Buy Your Galoshes While They're Cheap
I remember in the winter of 1976 watching New Yorkers try to chip the ice in their toilet out with broom handles. They predicted another Ice Age (or was it the Nippy Era?). Thirty years later my latest sculpture partially melts on the weekend. What if there is a cycle that we cannot influence, but ride it out like a wave. That's what Khabibullo Abdusamatov thinks is going on:
Okay, so what if we get so proactive about global warming that we stop it in its tracks? Then the regular cooling cycle happens and we plunge into super cold temperatures? I am convinced that we have knocked the environment akimbo. What if it's not that we kicked a spinning into the red zone, but instead we knocked it off kilter and its swings to and fro-- temperatures too high and too low in alternating cycles. Or maybe this is Mother Nature's trick: like the occasional forest fire to clean the forest floor. What if Mother Nature is picking off those who cannot surive the cold then two generations laters she picks off those who perish in the heat?
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches.
The Little Ice Age is believed to have contributed to the end of the Norse colony in Greenland, which was founded during an interval of much warmer weather.
Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is based on measurement of solar emissions, Novosti reported. They expect the cooling to begin within a few years and to reach its peak between 2055 and 2060.
"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. "The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth's global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol."
Okay, so what if we get so proactive about global warming that we stop it in its tracks? Then the regular cooling cycle happens and we plunge into super cold temperatures? I am convinced that we have knocked the environment akimbo. What if it's not that we kicked a spinning into the red zone, but instead we knocked it off kilter and its swings to and fro-- temperatures too high and too low in alternating cycles. Or maybe this is Mother Nature's trick: like the occasional forest fire to clean the forest floor. What if Mother Nature is picking off those who cannot surive the cold then two generations laters she picks off those who perish in the heat?
Comments