The Ice Age Cometh?

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I am a meteorologist so I’ll offer a few thoughts..

First, the article does not predict an “ice age” - not even a mini ice age like we saw a couple hundred years back. But anyway, I can appreciate that the title was just for effect.

It amuses me how everyone is always so black and white with this issue - arguing “it’s the rise in CO2 due to man! Were doomed!” and then the response: “NO! it’s natural variation! Global warming is a scam! As a forecaster, I predict lots of that on this threadJ be nice people!
What I’ve learned after 6+ years in the field is that science is complex! There are always many factors to weather and climate. So I think this article may be on to something but that man induced Co2 is also stillan issue and some of the people they refer to are probably minimizing it too much. If it was all due to natural cycles acting on the shorter term of 10 to as much as 20 or 40 years you would see an up and down trend over these periods in temperatures with no rise over the longer term of say 100 - 150 years. If it was all Co2 you would see a more or less steady upward trend since 1850.

The reality is, is that the temperature trend has shown an overall upward rise since 1850 or so that corresponds well with increasing CO2 levels. And the increasing CO2 levels have correlated well with the rising emissions due to industrialization. And taking the forecast of any future warming aside, the science has shown that Co2 does act as a greenhouse gas and that as such, increasing levels of Co2 can reasonably be expected to trap incoming solar radiation and result in warming. So I don’t see how it’s so unreasonable to think that in all probability we have had at least some influence on the warming. But like I said, science is complex and there are indeed natural variations as well. Anyone would also be a fool to argue otherwise on that point. The overall long term rise we have seen since 1850 has not been linear. It has come in “spurts”, or “fits and starts“. What’s more, following some of these spurts there has indeed been cooling. So it is indeed likely that this is a result of shorter term variations superimposed over the longer term upward trend. The effect is a saw toothed curve of sorts.

What do I think will happen? It’s late now, so I’ll save that detail for a later post. In short, I think there is some truth to that article. I think natural variation may delay any significant warming (more than 1 C ) from current temps until after say 2030 or so. Over the next 30 years, we may not even see the warming rates we’ve seen in the past 30 years ( about 1 F since the late ‘70s). But I don’t think we’ll see major cooling from current levels. At most slight cooling. In other words natural & man made cycles may cancel each other out in the short term. But longer term (50-100 years +) could be a different story where I would lean more “man / CO2”
 
Do you believe this? If so why?

Prof Mojib Latif is a very well respected scientist in the field of climate and has been warning about climate change for as long as I can remember, so mid-90s at least. There was another model done by scientist from Potsdam hinting at a 10 year cooling period. I think there is good reason not to brush it off.

Just as pcfitz80 said, it's silly to be so black and white about the whole issue, or to be quasi-religious about it. We like to dumb down the complex issues hoping to understand them better then, but following that as the ultimate truth is very dangerous and misleading.
 
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