This is the third book in the series that included 'The Theory of Nothing' the "The Universe Revealed.' My purpose in this new book is to more fully explain how science is actually done and how science fits into our culture along with religion and p...
As you might know, the Earth has undergone five ice ages, the last ending around 10,000 years ago. Because of this, some scientists have predicted that we face another ice age in 1500 years. They base this on the theory that the Earth's orbit around the sun and the slight oscillation of the tilt of our planet goes through a cycle that causes winters to be much colder than normal. This has the official name of Milankovitch cycle that allegedly happens every 100,000 years. This theory is open to a lot of discussion among astronomers and geologists. It's not exactly a given.
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It's hard to express the seriousness of an ice age. During the last ice age, glaciers would have buried New York City under thousands of feet of ice. The same would have happened to much of Europe. Glaciers take thousands of years to form and grow in size, but their inexorable march down from the Polar Regions is devastating to anything alive. According to the theory, which had a lot of support during the 1970's, is not what's happening today. Instead of the Earth's temperature decreasing on a year-to-year basis, it has been increasing at an alarming rate.
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The problem with ice ages and global warming is that once these effects begin they usually run out of control. Again, the effect takes hundreds of years to get going and thousands of years to run its course. In other words, nothing happens overnight like they show in disaster movies. I've seen movies that show an ice age occur in one week. That's not going to happen.
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The reason why we're not going to see an ice age any time soon is because of man's change to the Earth's atmosphere. Ever since the industrial revolution, man made emissions of carbon dioxide have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 300 parts per million to 400 parts per million. This doesn't seem like much but it has begun a warming trend that will increase the Earth's temperature more than 4 degrees C in only a few decades. One thing we can rule out as the cause of either ice ages or global warming is variations in the Sun's emission. The changes in the Sun's output due to sunspots are not all that much. It's the atmosphere that causes the changes in the Earth's overall temperature.
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However, a mini ice age could occur if we have a massive volcanic eruption occur, such as Krakatoa or the ones in Iceland. Volcanic eruptions have caused snow in June and July. One such event happened during the 1700's. However, these mini ice age effects are not nearly as devastating as a true global ice age.
Maybe global warming would be easier to take than a full-blown ice age. However, global warming climate change will displace a billion or more people and cause widespread famine. Hopefully, the world's governments will wake up and formulate a way to avoid these devastating consequences.
