The Ice Is Coming
There seems to be a general consensus that our global climate is changing, but is our world getting warmer or colder? The critics of Western Industrial Civilization claim that our activities are causing the planet to get warmer. They claim that we're facing widespread flooding of coastal regions due to rising sea levels as the polar ice caps melt, and global famine as productive farm land becomes sun blasted desert. They try to cover all possibilities by saying that global warming will cause more severe weather at both ends of the spectrum - both warmer summers and colder winters.
At first glance the claims of global warming appear to have some substance. The oceans are getting warmer, with temperatures on the Eastern edges of the Pacific rising 11 degrees. Body counts from the violent storms that dominate nightly weather reports have risen to the point where they often rival the effects of man's inhumanity toward his fellow man. Even the usual sensationalist news of wars and scandals that nightly floods our TV screens has been at least partly displaced by stories of the massive economic disruptions being caused by heat related weather patterns like El Nino. But could there be more profound cycles at work here? Do the trends really point toward global warming, or do they fit disturbingly well with the geologic record of climate changes that marked the onset of previous ice ages?
Even as we're told to change our ways because of global warming, record snowfalls and low temperatures are being reported around the globe. During recent winters snow has been reported in such previously snow-free places as Guadalajara, Mexico City, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. USDA Plant Hardiness Zones are shifting south. We're told that the edges of the ice packs are melting and some glaciers are receding, but when they found the "lost squadron" of planes abandoned during WWII on the Greenland Ice Sheet, the planes were buried under the over 200 feet of new ice that had accumulated since the war. The situation in Antarctica is much the same with the old Byrd Station being crushed under 40-50 feet of new ice, and a new station having to be built on what is now the surface of the ice.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets represent far more area than all the world's glaciers put together, and they aren't melting - they're growing. But all we hear about is the melting on the edges where the ice is exposed to the warmer ocean waters. The oceans are getting warmer, but not because of global warming or anything mankind is doing. Ocean temperatures are following the same pattern that preceded every other ice age and for the same reasons. Just prior to the last ice age ocean temperatures shot up 10-18 degrees - the same as they're doing today.
The real power behind climatic change has always been the Earth's interactions with the Sun and our fellow planets. On the most obvious level our regular yearly orbit around the Sun coupled with the inclination of our axis gives us our regular cycle of opposite seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. But because of the gravitational influences of the other planets the Earth's orbit isn't always circular - at times our orbit becomes more of an ellipse which takes us farther away from the sun.
A further complication is the influence of the planets on the rotation and orbit of the Sun itself. When the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn end up in the same quadrant, their combined gravity can cause a wobble in the Sun's orbit and influence its rotational speed. Perhaps most importantly, the confluence of the gas giants in the same quadrant can affect the Sun's magnetic field. All of these factors influence the Sun's effects on the Earth.
The interactions between the Sun and planets are complex since each celestial body has a different orbital period and rotational speed. However, since the movements of each celestial body are relatively consistent, those sets of interactions that influence the Earth appear to us as regular cycles with predictable periodicity. The geological record indicates that these cycles have been consistent for at least the last three million years. The history of the Earth locked up in the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets show that ice ages in particular have consistently followed the same regular pattern for at least the last 250,000 years.
The Earth is subject to a number of major and minor cycles - some with periods in the hundreds of years, while others have periods in the thousands of years. Robert W. Felix has brought these various cycles and their effects on the climate and inhabitants of Earth together in his book Not By Fire But By Ice. Felix points out that we are currently at the confluence of a number of the Earth's natural cycles, perhaps the most important of which is the utterly regular and reliable 11,500 year Ice Age Cycle.
Felix also provides startling revelations about the mechanics of just how ice ages start and how fast they come on. The old idea of the ice slowly spreading down from the frozen North and then slowly receding back at the end of the Ice Age is wrong. Several years ago studies of ice age human societies uncovered the startling fact that the end of the last Ice Age took less than a single human generation to transition from ice to temperate climate. Deep ice cores in central Greenland indicate that the onset of an ice age is similarly rapid - with a transition from conditions like we're experiencing today to full blown glacial severity in less than 20 years.
