balance is still a matter of conjecture. we know they have an impact, but dont realise just yet how important it is, relatively.

the problem with watching documentaries, letting your (otherwise admirable) imagination go, then filtering all that through some schematic or other that would be your own system of thought has for effect this horrible situation in which second hand facts (as they are presented in documentaries intended for the public) mixed with second hand rules (as they would be when they are used out of context) results in second hand conclusions, namely ideas such as “a convection current might stop in spite of temperature differences increasing”; “global warming will bring about an ice age”. the fact that co and especially co2 are greenhouse gases (you did mean carbon dioxide didnt you ?) is not “said” by phisics. scientists have noticed a correlation between the rise of temperatures and the rise of co2, but they dont do the post hoc ergo propter hoc just yet. and finally, just how fast or slow the earth moves has entirely no bearing. i never said the earth is moving slow, especially viewing it could outrun me.

mixing politics in this entire debate is entirely superfluous.

Future_Man · November 28, 2004, 8:51pm

“1. we cant at the same time overheat and have an ice age. pick one.”

the fact that the global temperature is rising causes galciers to melt which causes currents to stop which causes high temperature air to not heat up areas that would otherwise be excessively cold. yes we can.

“2. the atlantic current will not slow down but accelerate inasmuch as the present differences of temperatures rise”

the difference in temperatures from pole to equator is decreasing. the temperature is rising faster at the poles due to the way air circulates for some reason. their winter comes weeks earlier and i cant say that ours does.

as you say, the difference in temperatures is what causes the current to move. in addition to the glacial meltwater flowing in the opposite direction, the decreasing difference in temps is decreasing the power.

“3.the likely way you could get lower temperatures in currently populated zone is if the atlantic current changes its path”

i cant say i really understand the physics of the situation, but it appears that the current is pressurized away from the center of the atlantic, up against the path of least resistance coast. i dont see how it could change directions. i suppose it could actually aim a little southward once it gets to iceland/england if glacial currents flow SW from the north sea.

still, the point here is that melting glacier water is going to disrupt the climate in england for sure, possibly the US.

i guess its possible that greenhouse gases didnt cause the rise in temp, but that would surprise me.

the only thing really in question relating to the main question is whether or not the cold water flowing south will affect hot water flowing north. there is a cold water current in place that flows south on the ocean floor. it seems to me like cold water from the glaciers would just sink and then not really affect the northward hot surface current.

i dont know, but i remember the graphic showing the current actually stop. i guess its possible that they didnt want the average “Big Biker Build-Off” watcher to struggle with the physics of how the current would be redirected.

republicans like money more than the earth. theyd teach you that suvs are good for the economy and the atmosphere if they could get away with it.

Future_Man · November 28, 2004, 8:52pm