
The Coming Ice Age (1958) - pmoriarty
https://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
======
DavidWoof
I assume the author is _the_ Betty Friedan. This would be about 5 years before
she wrote _The Feminine Mystique_ , easily one of the most influential books
in modern history.

It's kind of fascinating to see her here at 37, working in obscurity, knocking
out fairly pedestrian writing assignments, when in just a few years she's
going to change the world.

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throw0101a
The author of this story seems to have only talked to two scientists, Ewing
and Donn. Others at the time were measuring and modelling CO2 absorption rates
and emissions:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#Increasing_concern,_1950s_–_1960s)

William Donn doesn't appear to have many online tributes, but Maurice Ewing
seems to have some interesting work as a geophysicist:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ewing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ewing)

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reaperducer
This article is from 1958, but we were taught in school as late as the 1980's
that the Earth is cooling, and no longer a black box.

I vaguely remember in the last few years someone linking to a Time magazine
cover published in the 80's about global cooling.

~~~
Swizec
This makes me wonder if the current political “backlash” against global
warming is because many politicians are ... old.

If they were taught in school that the earth is cooling, and we know from
research that people are very unlikely to change their mind about things after
35 ... well why _would_ they believe it’s now warming?

~~~
civilian
You're strawmanning the position. It's not that those skeptical politicians
believe what they were taught in school-- it's that they see that the science
can change, and that calls of doomsday can turn out to be wrong.

Even Al Gore's doomsday predictions in the late 90s turned out to be woefully
inaccurate. I'm all for being a good steward of the planet, but I think it's
reasonable to wait in order to:

\- Make sure this is a serious risk, and not just something we can adapt to

\- Let technology develop so we can combat climate change effectively and
without bankrupting the world.

Furthermore, I see environmentalists who are anti-nuclear, anti-iron-
fertilization, and anti-atmospheric-sulfur-injection. If global warming is
truly an _existential_ threat, then why aren't these projects appreciated by
the run-of-the-mill environmentalists?

~~~
hn23
I would say it is pretty risky to run a nuclear power plant you cannot cool
because the river is dry or too warm... happenend in France last Year.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-
nucle...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-nuclear-
reactors-shut-down-edf-europe-heat-wave-a8477776.html)

------
ChuckMcM
This has been one of those conversations I've followed for a while. One of the
most provocative things about climate change was the notion that Global
Warming could accelerate an ice age.

In popular literature, one of the more under appreciated factors in various
models is the moisture carrying capacity of the atmosphere. Basically as the
mean atmospheric temperature rises, the more moisture it can carry. This leads
to the formation of clouds as different temperature air masses meet, and
precipitation when the temperature drops below the dew point.

When you run different climate models, if the clouds form in the stratosphere
the overall temperature goes up (more CO2 below the clouds to reflect IR back
to the ground) if the clouds form in the troposphere the temperature goes down
(clouds create a higher albedo and more energy is reflected into space rather
than absorbed).

One of the papers discussing inter-glacial periods expressed essentially the
same view as the Harper's article which was that kicking off an ice age would
require a tremendous amount of material in the troposphere to reflect
sunlight, and a bunch of water to condense into snow to boost the albedo of
the surface to prevent it from absorbing solar energy and re-radiating it as
heat.

In the 80's, when people looked at the possible after effects of a nuclear
exchange between the US and the then USSR, it was suggested that the level of
soot and ash thrown into the air would cool the planet to a point to enshroud
it into a "nuclear winter." Later papers have looked not at nuclear exchanges
but simply volcanic activity or firestorms of one form or another.

The duration of these effects is tied to both the amount of sunlight
obstructed and reflected _and_ the resulting weather effects.

Using those models it seems plausible that prior to the presence of humans, if
the global temperature rose, it would dry out vast tracks of forests and
grasslands in the mid-lattitudes, those tracks would be set on fire by
lightning creating a tremendous soot load on the atmosphere. Once the soot
layer forms, the temperature falls, and the atmosphere drops its moisture as
precipitation. If the temperature is low enough it becomes snow, and gets
compacted into ice. The ice become glaciers and it takes a while for the cycle
to reset.

For me, it is an interesting aspect of climate dynamics on the water cycle as
a feedback loop sort of problem. I have yet to see any paper that suggests the
'venus mode' (runaway greenhouse effect leading to boiling the oceans) is any
more or less likely than the 'snowball mode', other than we have a geologic
record of the planet going snowball mode on its own several times over the
last million years.

