NASA: Greenland ice sheet shrinking

[Aquawind]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10 ... index.html

Well gosh now that NASA says so that must mean it's true.. kinda old news..but now even NASA has put their stamp on it with numbers.

41 cubic miles is just enough to keep a few kegs cold..

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

We are moving out of a little ice age for the last 150 years. No wonder glacirs are melting, we are going into another warm period. The same we where durning roman times.

[Extremeweatherguy]

I do want to point out this interesting first sentence:

The vast sheet of ice that covers Greenland is shrinking fast, but still not as fast as previous research indicated, NASA scientists said Thursday.

hmmm..

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

They think we are not coming into the innerglacier, at the rate the other guy thinks. Thats all that means.

[curtadams]

We are moving out of a little ice age for the last 150 years. No wonder glacirs are melting, we are going into another warm period. The same we where durning roman times.

Well, we *are* moving out - but the reason is all this CO2 we've added to the atmosphere. By the Milankovitch cycle we should be going in the other direction.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

We are moving out of a little ice age for the last 150 years. No wonder glacirs are melting, we are going into another warm period. The same we where durning roman times.

Well, we *are* moving out - but the reason is all this CO2 we've added to the atmosphere. By the Milankovitch cycle we should be going in the other direction.

I'v always thought we where coming out of a little ice age, into a innerglacieral. Which would tell why we are warming up. But never heard that we supposed to be moving into another one. We will see over the next few years; if 2007-2010 has a year warmer then the romans seen, then I'm going to start rethinking big time.

[gigabite]

The 200 year sun cycle?

http://www.kolumbus.fi/tilmari/some200.htm

[curtadams]

I'v always thought we where coming out of a little ice age, into a innerglacieral. Which would tell why we are warming up. But never heard that we supposed to be moving into another one. We will see over the next few years; if 2007-2010 has a year warmer then the romans seen, then I'm going to start rethinking big time.

Check the "solar forcing" at present on the left (reversed - usually you'd expect the other direction). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mila ... ations.png Warming has dropped off precipitously over the past few thousand years, so we should be - based on history - in a long slow slide into an ice age

Global warming is not so fast as to cause a huge difference in four years. Median expectations are for a couple of degrees C over the next century. Given the uncertainty about Roman climate, it will probably be half a century before we'll be able to definitively say we're warmer that Roman times. If we get something as significant as what you're talking about, things are worse than the most pessimistic GW scenario I've ever seen and the catastrophic 40 ft sea level rise is imminent.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Of course if we had an Ice Age right now modern civilization as we know it couldn't exist. The link between Global Warming (in the ancient past after the last ice age), and the rise of modern society is impossible to ignore.

During the "Little Ice Age" of the 11th -13th centuries (roughly) glaciers were advancing on Northern Europe towns, and the climate turned generally wet and miserable. The harvests were bad, and plagues nearly wiped out the known world.

[gigabite]

I think that humanity could adapt to an Ice Age.

The period of time between 1350 and 1600 ca was known as The European Renaissance. This was a cultural revolution subsequent to the Black Plague, the great equalizer a condition that penetrated all social levels. Some current thinking suggests there may have been several conditions at work kicking off some physical adaptations that sparked a round of Human Development that ushered-in a new level of social freedom.

Certainly the Plague was a key factor that required the most intelligence to avoid. One of the environmental conditions that lead up to the plague was a period of high rainfall. That period of high rainfall was preceded a phase of population growth prompted by an epoch of mild weather. The increased rainfall forced people closer together facilitating the transmission of the disease.

Another result of the increased rainfall was that it established an environment that was conducive to the progress of a crop blight known as ergot. Ergot is a mold that grows on bread grains the spores of the mold resist the heat of baking and when eaten cause symptoms similar to plague and often confused with the plague. The result of ergot poisoning is often death depending on the amount and specific variety of the mold. The current thinking is that as many as half of the deaths ascribed to be plague were actually food poisoning. The Russians developed a method of treating the contaminated grain with ammonia from urine to disinfect it in the late Renaissance.

This is way off topic, but bla bla bla...

