Global Warming and the Coming Ice Age

I am not a climate modeler. I'm not even a person who studies ice ages. Most of my field research deals with sediment shed off of the Andes in Argentina and Bolivia. My primary professional task is to be a good teacher. Ever since I received my Ph.D., in 1987, I have been affiliated with small Geology programs. As a result, I have taught a wide variety of courses across the spectrum of the Geosciences. Nothing presented here is anything that students aren't exposed to in introductory geology courses such as Physical Geology, Historical Geology, and Physical Oceanography, although all of these facets are usually not taught in any one of these courses.

My first exposure to this problem actually occurred in the Physical Geology course I took as a Dartmouth freshmen, in the winter of 1972, which was taught by Geophysicist Bob Decker and Glaciologist Willie Weeks. I don't really remember who came to the conclusion that in order to have an ice age, the Arctic Ocean had to melt. I found that conclusion to be interesting but in my adolescent naiveté I couldn't fathom how the Arctic Ocean could possibly melt. Now, several decades later, there is substantial evidence that the Arctic Ocean sea ice is melting at a surprisingly fast rate due to the rise in global temperatures.

I began to look into the possibility of an ice age reoccurring. I want to emphasize that nothing on this page or in the linked presentation is the result of my own work. I've just compiled the ideas of others. There are quite a few really bright people who are interested in this problem and a lot of modeling has been done. It is interesting that Hollywood came out with a disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow", that is loosely based on these ideas.

Interestingly, some people in pretty high places, particularly the Pentagon, NASA, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, are extremely concerned with the possibility of a dramatic climatic shift in the near future. When I first read these reports, it really scared me. I sat down to figure out how they could possibly be true. To my chagrin, all of the evidence was already in place in my brain but I'd never put it together. The linked presentation,  below, attempts to explain, in layman's terms, how we could be plunged into a new cycle of global cooling or possibly even a new ice age within a few decades.

The final screen presents links to some other important websites on this topic. If such an event comes to pass, it will affect everyone on Earth. My major concern is that few people are aware of the possibility of a dramatic climatic change taking place within their own, or at least their children's, lifetime. Most of these sites refer to abundant paleontological evidence to substantiate that such changes have taken place in the fairly recent past. A growing number of scientists are deeply concerned about this possibility. You should be too.

That is the impetus for the slide show you will see after you click below. I have tried to break it down to the basic information that is needed to understand how such a change could happen. To view online, you will need to use MS Explorer or any other browser that supports the Power Point web format.

Global Warming and the Coming Ice Age

You can also download the latest 15 MB presentation in Power Point format by clicking Download. Feel free to edit and use this information.

The base maps used in this presentation were generated using a really cool website that allows the user to generate a map in almost any projection during the last 150 million years. Take a look at it at: http://www.odsn.de/odsn/services/paleomap/paleomap.html .