Here are my predictions for what is coming next, based on my humble research. Why am I qualified? I’ve probably done more research than other more well-known non-scientists, that are corrupting the discussion on global warming, by ignoring the evidence. To name a few: Al Gore, Senator John McCain, Jimmy Carter, President Bush (in a recent reversal), Senator Ted “Windmill” Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking, Tony Blair, My predictions:
A 1% chance that the world is warming from man-made carbon dioxide emissions, and that this causes rising oceans or prevents glacial advance.
A 5% chance that the present warm spell (the present interglacial) has been influenced by the past 10,000 years of human activity: the cutting of forest, cultivation of land, the building of roads and cities. A 1% chance that this effect will prevent the glacial advance. 5% that it might cause a delayed advance.
A 2% chance that the previous million-year pattern of glaciation will be altered by unknown causes, such as increased solar radiation (a 2% chance of being saved by a miracle).
A 95% chance the Earth will cool, as it has done at this stage for the past 35 million years.
It’s more difficult to predict exactly when the cooling will begin. Will the temperatures rise and then the oceans rise, say, 10 feet more, as they did during the last interglacial, or have they already reached their maximum, 5500 years ago, during the Holocene interglacial? There could be a second temperature peak, a new Holocene Maximum. What looks like double peaks in temperature occurred 430,000 and 570,000 years ago, during warm periods.
Remember, the polar temperatures have been falling already for a few thousands of years, depending how we decide to measure it (page 1, fig. 2). Probably the trend will continue. Anytime between this year and several thousand years from now, we should expect temperatures to plummet. There will be years without summers, frozen oceans, mass migrations, heating oil shortages, failed crops, no more ethanol. Frozen bodies and starvation. The ice won’t be a half-mile thick in Chicago right away; that might take as much as 30,000 more years. When will Canada have to be evacuated? When is the first year that all the North American crop harvests fail? Maybe this century, maybe in a thousand years, we can’t predict exactly, but it’s almost inevitable.
I’ll modify my predictions (the %’s) if more information becomes available.
Carbon dioxide is a weak greenhouse gas. It’s not a pollutant, it’s plant food! It hasn’t caused warming on a global scale in the past, as shown by the Vostok (Antarctica) ice cores. An examination of the ice core records shows that temperatures can fall while carbon dioxide is increasing or holding constant. This effect persists for 20,000 years or more. That’s like saying increasing carbon dioxide causes 20,000 years of global cooling! The increasing temperatures cause an increase in carbon dioxide, not the other way around. Probably an increase in temperature causes more vegetation (including algae), and more vegetation causes more carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide doubles at night as the trees release the gas. Also cold waters (oceans) hold more CO2 than hot water, and CO2 rises and falls, following the temperatures. For more go to CO2-Temp curves.
The most violent weather occurs during ice ages, not during the warm periods. Carbon dioxide is reduced during the ice ages when the violent weather occurs. The number of hurricanes in 2005 may have set a record for recorded history, but category five hurricanes were much more frequent during the period from 1000 to 3000 years ago, as shown by mud cores. Therefore 2005 was not unusual, and the hurricane activity can’t be claimed to be caused by man-made global warming.
Methane is a more important greenhouse gas (21 times more potent), but presently it is slightly decreasing in the atmosphere, probably because of deforestation.
The ice age maximums are characterized by grasslands and deserts. The brief warm periods are characterized by tropical rain forest and temperate zone forests. At the peak of the last ice age the Brazilian Amazon was savanna. When the warm spell began, the rain forest began. The rain forests produce warming by the greenhouse effect. It’s easy to see that the rain forests, or trees in general, are a heat engine that manufacture more and more warming as they multiply and spread. They amplify the warming caused by peak periods in the sun’s radiation.
The Amazon rain forest is presently drying out. This could be just a temporary cyclic condition, or it could be that the Amazon is returning to its normal ice-age savanna conditions. The Southern Hemisphere is receiving more sunshine right now (for the last 10,000 years). This could be the cause of the desertification of Africa, Australia, and South America. That would bring less moisture to the Southern Hemisphere, and to the whole planet, and that could be the cause of global cooling.
The sun’s radiation at the Earth’s surface (called insolation) varies daily and in longer cycles due to variation in Earth’s orbit. Cycles of 95,800 years, 41,000 years, and 22,000 years are known. The 22,000 year cycle is predominant. The 95,800 year cycle is weak. These cycles affect the insolation by hemisphere and season. In other words, it may be warmer in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and colder that same winter. The warm, wet summer melts some ice, and during the cold winter no new ice forms, because cold also means dry. 11,000 years later, when it’s warm in winter the glacial ice forms, because it’s a wet winter and cold summer. These cycles are thought to influence the warming and cooling, but not produce all the heat required to melt the ice. There is also an orbital inclination theory of 100,000 years which may explain the Ice Age cycle. Most of the glacial formation occurs in the Northern Hemisphere where there is more land.
