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RE: A cold reality: we are not ready for the upcoming ice age
I have one more thing to add which sort of summarizes my point of view. I do believe that the natural trend of the climate would be a cooling again. I have no idea how severe or for how long, but the question I keep having is:
"Will human influence of the delicate earth's ecological system diminish these natural trends?"
And when I see the scale of our human operations, and the numbers of the expected climate compared against the observed climate, I tend to say yes to that question.
Hey there! Am currently writing a response to your other message. Having to move slowly today as the kids seem to be requiring more attention than usual. Probably the effect of the full moon ;)
Good to see @bloom has pushed your comment up to the top here. It is an important question you bring up and a tricky one to answer with any degree of certainty. However, if we can acknowledge that the sun controls our climate, we must also acknowledge that it is dramatically larger than the earth. So if we think about it as a massive generator somehow powering a tiny little earth, it is hard to imagine how humans (proportionally speaking) have any effect at all. The sun must surely be the more powerful driving force?
I think I am right in saying that we know Greenland was nearly ice-free for extended periods during the Pleistocene period, so can we not assume from this that when the ice caps melt it is not because of humans? Though it seems to me there is plenty of evidence that the greenland ice sheet is expanding. You will find lots of articles linking to this evidence here
Hah I sadly missed it... I was happy to enjoy my sleep. Did you see it this morning?
The sun is indeed a HUGE powerhouse, but you must take into account that we are 149.600.000 km's away from it (93.000.000 miles) and we only receive 0.000000045% of the energy it produces. This puts the massive size of our sun into more perspective. I'm not of the opinion that the sun controls our climate rather than influences it.
Greenland has indeed been ice-free in past histories, so was Antarctica and everything on earth was fine because these changes happened gradually over millions years, or even thousands at least. Changes in climate on a global scale have never happend as sudden as they do now (only 100 years). And I looked a little deeper into the sources. The source from the first example of Greenland states this:
it is no secret that increased warming causes more water to be stored in the atmosphere which can induce more snowfall, but it is the much greater effect of warmer ocean waters hitting the ice that causes ice berg calving. And since that is definitely equally as important the data of the study does not necessarily mean that the Greenland Ice sheet is growing