It turns out that ice ages form in place as a result of massive snowfalls. This explains the fossil records of whole herds of dinosaurs and mastodons dying in place with food in their stomachs and no evidence of predators or other natural causes. Those that were too heavy to climb on top of massive snowfalls were simply buried in place. Smaller species survived the trap because they could climb on top of the accumulating snow and escape.
Consider that as a general rule one inch of rain translates into ten inches of snow. We're currently seeing worldwide flood activity at its highest levels since the little Ice Age of the middle ages. Recently Kentucky reported twelve inches of rain in one day, Aberdeen Washington reported twenty-one inches of rain in four days, and Modesto California reported being deluged with forty inches of rain in one week. Imagine if these rains had fallen during winter as snow. Forty inches of rain would result in 33 feet of snow in one week!
The conventional wisdom that the climate has to be a lot colder is also in error. Even at the depth of the last ice age the tropics and subtropics were only four degrees cooler than they are now. Temperatures in the Equatorial Rain Forest Belt remained much as they are today. According to Maurice Ewing, former directory of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, it's cold enough right now to cause an ice age - all we need is more moisture. And the record rains and flooding around the world demonstrate that increased evaporation from warm oceans is already providing that additional moisture.
Felix believes that the periodic reversals of the Earth's magnetic field, which are caused in turn by changes in the Sun's magnetic field, are the key to the Ice Age Cycle. We appear to be headed into another magnetic reversal in the very near future. Magnetic field strength has fallen some 50-60% over the last 2000 years, and the rate is accelerating. 5% of the decline has occurred in the last 100 years alone. When the Earth's magnetic field reverses, the iron and other magnetically sensitive materials in the crust respond to the changes in the field, which in turn disturbs the existing stress patterns in the crust. The result is increased volcanism.
NOAA estimated back when they believed there were only 10,000 underwater volcanoes in the entire world that at least 80% of the Earth's volcanoes were under the oceans. Since then marine geophysicists have found thousands more - including rift volcanoes that stretch for miles. On land we're experiencing the highest level of volcanism in at least 500 years, so it stands to reason that the activity levels of the volcanoes under the oceans are similarly elevated - and pouring vast amounts of heat into the water. These underwater volcanoes are the primary source of ocean warming. How ironic that an ice age on land can be set in motion by fire under the water.
The coming Ice Age doesn't have to be the end of civilization as we know it. During the last Ice Age the highly productive wheat fields of Canada and Russia were buried under miles of ice, and the loss of agricultural production from these areas will significantly impact global food supplies. Farmers in other areas may have to change crops, but their farms will still be free of ice. The productivity lost in the North may even be largely replaced by new land reclaimed from the oceans since, as the ice builds up on the land, sea levels will drop exposing the continental shelf and rich river deltas.
We will have to make major changes in our infrastructure and economic systems. Rather than being drown by rising sea levels, coastal cities will have to adapt to increasing isolation from the oceans as sea levels fall. Structures in Atlanta will have to be rebuilt to cope with the kind of weather Chicago now experiences, while Chicago will have to adapt to arctic weather. Grand Rapids will either have to figure out how to function under hundreds of feet of ice, or be abandoned.
As is too often the case when scientific research is driven by political agendas, the official line on global warming has much more to do with advancing the agendas of the advocates than with preparing the populace for traumatic climatic change. And as happens so often when science bows to politics, the consequences of hobbling the Western Industrialized world in the name of global warming may benefit a few, but will doubtless create the worst possible results for most of us. Preparation will be the key to surviving the wide spread population reductions that will likely accompany the coming Ice Age. No doubt those prepared for global warming when the snow starts falling will provide future archaeologists with interesting subjects to go with the dinosaurs and mastodons that were trapped by previous Ice Ages.
More information regarding the coming ice age can be found in:
Not By Fire But By Ice
Robert W. Felix,
ISBN 0-9648746-8-7
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