Shorter temperature cycles have also been measured: for example, a weak 40 - 60 year cycle (20 - 30 cold years, 20 - 30 hot) and a stronger 900 -1500 year cycle (approx.). Both cycles are in a warming trend now. The short cycle could cause it to turn cooler in about 10 years, and return to conditions like the 1950’s. The long cycle warmth might be like the Medieval Warm Period, and could persist for about 50 - 600 more years, before it turns colder (returns to conditions like the Little Ice Age).
Moisture is the most important greenhouse gas. Trees, with their dark albedo, are a cause of global warming and moisture. From the end of the last interglacial, up until the warming that culminated in the Holocene Maximum, 6000 years ago, the world was moist. Since then the world has been drying out. Deserts and grasslands have been growing in Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. Mongolia once had forests. Trees have been lost in Europe and the Americas and everywhere else. The natural loss of trees and the increasing desertification are a sign of global cooling. Humankind has increased these losses in the present warm period, but certainly had little influence on the losses 135,000 years ago. The recent human activity would appear to contribute to global cooling.
Solar insolation in the Northern Hemisphere is presently in a cooling phase that began about 10,000 years ago. Because of a natural lag time that is always present, the world continued its warmth for 5000 more years, until the Holocene Maximum. This cooling phase will end soon, and normally leads to a period that is popularly called an ice age (the period of warm, wet winters, when the ice forms).
We can speculate here that the lag time between the solar insolation peak and the cooling period is at least partly caused by the continued presence of trees, which produce greenhouse warming. Also, the presence of sustained carbon dioxide levels after temperatures begin to fall might be attributed to the presence of trees. That would mean that humankind’s destruction of the global forests has moderated the heating trend. The sharp heating peaks that characterize pre-civilization warm periods are usually followed by sharp temperature drops. The present warm period is somewhat longer than the previous four. Thus human activity may have moderated maximum heating during the present warm period and therefore delayed the expected global cooling.
Solar insolation in the Northern Hemisphere is declining at present, causing cooling. Deserts multiplied during the Holocene Maximum, causing higher albedo and global cooling, but there is a third cooling effect. As ice melts during the warm period, the ocean circulation (the conveyor current) is affected. The Gulfstream currents are slowing down right now, which will likely lead to a colder Europe. The ocean currents seem to flip between different configurations, leading to sudden and drastic temperature changes during the ice ages.
Besides solar insolation, the Sun effects Earth’s temperatures in another way. The solar wind modulates the polar vortex which in turn affects the jet streams (the polar vortices are hurricane force winds that circle the poles in the winter). The solar wind is modulated by magnetic storms on the Sun. Periods of strong storms cause the Earth to heat; weak storms cause the Earth to cool. The strong solar wind protects the Earth from cosmic rays, which are thought to produce clouds and cooling. Currently the magnetic storms are strong, but are expected to weaken in 30 years, causing cooling. The storms were weak during the Little Ice Age, and the same conditions are expected to return.
An unanswered question is what causes the end of an ice age? When the globe is mostly ice and deserts, when North America, Asia, and Australia and Africa are mostly desert or ice, what causes global warming to begin, and the ice to melt? I would suggest that about 5000 years of increasing insolation in the Northern Hemisphere is enough to trigger the vegetation (including algae) that returns the needed moisture to the atmosphere. The melting ice and the warming oceans release moisture, and the ocean provides CO2 to the starved vegetation. The Earth grows green, albedo is reduced, and the temperature rises. The growing trees and plant life produce CO2 and methane, but mostly it is the moisture and change in albedo that produces the warming. The 22,000 year cycle alone causes lesser warming peaks, but that cycle must combine with the warming peaks of one or both of the remaining cycles to end an ice age.
The warming comes quickly, say 5000 years, because the ice is retreating while vegetation is expanding. It’s a doubled albedo effect: the loss of the highly reflected ice and a gain in the dark vegetation. After another 5000 years the planet overheats and the vegetation dies: deserts form. CO2 is a small part of the overheating; insolation, moisture, and albedo are more important. The cooling into the Ice Age comes slowly (say 20,000 years) because it is not a doubled albedo effect: this time there’s only deserts and ice (both high albedo).
There is a theory (A. Berger and M. F. Ioutre) that there won’t be another ice age for 50,000 to 100,000 years. This is mentioned in Wikipedia and I heard on Fox news also. It’s based on the idea that the northern hemispheric solar insolation will be warming for the next 25,000 years, and that orbital eccentricity will be small. Eccentricity (the distance from the Sun) is declining, but right now eccentricity is more (it’s contribution is colder) than what it was during the ice age that occurred 400,000 years ago, so I think the theory is questionable. Solar insolation hasn’t started warming yet, either. It’s been going down, and maybe it is about to bottom out and go back up. We can hope they’re right, it but don’t count on it. More likely the world has been cooling for the last 6000 years, and will continue to cool. Besides, it is the warming of the northern hemisphere that brings the wetness and snow to the north, while the southern hemisphere dries up.
