While attention worldwide focuses on manmade global warming, the risks from which are fairly small compared to the benefits of the energy use that allegedly drives it, the real risk to humanity (and the rest of the biosphere) is, as it has been throughout geologic history, from nature-made global cooling. Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer reflects on that in a recent article in American Thinker:

What drew my attention to ice ages is the manuscript (Climate and Collapse) by agricultural economist Dennis Avery, my coauthor on Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years [Rowman&Littlefield 2007].  Dennis documents the historic collapse of civilizations, using recorded history and archeological data.  Cold periods and droughts appear to be the main dangers to agriculturally based societies in all regions of the world.

There is no question here: To protect our civilization from harm, it is vitally important to understand the causes of severe climate cooling and try to figure out how to prevent such cooling episodes, if possible.

There are two kinds of ice ages; they are fundamentally different and therefore require different methods of mitigation: (i) Major (Milankovich-style) glaciations occur on a 100,000-year time-scale and are controlled astronomically.  (ii) “Little” ice ages were discovered in ice cores; they have been occurring on an approx. 1000-1500-yr cycle and are likely controlled by the Sun.  The current cycle’s cooling phase may be imminent — hence there may be urgent need for action.

Read the rest to get a sense for how much more dangerous even a new Little Ice Age would be for humanity. Might not be a bad idea to begin with this visualization: a mile-thick layer of ice covering virtually all of Canada and stretching down to the Missouri and Ohio rivers and across to what is now New York City; ice covering most of most of Britain and Northern Europe well into Germany and Poland with permafrost covering southern Britain and reaching into southern Hungary; and similar effects in the northern stretches of Asia and the southern stretches of Africa and Latin America.

 

 

Featured image by Bev Goad, Creative Commons, used by permission