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The
next Ice age? Fascinating E mail I received in January
2004 Dear friends, I have been compiling
the following information from several internet lists that I belong to. This
research on the connection between global warming and a potential ice age is
irrefutable. It offers a sobering 3-D perspective on what we could see in the
years to come, and make no mistake, from a 3-D perspective this could very
well spell the end of civilization as we know it. But then so could a
number of other factors, including nuclear war, rampant deforestation
and pollution, or the politics of a New World Order taken to its extreme. We
are closer to catastrophe than we may realize, and have been for a long
time. Pretending this isn't going to happen is the best way to ensure that it
will. However, this very
potential is the evolutionary force which could propel us into the most
powerful shift in human and planetary consciousness ever. There
are realms beyond the 3-D which already exist, which are beginning to
make their presence increasingly felt, and which we are birthing into
collective "reality". In my articles on the "supramental awakening"
I refer to the possbilities of how this might come about. In the
acceleration of consciousness currently taking place. I believe that our
experience of time itself is undergoing a radical change, and that we could collectively
experience a number of parallel realities at the same "time",
allowing us to choose which we would like to make "real" for us.
Please read these reports, not with a sense of dread or hopelessness, but
with the recognition that we are getting ready for a planetary birth, and
that we can influence this with our collective thoughts and intentions.
We have come here on Earth at this time precisely because we chose to make a
difference, and there is a collective soul force that is guiding the process. If you think this
could be useful, please pass this information along. To add or delete
yourself from this e-list, please contact kiara@doorwaytoeternity.com. I
would also appreciate feedback, perspectives, and other information on this
and related themes. Please also check out my website, www.doorwaytoeternity.com,
and my book, "Doorway to Eternity: A Guide to Planetary Ascension". Love, Kiara ------------------ Contents: 1. How Global Warming
may Cause the Next Ice Age 2. History's Greatest
Disaster Has Begun 3. Climate Collapse:
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare 4. Global warming will
plunge Britain into Ice Age within Decades 5. Glaciers and Sea
Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures ------------------- 1. Published on Friday,
January 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org In quick summary, if
enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the
melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut
down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm.
The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in
a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario
would be a period like the little ice age" of a few centuries ago that
disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters,
droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the
world.
The Great Conveyor
Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the Earth's rotation, is mostly
driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and
salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean is saltier and colder than the Pacific,
the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern
and Southern American Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the
east. As a result, the warm
water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the North Atlantic leaving
behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts
of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool waters settle to the bottom of
the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip
of Greenland, producing a whirlpool of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles
across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times
of year it does produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt
ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient
mariners). This falling column of
cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it
forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land
combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where
it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense
(because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn t surface in the
Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North
Atlantic off the coast of Greenland. The out-flowing
undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly
lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm,
fresher water from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river.
This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops around
North America where it's known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast
of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland, it's cooled off and
evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor,
providing a continuous feed for that deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific.
These two flows - warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows
salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river - are known as
the Great Conveyor Belt. Amazingly, the Great
Conveyor Belt is only thing between comfortable summers and a permanent ice
age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America. Much of this science
was unknown as recently as twenty years ago. Then an international group of
scientists went to Greenland and used newly developed drilling and sensing
equipment to drill into some of the world's most ancient accessible glaciers.
Their instruments were so sensitive that when they analyzed the ice core
samples they brought up, they were able to look at individual years of snow.
The results were shocking. Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the
periods between glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and
North Asia were gradual. We knew from the fossil record that the Great Ice
Age period began a few million years ago, and during those years there were
times where for hundreds or thousands of years North America, Europe, and
Siberia were covered with thick sheets of ice year-round. In between these
icy times, there were periods when the glaciers thawed, bare land was
exposed, forests grew, and land animals (including early humans) moved into
these northern regions. Most scientists figured the transition time from icy
to warm was gradual, lasting dozens to hundreds of years, and nobody was sure
exactly what had caused it. (Variations in solar radiation were suspected, as
were volcanic activity, along with early theories about the Great Conveyor
Belt, which, until recently, was a poorly understood phenomenon.) Looking at the ice
cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover that the transitions from
ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather usually took only two or
three years. Something was flipping the weather of the planet back and forth
with a rapidity that was startling. It turns out that the ice age versus
temperate weather patterns weren't part of a smooth and linear process, like
a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately
balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits
through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch,
which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point
threshold or "breakover point" where suddenly the state is flipped
from off to on and the light comes on. It appears that small (less that .1
percent) variations in solar energy happen in roughly 1500-year cycles. This
cycle, for example, is what brought us the "Little Ice Age" that
started around the year 1400 and dramatically cooled North America and Europe
(we're now in the warming phase, recovering from that). When the ice in the
Arctic Ocean is frozen solid and locked up, and the glaciers on Greenland are
relatively stable, this variation warms and cools the Earth in a very small
way, but doesn't affect the operation of the Great Conveyor Belt that brings
moderating warm water into the North Atlantic. In millennia past,
however, before the Arctic totally froze and locked up, and before some
critical threshold amount of fresh water was locked up in the Greenland and
other glaciers, these 1500-year variations in solar energy didn't just
slightly warm up or cool down the weather for the landmasses bracketing the
North Atlantic. They flipped on and off periods of total glaciation and
periods of temperate weather. And these changes came suddenly. For early humans
living in Europe 30,000 years ago - when the cave paintings in France were
produced - the weather would be pretty much like it is today for well over a
thousand years, giving people a chance to build culture to the point where
they could produce art and reach across large territories. And then a
particularly hard winter would hit. The spring would come late, and summer
would never seem to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as
September. The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't
happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few
days during August and the snow never completely melting. After that, the
summer never returned: for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and
accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with
glaciers and humans either fled or died out. (Neanderthals, who dominated
Europe until the end of these cycles, appear to have been better adapted to
cold weather than Homo sapiens.) What brought on this
sudden "disappearance of summer" period was that the warm-water
currents of the Great Conveyor Belt had shut down. Once the Gulf Stream was
no longer flowing, it only took a year or three for the last of the residual
heat held in the North Atlantic Ocean to dissipate into the air over Europe,
and then there was no more warmth to moderate the northern latitudes. When
the summer stopped in the north, the rains stopped around the equator: At the
same time Europe was plunged into an Ice Age, the Middle East and Africa were
ravaged by drought and wind-driven firestorms. . If the Great Conveyor Belt,
which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would
be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North
America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years,
those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would
starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it
probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow. And, incredibly, the
Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in the past decade. As William
H. Calvin points out in one of the best books available on this topic ("A
Brain For All Seasons: human evolution & abrupt climate change"):
".the abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows that a flip can occur
in situations much like the present one. What could possibly halt the
salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much farther north and limits
the formation of ice sheets? Oceanographers are busy studying present-day
failures of annual flushing, which give some perspective on the catastrophic
failures of the past. "In the Labrador Sea, flushing failed during the 1970s,
was strong again by 1990, and is now declining. In the Greenland Sea over the
1980s salt sinking declined by 80 percent. Obviously, local failures can
occur without catastrophe - it's a question of how often and how widespread
the failures are - but the present state of decline is not very
reassuring." Most scientists
involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming,
melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing
cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical
threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age that
could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100 000 years. And when might that threshold
be reached? Nobody knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining
ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models
and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as
next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be wobbling right now,
producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years. What's
almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will
happen sooner rather than later. This article was
adapted from the new, updated edition of "The Last Hours of Ancient
Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann (thom@thomhartmann.com),
due out from Random House/Three Rivers Press in March. http://www.thomhartmann.com/ -------------------- 2. History's Greatest
Disaster Has Begun The greatest
environmental catastrophe in recorded history is now unfolding. The Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute has announced that the North Atlantic
Oscillation is failing, and, along with it, the Gulf Stream. The Institute
has observed "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured
in the era of modern instruments," in an analysis of Atlantic ocean
currents from pole to pole. Woods Hole has found that salinity levels are
changing in ways that they have changed in the past leading to periods of
abrupt climate change. Polar waters are becoming far less saline, meaning
that the "heat pump" effect that draws warm water north is failing. Dr Ruth Curry, the
study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the circulation
of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely
experience a significant cooling." The director of Woods
Hole, Robert Gagosian, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that
would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes." Last summer,
Unknowncountry.com reported an ominous sign that the North Atlantic Current
was weakening, when cold northern water suddenly appeared along US coastlines
as far south as Florida. This suggested that the Gulf Stream had moved
farther offshore than normal, which would happen if it weakened and was not
flowing north normally. The extremes of heat
and cold that the northern hemisphere has experienced over the past twelve
months may be further signs of this effect. Extraordinary heat killed at
least 20,000 people in Europe last summer, and extreme cold in north America
this winter has been responsible for at least 35 deaths. World weather
patterns have become extremely bizarre recently, exemplified by blocks of ice
falling from the sky in regions as diverse as New Zealand, Spain and the
American South and, within the past few months, tornadoes in Wales and, just
yesterday, on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. From now on, there is
an immediate potential for abrupt climate change. The key factor in the
sudden climate change scenario described in the Coming Global Superstorm and
many other places is the collapse of the system of currents that equalizes
heat and cold over the surface of the earth. It is likely that
climate change will take place over a single season, as the fossil record
tells us. It will not be a protracted process, unfolding over hundreds or
even tens of years. It will begin with an outburst of violent weather unlike
anything recorded in the historical era, and then be followed by years of
climactic turmoil. At some point, the climate will either return to the
interglacial state it is in now, or we will slip into another ice age, but
this is likely to be hundreds of years into the period of turmoil. Mankind, for the
foreseeable future, will experience the full effects of the turmoil and
disaster caused by sudden climate change. This process is going
to devastate the northern hemisphere, dramatically altering growing seasons
in the United States, Canada and Europe, shortening them, making them
entirely unviable in northern areas, and crippling many regions such as the
central-western US, with drought so intractable that it will likely result in
large scale population movement out of these areas. This unfortunate
situation is in part the result of natural climactic cycling, but it has been
sped up by human emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and the
process could have been controlled by considered worldwide attention to
controlling those emissions. Proper leadership in the developed countries
could have prevented this catastrophe, and without significant disruption to
business activities or the lives of individuals. Instead, nothing useful
has been done, and now we will go through a significant stage of climatic
upheaval that will be accompanied by the death and impoverishment of millions
of the best educated and most productive people on earth. This will result in
a vast diminishment of mankind and the likely collapse of many of the
structures of government, business and finance that we depend upon to insure
our safety, prosperity and freedom. Even if a tremendous
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions were achieved within a year, the
process would still continue. What we will be able to do, if human society
remains organized at a high enough level to achieve this, is to make a slide
into another ice age somewhat less likely, and hasten the return of a more
acceptable climate. Questions will be
asked: why has this happened? Who is responsible? Among Americans, the answer
is clear: political leaders and media personalities have, at the behest of
corporate sponsors who feel threatened by environmental controls, lied to the
public about the problem, promoting the fallacy that the situation was a
matter for debate when, in fact, nature had already cast the die. Worldwide, various
governmental and private entities have misused the threat of environmental
disaster as a means of imposing a level of planning on all human activities
that many found unacceptable. In fact, government,
the corporate world and environmental groups should all have faced the real
and imminent problems in a clear-headed and practical manner, instead of
viewing them through the crazy lens of ideology, be it left or right.
Instead, ideology has been placed above need in virtually every case, with
the result that the worst possible situation has become true: human
activities in the form of greenhouse gas emissions have been allowed to
exacerbate a natural cycle, with results that promise to be devastating
beyond imagination. It is ironic indeed
that the Day After Tomorrow, the film related to the Coming Global
Superstorm, will be released in May of 2004, which is likely to be the first
month in the past ten thousand years at least that the extreme weather
conditions described in that book could actually occur. At present, only a few
paleoclimatologists will admit to the actual violence that the fossil record
reveals, and there remain questions about the degree to which the debris from
these extremely violent weather events of the distant past actually relates
to sudden climate change. For example, there
have been questions surrounding the cause of the quick-freezing of mammoths,
whose remains have been periodically found in Alaska and Siberia, often with
still undigested food in their mouths and stomachs. It has been claimed that
no weather-related mechanism could possibly cause this, and therefore that