~~~
bartimus
Considering the next ice age is inevitable in normal circumstances. What
terraforming options do we have to prevent an ice age? Maximizing the
greenhouse effect by releasing more CO2 sounds like something worth exploring?

~~~
ghthor
I also had similar thought to this. Were coming up on a minimum period in the
solar cycle that produced a mini ice age, Grand solar minimum. I wonder if our
co2 blanket will counteract the reduction in global temps we saw during the
last grand solar min.

------
8bitsrule
In September, 1958 science was in the midst of the groundbreaking 18-month
'International Geophysical Year'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year)

It's what stimulated ice-core sampling. Before it, 60 years ago, science knew
_much, much_ less about climate, let alone climate history. (Plate tectonics
was just coming into vogue!) IGY stimulated evidenciary techniques that forced
a drastic revision of what we 'knew' before it.

------
Isamu
The argument advanced here is that, counter-intuitively, warming climate
triggers an ice age, because open Arctic waters feed the glaciers through
increased snowfall. So it was climate cooling and the freezing of the Arctic
that ended the Ice Age.

~~~
jbotz
Close, but not quite. It's not "warming climate", but warm water flowing
freely into the open Arctic Ocean that they say causes glaciation... the over-
all climate still has to be cold enough for that moisture to eventually fall
out of the atmosphere as snow in order for the glaciers to start growing.

~~~
Isamu
Not clear they considered the warming ocean as separate from warming climate.

“The rate at which our weather has been warming in recent years could be
temporarily slowed down,” they told me. “We don’t know the exact rate at which
the sea is now rising. We need long-term world-wide evidence which the
International Geophysical Year may give us to assess accurately the changes
that seem to be taking place in the ocean and the ice.”

For snow to stop forming at higher latitudes the climate would have to heat up
quite a bit.

------
fooblitzky
“The answer, we believe, is chat until a million years ago, the North Pole was
not in that landlocked Arctic Ocean at all, but in the middle of the open
Pacific, where there was no land on which snow and ice could accumulate, and
ocean currents dissipated the cold."

Can anyone explain this bit to me? Even if the magnetic pole was in the middle
of the pacific, wouldn't snow and ice still accumulate at the geographic
poles, because that's where the sun is weakest/absent for months?

~~~
thrav
I think the idea is that the position of the earth relative to the sun
would’ve moved with the pole movement, right? As in, “the middle of pacific”
would’ve been the top of the world.

Not sure if they gave any indication of when the pacific was thought to be the
North Pole, but the line of hotspot created underwater mountains from the
Siberian traps to Hawaii certainly support a huge amount of movement of the
surface of the planet around the core. It doesn’t feel that far fetched,
depending on suggested time frame.

I just traced a parallel line (matching the Siberia to Hawaii one) from the
North Pole and it does indeed land out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Incredible stuff.

~~~
fooblitzky
Ah OK - thanks for explaining. I wasn't thinking about the movement of
tectonic plates on that scale.

------
deynataggerung
This is an interesting article and a lot of what was talked about is correct,
this wasn't pushing any agenda, it's just the conclusion isn't quite accurate.
The warming of the arctic does indeed push colder temperatures south, and
there's an area int he north Atlantic that has seen drops in average
temperature in recent years. This process may in fact have been part of how
ice ages started in the past.

The incorrect conclusion that we are headed for an ice age that they came to
was likely based on a lack of the information we have now. Namely the fact
that the increase in temperature isn't just part of the regular cycle of
heating and cooling, we're at the top of a heating trend, but the increase of
greenhouse gasses is driving temperatures up more than a process like this
will cool it down. There'll have been and likely will continue to be some
colder winters in the northern hemisphere for a bit as the process starts to
kick in, but the overall temperature trend is still getting warmer and isn't
going to stop for something like this.

Here's an interesting map to see average temperature change in different
regions.
[https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/12DA7/production...](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/12DA7/production/_105532277_nasa1.jpg)

------
haunter
The Wikipedia article about the topic has some other interesting sources

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation)

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Eventually it will happen.

------
briantakita
The Harpers story here is that people are the reason why the climate is
changing, with the solution being authoritarian control over the people. This
is simply a game of using asymmetric knowledge to tell a story to justify a
power structure that benefits a select few.

In reality, the Universe is Electric. The Sun goes through cycles. The Solar
System travels through the Galaxy, creating cycles. The Galaxy travels through
the Universe, creating cycles.

The cyclical variance of inputs of thermal, solar wind, xrays, cosmic
radiation, magnetic fields has & will continue to drive the climate &
geological change on Earth & the other planets in the solar system. There are
also the unknown unknowns as well.

