We are in a lull before the storm of catastrophic natural climate change. We'd better deal with global warming quickly, before the next ice age comes!

"The climate of the past 9,000 years appears to have been exceptionally stable. For two million years, the earth's climate has been dominated by periodic ice-ages, each lasting tens of thousands of years. The ice-ages are separated by warmer "interglacial" periods, such as the one we are in now. Large climate fluctuations on time-scales of decades to centuries have long been known to occur during ice-ages, presumably due to sudden surges or collapses of the massive ice sheets. Recent evidence from ice-core drilling in Greenland indicates that similar fluctuations also occurred during the previous interglacial period, possibly due to rapid changes in ocean circulation. No one knows why these fluctuations have not occurred during the current interglacial period, allowing a (possibly essential) "window" of climatic stability for the development of human civilisation. Nor do we know how man-made GHG emissions might affect this stability."

Source: http://www.cs.ntu.edu.au/homepages/jmitroy...uncc/fs017.html

Current thinking on this projects that if the Greenland ice sheet slides into the ocean, the infusion of fresh water will shut down the "North Atlantic Conveyer" (gulf stream system), leading to an ice age in Europe. The last time that happened (when the melting glacier inland fresh water sea burst through to create the St. Lawrence river, Europe was frozen for two thousand years. So preventing global warming could prevent the next ice age.

Tuesday, 12 December 2006, 04:47 GMT
Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6161317.stm

That's the primate link.

Hmm, hopefully the governments of the world will smarten up soon.

I propose a new marketing capaign for hybrid cars aimed at redneck america~"Get a hybrid and stop our dependence on foreign oil". Speaking of redneck america, I am in Kansas right now--I don't see why these people are not huge advocated of alternative fuel sources. It seems like they could be making tons of money out here with ethanol.

Sorry. Link should be:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6179409.stm

I don't see why they supported Bush's war, environmental devastation, pharmaceutical company giveaways, oil company subsidies, trampling of the Constitution, etc. Must be a general cultural or brain deficiency there.

how do we know these polar ice caps are not melting because we forgot to replenish the ozone layer 15 years ago by launching those rockets up to the south pole with fresh ozone...or has everyone forgot. It may not be co2 induced global warming that will flood the world, but forgetfulness…