Quote:
Originally Posted by TAG UR IT
So Casull, do you think it could happen or not?
Do you think our way of living is having an effect on our environment (climate)?
"In the past million years, the Earth experienced a major ice age about every 100,000 years. Scientists have several theories to explain this glacial cycle, but new research suggests the primary driving force is all in how the planet leans....
The last major glacial thaw was 10,000 years ago, which means that the Earth is scheduled to head into another ice age. Whether human influences could reverse this, Huybers was hesitant to speculate. Other researchers have found evidence that the process of climate warming can set up conditions that create a global chill.
"What we have here is a great laboratory for seeing how climate changes naturally," he said. "But this is a 100,000-year cycle, whereas global warming is happening a thousand times faster"
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofn...arth_tilt.html |
Well, there is no doubt that our burning of fossil fuels are dramatically adding to the CO2 levels in our atmosphere. The CO2 levels have in fact increased some 28% just in the last 50 years. However, this still a very very small amount of the total atmosphere. Nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere, Oxygen makes up about 21%, and CO2 and some others about 1%. Therefore is would have to take a very significant amout of CO2 to drastically alter our atmosphere.
There are a number of theories out there that try to explain any temperature variation however. Some researchers believe that it is due tot he increase in volcanic activity worldwide, while others think that the solar cycles can account for the majority of the variation. It has also been demonstrated that the temperatures in urban areas have increased significantly more than rural areas, leading many people to believe that temperature variation is more of a local phenomenon rather than a global phenomenon. In fact if you account for the variation in temperature by urban cities, the average temperature has actually decreased over the past 100 years.
The fact is that no one knows for sure the effect humans are having on our climate, if any. Likewise, the research on the effect of increased CO2 emmissions on our climate is even more fragmented demonstrating that there is not one clear cut trend.
Going back to your quote about global warming leading to a global chill, I believe that is a reference to the notion that global warming would lead to the recession of glaciers which would then uncover a mass of pockets of methane gas in the earth's surface. If enough Methane gas was released into the atmosphere, then it could in theory create a global chill.
However, this theory clearly relies on the assumption that global warming is, in itself, melting the glaciers, and this is just not the case. In fact some glaciers have been receeding now for thousands of years, way before greenhouse gases. Also, it has been reported that a number of glaciers are actually growing, particularly those in Greenland, which further throws a kink into any assumption that greenhouse gases are melting our glaciers.
EDIT: I know I did not answer your question directly as to whether I think it could happen. In theory, yes... However, it is just too difficult to determine any effect human interaction is having on the climate.