~~~
tasty_freeze
Your explanation is meaningless. What trend could I not dismiss as simply
being part of your cycles?

There are many fish populations which are on the brink -- but not to worry, we
don't need to worry about overfishing, fish populations are cyclical. We don't
need to worry about CFCs, the ozone hole is clearly just part of an
atmospheric cycle.

Rather than breezy armchair theories, about how about finding some plausible
evidence that climate scientists are making this all up?

~~~
briantakita
> Rather than breezy armchair theories, about how about finding some plausible
> evidence that climate scientists are making this all up?

Too easy.

The lack of accurate prediction capabilities of their models. Also the lack of
consistency with their models. In contrast, Solar Physicist Valentina Zharkova
accurately predicted the sun going into a minimum using a Double Dynamo model
with 4 eigenvectors which cohere & interfere. Her model also accurately
predicted the cooling that occurred in the past few years due to the
approaching solar minimum. In her free time, she created a more accurate model
than anything the IPCC ever produced.

[https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/12/12/the-latest-on-the-
dou...](https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/12/12/the-latest-on-the-double-
dynamo-solar-model-and-dr-zharkovas-predictions-of-a-grand-minimum/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NI1bQe8I4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NI1bQe8I4A)

The lack of experimental evidence. The Electric Universe theory has
experimental evidence with plasma interacting with atmospheric gasses. Also
experimental evidence of cosmic radiation with heating water, seeding clouds,
etc.

See Henrik Svensmark's reproducable _physical_ experiments. It's not just a
bunch of computer code which ultimately means nothing without experiment or
predictive capabilities.

[https://principia-scientific.org/strong-evidence-that-
svensm...](https://principia-scientific.org/strong-evidence-that-svensmark-s-
solar-cosmic-ray-theory-of-climate-is-correct/)

Despite Henrik Svensmark having compelling _physical_ experimental evidence,
which the IPCC models lack, he somehow lost his institutional funding. He is
now independently funded.

Perhaps the science is not "settled" after all...Is that what the authorities
told Galileo when he dared to claim that the Earth was not the center of the
Universe?

~~~
tasty_freeze
I clicked on the youtube link -- and you found a solar physicist who supports
your claims and aha, that proves the climate scientists are all wrong? Why
does it seem that skeptical physicists are always taken as credible sources,
yet climate scientists are subject to hyperskepticism?

The funny thing is that the Koch brothers funded Berkeley physicist and
climate change skeptic Rich Muller a few years back. Muller, being an
egotistical physicist, was sure that he was smarter than the muddle headed
climatologists and would disprove their models and find all sorts of errors.
After a year, Muller wrote up his summary ... find that indeed, AGW was a real
thing, and the various correction factors that had been used by climatologists
for thins like urban heat island effect were both justified and reasonable.

So, to make this more concise, why do you find that Solar Physicist Dr.
Valentina Zharkova is to be trusted than the IPCC reports? You claim her model
is far more accurate than anything the IPCC has done ... yet your link says
her model was presented in 2015. Second, the IPCC models have be wrong only in
that they have intentionally been conservative in their estimates (for
political reasons). If you believe that the IPCC models have overestimated
warming effects, then you have bought into a popular lie.

The are many other problems with your claims, but it would take more time than
I care to invest in it considering the information is already presented in the
IPCC reports and you refuse to accept them.

