Wow! The Coming Ice Age!

Antarctica’s ice mass is expanding. Sea levels are falling. The next Ice Age is coming. Start polluting — fast — before glaciers overrun Kentucky.

Or not.

I’ve ranted about the whole global warming/ cooling/ sky-is-falling bid to control us through fear before. Will probably erupt over it in the future, too. We do well to keep in mind that, Disney and the execrable “It’s A Small World” song to the contrary, this isn’t a small world at all. It’s enormous. The planet’s complex system of subterranean lava venting and subduction, plate shifting, oceanic churning, solar heating, wind movement, and condensation defy quality computer modeling — we don’t have enough data points over enough time to feed in anything but garbage yet.

We’re good enough now to guess what the weather is going to be like in ten days. Sort of. We can predict the basic track of a hurricane. Kind of. Odds aren’t too bad that if your local weather station declares rain day after tomorrow, you’ll have rain. You’d probably get the same odds betting on the favored thoroughbred at the local racetrack. And about the same results.

But if the ice is receding from one part of Antarctica, yet expanding in other parts, and if the overall ice mass is up, does this mean that some shmuck with a computer programmed with variables he cherry-picked to assist in his study can accurately declare that there will be an overall temperature rise, or fall, or anything at all, TEN YEARS from now?

If you think it does, I have this great bridge in Brooklyn — nice history, lovely architecture, and in light of the tax rate on bridges these days, I’m selling it for a song.

image_pdfDownload as PDFimage_printPrint Page

Posted

in

by

Tags: