New Study, Next Ice Age

Future Ice Age Put on the Back Burner

By Joshua S. Hill

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

It comes as a sheer bafflement to me as I try and wrap my mind around the time-frames used to describe what our earth has gone through, and what it has still to encounter. Evolutionary process, ice ages and life spans are all detailed in the millions of years; it boggles the mind!

But scientists don't seem to mind, and according to a new research study by Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the next ice age expected won't come about for approximately half a million years.

OH NO!

My sarcasm aside, the sheer weight of responsibility being placed on the shoulders of humanity is slowly crushing governments, and with this latest study blaming our burning of fossil fuels for the extended lack of cooling, one wonders what the next step will be.

Using a mathematical model to study what would happen to marine chemistry in a world with ever-increasing supplies of the greenhouse gas, Dr. Tyrrell and his team demonstrated the most far-reaching disruption to the natural equilibrium of our planet caused by our existence.

This comes at an interesting time for me, as I have also just been reading a book by Alan Weisman entitled The World Without Us. The title is relatively self explanatory, and though I have yet to finish, what I have read has already sent me in to a literary heaven of imagining a world without humans. One of the key problems that both Tyrrell and Weisman have come across is that the oceans are absorbing too much CO2, and as a result, are becoming more and more acidic.

As a result, the acidic nature of the ocean is dissolving the calcium carbonate in the shells produced by surface-dwelling marine organisms, subsequently producing more carbon that has hitherto been unaccounted for in computer models.

"Our research shows why atmospheric CO2 will not return to pre-industrial levels after we stop burning fossil fuels. It shows that it if we use up all known fossil fuels it doesn't matter at what rate we burn them. The result would be the same if we burned them at present rates or at more moderate rates; we would still get the same eventual ice-age-prevention result."

An ice-age is supposed to occur every 100,000 years or so, and it has been a tool that the earth has used to cleanse the troubled surfaces. Glaciers would make their way slowly down close to the equator, and upon their retreat millions of years later, new ground is exposed for those animals that survived.

So if you're looking for a good read, that will not only enlighten you but send you in to delusions of how to rid the earth of all humans, then go out and pick up The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, and if you're still not convinced, wait a month for my review!