the mammoths must have fallen into sinkholes and frozen there. Recently, however, the
discovery of quick-frozen plants embedded in glaciers in Peru has revealed
the fact that very extreme weather changes to take place on this earth, and result
in long-term effects. For example, plants that froze in the Peruvian Andes in
a matter of minute ten thousand years ago are only just now being disgorged
by glaciers. In other words, plants that were living in a moderate climate
were plunged, over what appears to have been the course of just a few hours
or even minutes, into extreme cold that held them in its grip for ten
thousand years. All mankind is now
threatened by such a danger. Where and when it will strike, or if it will
unfold with such super-violence at all is unknown. But the greedy and the
foolish among our leadership have released the bull from the paddock, and we
are not likely to see it returned anytime soon. Two questions remain:
what can we do and what are the warning signs of sudden climate change? The primary warning
sign has always been the failure of ocean currents, and Woods Hole is telling
us that this is happening now. On a more detailed, day-to-day basis, any
excursion of warm tropical air into far northern latitudes, from now on, is
apt to trigger ferocious storms, and the farther that air penetrates, and the
warmer and more humid it is, the more violent the consequences will be. We will be making
certain changes to our Quickwatch on this website to reflect the changing
situation. For example, we are going to expand the number of points from
which we pick up air temperature measurements and drop the ocean current
measures and observations, except for the Gulf Stream, as they have already
been triggered and will not change anytime soon. We will be watching for the
dissolution of the Gulf Stream. If this should happen between May and
October, the immediate weather effects will stun the world. No matter when it
takes place, and it is now certain that it will, it will lead in a single
season to an entirely new climate of a kind that is far less viable for us
than the one we have known. Also on our Quickwatch
page is an article that contains a series of simple steps that world leaders
should have been aggressively asking individuals to take for the past ten
years. Instead, they remained mired down in their various political and
ideological issues, either claiming that there was no significant
environmental problem or that there was a huge problem that could only be
solved by massive government intervention, imposing draconian new levels of
planning on society at every level, with special emphasis on corporate
enterprise and economic development. However, the fact
remains that a great deal can be done: To reduce individual emissions
dramatically, only a few minor lifestyle changes are needed: Replace the
20-year-old fridge with an energy-saver model. CO2 savings = 3,000 pounds.
Send out one fewer 30-gallon bags of garbage per week. CO2 savings = 300
pounds. Leave the car at home two days per week. CO2 savings = 1,590 pounds.
Recycle cans, bottles, plastic, cardboard and newspapers. CO2 savings = 850
pounds. Switch from standard light bulbs to fluorescents. CO2 savings = 1,000
pounds. Replace the current shower head with a low-flow model. CO2 savings =
300 pounds. Turn the thermostat down two degrees for one year. CO2 savings =
500 pounds. Cut vehicle fuel use by 10 gallons in 2003. CO2 savings = 200
pounds. Switch from hot to warm or cold water for laundry. CO2 savings = 600
pounds. If these steps were
taken by just 20% of U.S., Japanese, Canadian and European inhabitants, world
CO2 emission levels would drop to a point that the human factor would be
vastly reduced as a source of global warming, and the upheaval that we now face
would be reduced in its duration and effect, perhaps to the point that the
world as we know it might be restored, not in our lifetimes, but with luck in
those of our children. ----------------
3. From http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html Jan 26, 2004 by David Stipp Global warming may be
bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as
little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the
terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and
harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that
the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it. The threat that has
riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual,
centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point.
Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the
world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade,
like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists
don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt
climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the
need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies, thereby upsetting the
geopolitical balance of power. Though triggered by
warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere,
leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it
would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to
ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine
similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia,
it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate
change. Climate researchers
began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying
temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data
show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in
the past with shocking speed, in some cases, just a few years. The case for angst was
buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely explanation for the abrupt
changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge
Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from the tropics, that's why Britain,
at Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air,
this "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves
north. That causes the current to sink in the North Atlantic, where it heads
south again in the ocean depths. The sinking process draws more water from
the south, keeping the roughly circular current on the go. But when the climate
warms, according to the theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers
flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity and its
density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and
runoff into the current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the
conveyor loses its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off
the huge heat pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern
Hemisphere. Scientists aren't sure
what caused the warming that triggered such collapses in the remote past.
