DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg0Z3LappEM
9m30s
I don't know why so many of these sources get it wrong -- it seems
intentional -- but we are not technically in an ice age, this is an ice
age. What people think of as "The" ice age was the most recent of
many glacial periods, and there will be many many more in the
future, starting sooner rather than later... WE ARE OVERDUE BY
THOUSANDS OF YEARS!
The "Ice Age" is the Quaternary Period.
"Humans," the genus Homo, begin officially with habilis, which places
the entirety of human evolution within our ice age, the Quaternary
Period.
Humans -- Homo -- have lived through and even thrived within the
many DRASTIC swings in climate; each of the glacial periods during
the Quaternary Period along with the far briefer warm pauses between glaciations known as interglacial periods.
We are presently inside of an interglacial period. It is called the Holocene.
Most interglacials only lasted for 10k years, ours is popularly dated back almost 12k years, realistically closer to 15k years when factoring out the Younger Dryas cooling...
Without human intervention, all the glaciers, all that former land mass
will return... and then go away again... and return again... and go away again... and return again...
Geoengineering the planet, returning us to some pre ice age state, pre Quaternary norm, would mean bringing about all the warming, all the
"Global Warming" that the media has trained you to wet your bed over.
Sorry, but we need to be at least 2C warmer...
Can humans do this? Geoengineer the planet? End the Quaternary
Period, our ice age? Yes. It'll still get cold and hot, the sun's energy fluctuates as does the earth's orbit but we can more or less restore
our climate to it's warmer, pre ice age norms. We can do this by
altering the currents.
See, most of the sun's energy falls along the equator, and then is
circulated around the globe by ocean currents. And wind currents,
yes.
BECAUSE of the way that the sun's energy is circulated by the water
and air currents, Toronto Canada is roughly equal in latitude to Nice
France, yet Toronto averages about 20F colder in December than
does Nice France.
...many sources place the difference in temperature even
greater than that!
But you see the issue, right? How far north you are is NOT as great
a factor in climate as is your position in relation to water & air
circulation. This is why Boston can be closer to the equator than is
Nice France and yet be colder.
Move over to the west coast of the United States and it's a very
different story. All the currents favor them, moderate the climate,
make it warmer.
So humans can alter the climate. We can change the way the planet
circulates energy from the equator and end the Quaternary Period. it
was precipitated primarily by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama,
it seems, which happened about 3 million years ago.
Yes, there was a delay. The change was significant but hardly dramatic.
It takes a lot of energy to warm or cool the oceans, and in our case it
was about 400k years between the Isthmus of Panama forming and
the start of the Quaternary.
Does this mean that even if humans geoengineered the planet to end
the ice age we'd still see one or more glacial periods?
Yes. Or, probably. But, yes. It's probably far to late to save northern
Europe or huge chunks of North America from the next glacial
period, so called ice age. But we could end the glacial/interglacial
cycle MILLIONS of years before it could ever end on it's own.
-- --
https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/683605167873146880
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