With a layman's understanding of sea level rise projections from studies like this, I now have a macabre fascination walking around in popular public places that are either barely above sea level or already below sea level and have been for a long time - like Balboa Island near Los Angeles [0], and marveling at the fact that in ~100 years time these places may not exist at all or at least in a drastically different fashion than they do now. This became fascinating to me because some of these places haven't even really been around that long. In geological time scales 100 years is nothing, or even in human history time scales - places that are just a ~century long blip in the historical record can easily be forgotten by future civilizations. It makes me marvel at how much of human history we have likely lost to climate change and other external factors. To us, 100 years seems like an eternity, because that's beyond the span of most humans' natural lives. A mighty metropolis like Los Angeles at the bottom of the ocean in 2000 years may not even end up being discovered!
This is all I can do really because thinking about it with any other feeling than awe or apathy is extremely difficult. We're living in what will surely be a pivotal moment in history, and not all societies have been able to say that.
"Ice Age" is when there's ice on the planet .. the planet is in an ice age and has been for a long long time - a bit longer than humans have existed in modern form.
The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Ma (million years ago) and is ongoing.
In terms of the glacial cycle the planet was due to begin cooling and enter a period of greater glaciaton than currently existed in, say, the 1880's.
"Was due" but didn't happen is key, and the reason for that is the increase in insulation like a few extra blankets thrown on the bed by human activity - the clearly recorded and well sourced increase in CO2 levels that much has been written about.
If you're looking for detail and definitions then I'd suggest looking through the IPCC report(s) or start with something foundational such as Syukuro Manabe's 1967 classic Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity
an ice age consists of alternating paired epochs 'glacial - interglacial'
an ice age is when things are bad cold sea level drops and icing occurs
interglacial is the opposite bright warm sea level is high
within these epochs periods of cooling and warming are also distinguished but on a smaller scale
the end of the last glacial epoch began about 20.000 years ago
we are now living in an interglacial epoch that began 11.700 years ago
and one example of a slight cooling in our generally warm times was the Little Ice Age which lasted from the fourteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century
after that global warming began intensified by anthropogenic impact
p.s.
point: saying that 'global warming' is caused by human activity is like saying 'coffee with milk' is just 'milk'
> an ice age consists of alternating paired epochs 'glacial - interglacial'
Yes. This is the correct geological time scale usage - a period when there is ice on the earth and a period that often includes glacial cycling - as I said above.
> an ice age is when things are bad cold sea level drops and icing occurs
?? define "bad cold" .. and yes, again an ice age is when there is ice on the earth, whether ice strictly limited to the poles or ice that almost reaches the equator - these are both examples of ice on the earth that occurs during an ice age.
> we are now living in an interglacial epoch that began 11.700 years ago
Yes - and one that was due to end with a greater cooling and more glaciers - this is not what you claimed in your comment above. Instead of this current interglacial period coming to an end it will now be extended with warmer periods caused by the extra insulation added by human activity in the last century.
This is what is called AGW .. that specific component of additional trapped radiant heat energy caused by human added insulation to the atmosphere.
This is readily tracked in various atmospheric fas libraries that have existed since the early Cold War .. and by other proxy means, not to mention looking at the by product of a centuries worth of FF extraction by products or with more recent sat constellations that track gases.
Study more, learn more, work harder to sound less ignorant.
The "Little Ice Age" was more localised to European cells than truly global and it's something bandied about in denier blogs that never truly get into the actual larger picture and global thermodynamics.
Would you care to share your results with the rest of us, instead of making each of us go look?
See, you only have to write your post once. But it's read multiple times. So it's more efficient (and more polite) for the author to do the homework, rather than for the readers to do it.
This is all I can do really because thinking about it with any other feeling than awe or apathy is extremely difficult. We're living in what will surely be a pivotal moment in history, and not all societies have been able to say that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Island,_Newport_Beach
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