(Clearly it wasn't humans and their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice
and other sources suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier
collapses were dismayingly similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age
began drawing to a close about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in
Greenland rose to levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly
plunged as the conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger
Dryas" period, a 1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is
an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the time.) Though Mother Nature caused
past abrupt climate changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably
has more to do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts
concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global
warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities,
mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release
heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include shrinking
Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at
northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible
trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm
that may not conveniently wait until we're history. Accordingly, the
spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In
2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human
activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers
to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two
decades. Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire
Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a
philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issue-next summer 20th
Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget
disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world
from an ice age precipitated by global warming. Fox's flick will
doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would abrupt climate change
really be like? Scientists generally
refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned
Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking
effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82,
is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda", a balding,
bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an
outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive
think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The
Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his
brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to
lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift
toward nimble forces and smart weapons. When scientists' work
on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped
another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the
national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed
planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with
organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks, he helped create futuristic
scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author
Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a
scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate
experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away
from - at least in public. The result is an
unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed
to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it
sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about
coping strategies. Here is an abridged
version: A total shutdown of
the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when
icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor
might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the
"Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and
droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused
horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas. For planning purposes,
it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of
cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on
8,200 years ago fits the bill-its severity fell between that of the Younger
Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by
a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's
global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the
things that might happen by 2020: At first the changes
are easily mistaken for normal weather variation, allowing skeptics to
dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving
policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is
little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has
fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and
Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average
temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15
degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key
agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30%
in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's. Violent storms are
increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A
particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the
Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California
the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting
the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south. Megadroughts afflict
the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15%
stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and
soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however,
thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant
resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots
gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America. Turning inward, the
U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve
resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from
Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands, waves of boat people pose
especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the
U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado
River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with
options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear
power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without
catastrophic losses. Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop,
struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to
the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries
in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from
catastrophe. Australia's size and
resources help it cope, as does its location. The conveyor shutdown mainly
affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to
draw on its social cohesion to cope. Its government is able to induce
population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources. China's huge
population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by
increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in
drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly
stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising
sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose
diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are
hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding
changes. As the decade
progresses, pressures to act become irresistible. History shows that whenever
humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine
Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading
Russia, which is weakened by a population that is already in decline, for
access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby
Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and
energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China
skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable
land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights, fisheries are
disrupted around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to
migrate to new habitats. Growing tensions
engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in a North American
bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for
itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea
align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a
truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against
aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may
join the European bloc.) Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil
supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many
countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy,
accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop
nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel,
China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb. The changes
relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"; the natural
resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the
population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped
boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis. It is
too widespread and unfolds too fast. As the planet's
carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of
desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard
archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm
until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a
population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home,
warfare may again come to define human life. Over the past decade,
data have accumulated suggesting that the plausibility of abrupt climate
change is higher than most of the scientific community, and perhaps all of the
political community, are prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we
should be asking when abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be,
and how we can prepare; not whether it will really happen. In fact, the
climate record suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point,
regardless of human activity. Among other things, we should: In sum, the risk of
abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But
given its dire consequences, it should be elevated beyond a scientific
debate. Action now matters, because we may be able to reduce its likelihood
of happening, and we can certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time
