The Coming Ice Age

On Friday, Anthony Watts posted the graph below on his WattsUpWithThat website.

“Data adapted from ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum’ by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown’ and ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift’.”

The bottom line here is simple–we are more at risk from global cooling than from global warming. Before we panic, we might also consider that as of yet we haven’t come up with an accurate computer model that correctly predicts long term trends in weather. Weather is the result of all sorts of things–carbon levels, sun spots, ocean temperatures, etc. Even at that, we really don’t know which of these things exerts the greatest influence or how they interact. Generally speaking, we need to do everything we can to keep the planet clean, but we need to balance that effort against the needs of the people who live on earth.

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