Europe had been dealing with ergot contamination of the food chain for a thousand years before the Black Plague. The hallucinations aspect of ergot poisoning played a key role in the bloom of The European Renaissance. A specific aspect of hallucinations in intelligent people is an increased ability to mentally focus on single task. The painters of the period were the leading thinker. They had to mix chemicals to come up with the correct color and the right method to place that color on the intended media. Hieronymus Bosch’s work seems to show a relationship between a controlled ergot exposure and artistic vision. A specific hallucination resulting from ergot poisoning was called Saint Anthony’s Fire. This is one of a series of his work entitled Saint Anthony’s Temptation. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bo ... empt-c.jpg

Small doses of LSD-25 are currently being used to treat autistic children. There is also a program that uses LSD-25 to treat addictive personalities. After reviewing The CIA fact sheet database for Middle Eastern types of drug abuse I noticed that the use of hallucinogenic drugs isn’t a noticeable factor. I think that the medical application of the medication into a sector of a population of individuals with a clear addiction to violence could help alleviate tension in the area by stimulating creativity. I call it the Star Trek solution.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medical ... wsid=53641

http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/1 ... 8593-lsd-0

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

I think that humanity could adapt to an Ice Age.

I doubt it could with out VERY serious problems arising. A planet covered in ice isn't going to produce societies more advanced than hunter gathers, farming would just be about impossible.

[Extremeweatherguy]

I think that humanity could adapt to an Ice Age.

I doubt it could with out VERY serious problems arising. A planet covered in ice isn't going to produce societies more advanced than hunter gathers, farming would just be about impossible.

with the current level of technology we have right now, I find it hard to believe we would go back to a hunter gatherer community. We are much more intelligent than those early forms of human life and I am sure we could figure out solutions and adapt to the changes. Yes, life would be harder and much different, but I believe we could make it.

[kevin]

I think that humanity could adapt to an Ice Age.

I doubt it could with out VERY serious problems arising. A planet covered in ice isn't going to produce societies more advanced than hunter gathers, farming would just be about impossible.

with the current level of technology we have right now, I find it hard to believe we would go back to a hunter gatherer community. We are much more intelligent than those early forms of human life and I am sure we could figure out solutions and adapt to the changes. Yes, life would be harder and much different, but I believe we could make it.

Now I'm not at all saying civilization will disappear aka hunter-gatherer. But human beings are not smarter today than they were 20,000 years ago. They have just learned some tricks. But they have on a large scale forgotten others.

I can tend a fire, and can start one with some leaves and moss. But I still need a lighter. And I can hunt an animals and kill it through persistence, but I haven't an idea on how to skin it and make clothing from it. Nor how to make tools.

There probably are very few people left who with a homemade fire create wire and the such. Our entire civilization rests on computer technology, mechanization, and oil.

Take those things away, and we'll go back to preindustrial times I believe. Or the early part of them. If there was a greater threat to our civilization in terms of say a nuclear exchange (limited), then I believe we could see the disappearance throughout most of the globe of agriculture. And the resurgence of primitive cultures. Because when it comes down to it being able to start a fire is much more useful than programming a computer in terms of survival.

[wxmann_91]

Agree with Kevin here. In fact, what has made us stronger could overall make us weaker in the end. It's the irony of riches. IN FACT, IMO, if we assume we plunge into a deep ice age now, and we compare these two scenarios:

a) civilization is what it is right now
b) Industrial Revolution never happened

I'd say Scenario B would lead to a greater population of Homo Sapiens surviving. And the poor country folk would be the ones who last the longest.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

You all misunderstood my post. I said I doubted that civilization as we know it could ever arise on a planet that was an ice ball. As for if it reverted to that today. There still would be huge, crippling problems, in spite of any ideas to the contrary man could exist easier with a warmer as opposed to colder world.

[MGC]

With the ice gone, it will be a bonanza for the archaeologist. More Norse remains will be uncovered giving scientist a better view of past civilizations when Earth was warmer a thousand years ago......MGC

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Indeed. Wasn't it just in the 1970s that the Hudson river had ice in it at NYC during several Winters, and the Great Lakes also froze over a couple of times? And people were worried in North America and Europe about another "Ice Age".