Questions On Global Warming?? Post Them Here!!

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Question: What do you know about the so-called "Global Warming Induced Ice Age" just like the one in the day after tomorrow being as it is possible and supposedly were seeing the beginnings of it?

I Found This Infomation :

Flash! Global Warming May Bring Ice Age By The Next Election
By Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr.
CNSNews.com Commentary
February 10, 2004

Well, perhaps not that soon; but readers of Fortune magazine, normally a reserved, fairly objective periodical concerned with business and economic stories may be forgiven for a little worry if not complete confusion.

In the February edition is an exciting piece entitled "CLIMATE COLLAPSE The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare," by David Stipp. He essentially tells readers that the prospect of global warming pushing the world climate to a "tipping point" has "become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it."

Stipp states that "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...." This "evidence," he says, suggests the possibility of a cacophony of climate disasters--longer, harsher winters in the US and Europe; massive droughts "turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes"--that could upset the geopolitical mix and "destabilize nuclear powers such as Pakistan and Russia."

Wow. All that drama based on, well, not much, actually. "...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," Stipp reports without citing the specific evidence or, for that matter, any scientists engaged in anything more definite than conjecture.

What is so amusing about this particular journalistic work is the attempt to lend credibility to junk science by fastening it to the Pentagon. The media were quick to attack the idea of the Pentagon spending money to study the possibility that markets could predict terrorist attacks. But Stipp and Fortune appear to be suggesting that Pentagon gaming and "what if" analysis of possible consequences stemming from abrupt climate change is sufficient evidence global warming constitutes an imminent threat, so to speak, and warrants preemptive action.

Reading through the article, claimed to be based on an "unclassified report completed late last year that the Pentagon has agreed to share with Fortune" causes one to laugh out loud. It is especially noteworthy that among the credentials cited for one of the report's authors is his work on the Steven Spielberg film "Minority Report." The result is, indeed, science fiction at its best.

The theory, in a nutshell, is this: the globe's climate is totally dependent upon a "huge Atlantic Ocean current" the alarmists liken to a "conveyor" that brings warm, temperate climates and moisture from the tropics to the eastern U.S. and northern Europe. Global warming will deposit more fresh water into the North Atlantic, turn off the conveyor, and plunge the northern hemisphere into an ice age. In less than ten years temperatures fall dramatically in North America, Asia and Europe, the average annual rainfall decreases 30% and massive droughts begin. Simultaneously, violent storms increase, making coastlines from the Netherlands to Bangladesh unlivable. Though the U.S. is able to cope with "megadroughts," the have-nots in the rest of the world turn against us. We survive (in part by coming to our senses and building new nuclear energy facilities) after a struggle. But those less fortunate around the globe revert to their pre-industrial, pre green revolution ways, and "desperate, all-out wars over food, water and energy supplies" commence in earnest.

What to do? Stipp, speaking on behalf of the science fiction writers provides a handy, if predictable answer: "...given its dire consequences [environmental Armageddon] should be elevated beyond a scientific debate....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...." Hopefully, that is science fiction as well.

What is so astounding about this "journalism" is its lack of embarrassment and the fact that Fortune's editors saw fit to allow it to escape the waste basket. This story has been wending its way around the Internet for some time; we suppose it was only a matter of more time until it showed up in one or another respected "mainstream" publication.

In a companion piece, Stipp makes the fabulous assertion that "Scientists used to think that major climate changes, like the onset of an ice age, took thousands of years to unfold. Now they know such dramatic transitions can occur in less than a decade." They do?

Frankly, David Stipp, who has been writing on science for the Wall Street Journal and then Fortune since the 1980s, ought to be possessed of a bit more savvy than is displayed in this effort.

The "evidence" for abrupt climate change having occurred is based on examination of data pointing to what some, not a majority of scientists consider the most recent past occurrence. That was at least 11,500 years ago, well before man started tinkering with greenhouse gases and under global climate conditions vastly different from today. But having failed to stampede US politicians into draconian, economy-busting restrictions on carbon gas based on threats of heat-induced catastrophe over two hundred years or so, the people behind this ice folly are trying a new tack: Unless we immediately reverse the headlong rush of industry-precipitated global warming, we could be in an Ice Age before the 2008 election.

Sensible journalists, with the slightest bit of skepticism in their make up, might detect just a bit of desperation in this fable. Or, perhaps the following might have tripped the smell-o-meter: "... [This] 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 (wait for it) global warming." That bit of telling "news" was slipped by Stipp into his Fortune article, indicating, hopefully, that his tongue was planted firmly in cheek while he wrote it.

This is a Film : http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/dayaftertomorrow/