to recognize it as a national security concern. The Pentagon's
reaction to this sobering report isn't known - in keeping with his reputation
for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But the fact that
he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about global warming. At
least some federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change
less as a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action. If so, the case for
acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell in Washington, may be
gaining influential support, if only behind the scenes. Policymakers may even
be emboldened to take steps such as tightening fuel-economy standards for new
passenger vehicles, a measure that would simultaneously lower emissions of
greenhouse gases, reduce America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its
trade deficit, and put money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes!-and give the
Pentagon's fretful Yoda a little less to worry about. --------------------
From: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=484490 Global warming will
plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades' By Geoffrey Lean,
Environment Editor 25 January 2004 Britain is likely to
be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new
research suggests. A study, which is being
taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of
remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North
Atlantic. Similar events in
pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of the climate,
bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development -
described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured
in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream,
which keeps Europe's weather mild. If that happens,
Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of
Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where
farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The
much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by
comparison. A report by the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden - launched by Nobel prize-winner
Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists - warned last week that
pollution threatened to "trigger changes with catastrophic
consequences" like these. Scientists have long
expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating
cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to
Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has
even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But until
now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away. The new research, by
scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods
Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen. Dr Ruth Curry, the
study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the
circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will
likely experience a significant cooling." Robert Gagosian, the
director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's leading oceanographic
institutes, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that would shut
down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes. "Even as the
earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a
precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates." The scientists,
who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from Greenland to
Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become "very much" saltier
in the tropics and subtropics and "very much" fresher towards the
poles over the past 50 years. This is alarming
because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty water sinking in the
North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards, forming the current. The change is
described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world
heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in
temperate and Polar Regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones
fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
The National Academy
of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly
increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a
light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for
decades at least, and possibly centuries. When the Gulf Stream
abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold
period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous
permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C,
and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain
anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe,
including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the
Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide. Some scientists say
that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be
less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder
and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this
would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation. ---------------------- 5. Glaciers and Sea Ice
Endangered by Rising Temperatures By Janet Larsen The Earth Policy
Institute 27 January 2004 By 2020, the snows of
Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's
Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic
Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature
has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And
that melting is accelerating. In both 2002 and 2003,
the Northern Hemisphere registered record-low sea ice cover. New satellite
data show the Arctic region warming more during the 1990s than during the
1980s, with Arctic Sea ice now melting by up to 15 percent per decade. The
long-sought Northwest Passage, a dream of early explorers, could become our
nightmare. The loss of Arctic Sea ice could alter ocean circulation patterns
and trigger changes in global climate patterns. On the opposite end of
the globe, Southern Ocean sea ice floating near Antarctica has shrunk by some
20 percent since 1950. This unprecedented melting of sea ice corroborates
records showing that the regional air temperature has increased by 2.5
degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950. Antarctic ice shelves
that existed for thousands of years are crumbling. One of the world's largest
icebergs, named B-15, that measured near 10,000 square kilometres (4,000
square miles) or half the size of New Jersey, calved off the Ross Ice Shelf
in March 2000. In May 2002, the shelf lost another section measuring 31
kilometres (19 miles) wide and 200 kilometres (124 miles) long. Elsewhere on
Antarctica, the Larsen Ice Shelf has largely disintegrated within the last
decade, shrinking to 40 percent of its previously stable size. Following the
break-off of the Larsen A section in 1995 and the collapse of Larsen B in
early 2002, melting of the nearby land-based glaciers that the ice shelves
once supported has more than doubled.
On Greenland, an
ice-covered island three times the size of Texas, once-stable glaciers are
now melting at a quickening rate. The Jakobshavn Glacier on the island's
southwest coast, which is one of the major drainage outlets from the interior
ice sheet, is now thinning four times faster than during most of the
twentieth century. Each year Greenland loses some 51 cubic kilometres of ice,
enough to annually raise sea level 0.13 millimetres. Were Greenland's entire
ice sheet to melt, global sea level could rise by a startling 7 meters (23
feet), inundating most of the world's coastal cities. The Himalayas contain
the world's third largest ice mass after Antarctica and Greenland. Most
Himalayan glaciers have been thinning and retreating over the past 30 years,
with losses accelerating to alarming levels in the past decade. On Mount
Everest, the glacier that ended at the historic base camp of Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to reach the summit, has retreated 5
kilometres (3 miles) since their 1953 ascent. Glaciers in Bhutan are
retreating at an average rate of 30-40 meters a year. A similar situation is
found in Nepal. As the glaciers melt
they are rapidly filling glacial lakes, creating a flood risk. An international
team of scientists has warned that with current melt rates, at least 44
glacial lakes in the Himalayas could burst their banks in as little as five
years. Glaciers themselves
store vast quantities of water. More than half of the world's population
relies on water that originates in mountains, coming from rainfall runoff or
ice melt. In some areas glaciers help sustain a constant water supply; in
others, melt water from glaciers is a primary water source during the dry
season. In the short term, accelerated melting means that more water feeds
rivers. Yet as glaciers disappear, dry season river flow declines. The Himalayan glaciers
feed the seven major rivers of Asia? the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween,
Mekong, Yangtze, and Huang He (Yellow)?and thus contribute to the year-round
water supply of a vast population. In India alone, some 500 million people,
including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend on glacier melt water that
feeds into the Ganges River system. Glaciers in Central Asia's Tien Shan
Mountains have shrunk by nearly 30 percent between 1955 and 1990. In arid
western China, shrinking glaciers account for at least 10 percent of
freshwater supplies. The largest
aggregation of tropical glaciers is in the northern Andes. The retreat of the
Qori Kalis Glacier on the west side of the Quelccaya Ice Cap that stretches
across Peru has accelerated to 155 meters a year between 1998 and 2000?three
times faster than during the previous three-year period. The entire ice cap
could vanish over the next two decades. The Antizana Glacier,
which provides Quito, Ecuador, with almost half its water, has retreated more
than 90 meters over the last eight years. The Chacaltaya Glacier near La Paz,
Bolivia, melted to 7 percent of its 1940s volume by 1998. It could disappear
entirely by the end of this decade, depriving the 1.5 million people in La
Paz and the nearby city of Alto of an important source of water and power. Africa's glaciers are also disappearing. Across the continent, mountain glaciers have shrunk to on | ||||||