A different view of climate change

Far from facing disastrous global warming, the earth is on the verge of a new ice age, according to a theory that was first stated in its mature form in a celebrated article in Science in 1976 and that is being revived again now, partly in response to the record cold winter last year and perhaps an equally cold winter now. According to the theory, for the past several million years there has been a regular cycle of 100,000 year-long ice ages interspersed with 12,000 year long warm periods. The last ice age ended 12,000 years ago, making possible the Neolithic age, the birth of civilization, and the world we know. The warm period is now coming to an end, and in a few years, perhaps, much of North America and Northern Europe will become, as they were during the last ice age, uninhabitable by man.

As much as I’d like to stop mass Third-World immigration, I don’t want it that badly.

- end of initial entry -

James W. writes:

The 100,000 year cycles are idealized, or an average. The cycles that form the changes—earth orbit, wobble, tilt, and sun activity, do not all fit into the 100,000 year figure neatly enough for that. [LA replies: That also made no sense to me. How could three different and unrelated cycles result in a single, unchanging cycle?] The major shelves of warming may last a few thousand years longer—or not, and there are other, shorter, periods of warming in the cycle as well.

But, as you say, these ice-ages only began a relatively short time ago. [LA replies: If millions of years is a short time.] It seems they are coincidental to the closing of the Isthmus at Panama. The Atlantic and Pacific no longer communicated, and the Gulf Stream was formed. That was the kicker to the cycles which was needed to start the ice-ages. It is also coincidental, or not, to the rise of man.

The solution seems obvious. Make the Panamanians an offer they can’t refuse. [LA replies: We’ve done it before.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 12, 2009 01:29 AM | Send