Scientists stirred to ridicule ice age claims

[Ivan Seeking]

Climate scientists have been stirred to ridicule claims in an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster that global warming could trigger a new ice age, a scenario also put forward in a controversial report to the US military.

The $125-million epic, The Day After Tomorrow, opens worldwide in May. It will show Manhattan frozen solid after the warm ocean current known as the Gulf Stream shuts down.

The movie's release will come soon after a report to the US Department of Defense (DoD) in February predicting that such a shutdown could put the northern hemisphere into a deep freeze and trigger global famine within 15 years.

But in the journal Science on Thursday, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, surveys the current research and concludes "it is safe to say that global warming will not lead to the onset of a new ice age". [continued]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994888

 

[Andre]

Sad story.

Science in distress.

 

[Andre]

The point is that all the oceanic sediments cores of the Oceanic Drill Program (OPD)show about the same deviations during an alleged cold ice age period a.k.a. Stadial or the (numbered) Maritime Isotope Stage (MIS) We are looking at heavy oxygen (18O) and Carbon isotopes (13C) in the micro shells of planktonic Foraminifera but specially the Benthic (bottom) Foraminifera. 18O tends to be high in the even MIS periods (13C low). The reason of this variation is still not clear at all. Temperature changes seem obvious but the deep sea bottom temperature is around 2 degrees C regardless of the Sea Surface Temperature (SST). Another possibility is general concentration changes of the isotopes due to interaction with ice sheets alleged waxing and waning but the fatal problems with that model have yet to be exposed. For the moment most people have faith in this one. Also the change in salinity and acidity also to current changes, so the link with the Thermo Haline Current (THC), or Gulf stream is obvious. but nobody seems to see the strange behavior that everywhere in the oceans the changes seem to be of equal magnitude and that they seem to be happening simultaneously.

So an idea about shutting of the THC due to melting water is logical. But the uncertainty of oceanic behavior is premature. Moreover the influence of the THC on the European weather seems to be overestimated.