Is it possible that global warming could ultimately bring on the next ice age?

Question

I've heard this theory which is dramatized in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". The more I study this issue the less of a remote possibility this seems to be.

Is it not possible that the melting of the icecaps can create a saline balance and shut off certain key currents and ironically send the majority of world into a deep freeze?

Answer 1

The actual cause of the ice age was from continents moving toward the poles and trapping ice.  There were other geological factors as well such as the Isthmus of Panama forming, the subcontinent of India crashing into Asia, the formation of the Indonesian archipelago, etc.  This resulted in a situation where the Milankovitch cycle could cause glacial periods alternating with interglacial periods.  The Milankovitch cycle results from variations in our Earth's rotation around the sun and the shifts in the axis of rotation of the Earth.  So to answer your question we are in an Ice age, currently an interglacial period.  Could global warming result in a glacial period.   Probably not since it has been resulting from periods when the orbit and axis of rotation are such that  cooling occurs.  Adding greenhouse gases should moderate the temperature and has not be shown to be a driver of temperature change.  Generally, CO2 concentrations previously increased after temperatures increased.

Answer 2

I hopeit does beause tht wud b so cul

Answer 3

I heard a theory that if Mother Nature doesn't step in and control the ongoing bickering between Heat Miser and Snow Miser, either one of them could take control...

The entire globe could either go into a deep freeze, or extreme heat!!!  Think of it... Snow in south-town at christmas!

We have got to do something to help these two Misers to get along!

Answer 4

If it were true, what brought on the last ice age?  "The Day After Tomorrow" is a complete work of FICTION.  People should not take that as fact, especially Al Gore!

Answer 5

It's possible, but that would be hundreds of years from now and it take a real long time, I don't think there will be humans left on earth even before it starts.

Answer 6

Ther are two versions of warming = cooling.  Neither of them is or was mainstream science, or is likely to be.

Back in the 1970's a few "skeptics", or "deniers" challenged science with the idea that as the earth gets hotter, more water evaporates at the equator, causing more snow to fall at the poles.  The ice caps get bigger, and more heat and light is reflected back into space, and the earth gets cooler.  There were serious errors in the math, and what they predicted is the opposite of what has been observed.  The first link below is the genius behind all that.

The other variation is that the massive amounts of fresh cold water that are being dumped into the oceans as the ice caps melt away will change the course of the major ocean currents, warm and cold.  This could in theory cause regional warming and/or cooling as happened during the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age that followed.  Whether it could actually cause an ice age we don't know, because we don't know much about that system, which is mostly far under the oceans.  The theory doesn't predict the kind of rapid change seen in the movie though, that's pure Hollywood.  Little Robber Girl can explain this one better than I can.

Frankly, we probably have a little time remaining on things that dramatic.  What we are and have been seeing is rapid melting of mountaintop glaciers.  Most of these have been where they are since the human race evolved.  The ice used to melt at the bottom at about the same rate new ice froze at the top.  These supply all of the great rivers of the world, directly or indirectly.  The glaciers are expected to be gone in 10-20 years for the smaller ones and 25-50 years for the larger ones.  Besides the water supply, the lives and livelihoods of the people living in the shadow of those glaciers are increasingly threatened.

Answer 7

Global Warming is a load of Horse hockey. Just 40 years ago it was Global Cooling.

Answer 8

thats what my enviornmental science teacher has been telling us for the last semester that we're going into an ice age instead of global warming, he doesn't think there's enough evidence towards gobal warming.  He hasn't said much about the icecaps though other than he thinks that they are naturally melting.

He thinks one of the keys to global warming is looking at the plankton levels in the ocean because they are very sensitive to the ocean temps.

Answer 9

i would do research on it instead of asking ppls opinions. Ive heard al gore propaganda, and ive also heard the earth is actually cooling. do the work and see for youself.

Answer 10

I doubt it.

More scientists are starting to question the belief of man-made global warming.

These "scientists" will predict a 30% chance of rain within 7 days.  However, they will predict global warming will happen 100%.

Hard to trust them long-term when they can't even get short-term forecasts right.

Answer 11

don't woory about it, that will never happen....

Answer 12

Of course it could! Within the next 50 years, Manhatten may be under water! Half of the Artic is already melted! YOU could make a big difference!:)

Answer 13

Warming precedes cooling only because interglacial periods like we're in now always return to an ice age eventually. The start of an ice age is due to many interlinked factors and many that operate individually no matter what the Earth does. The main cause of an ice age is solar output, when that drops the Earth gets cooler and arguing that it's anything else denies the obvious fact that without the sun we'd be nothing but a frozen ball of ice all the time.

Having an atmosphere with so much water vapor helps keep us from freezing solid, just as an ozone layer blocks radiation that would kill anything on the surface. But without the sun's input neither would matter to us, there'd be no heat for greenhouse gases to trap.

If I remember right, the movie you mention talked about the Atlantic currents stopping, meaning the Thermohaline Circulation. That is extremely unlikely but if enough fresh water was dumped into the Atlantic at once it has stopped for a brief time in the past. It did require a body of water that previously occupied an area several times the size of the Great Lakes emptying suddenly, though, so it's as close to impossible as a meteor strike wiping us out.

If our current solar cycle doesn't get more active we may be in for some major cooling, much more cooling in a shorter time than we have seen with warming. A prolonged period of sunspot inactivity coincided with the coldest point of the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago, which we are only now fully recovering from. Claiming this temp is now the optimum and that it's warmer than it's been for a million years is beyond belief. Optimum for whom? Who is to say we most of us wouldn't be happier and better off if they could farm in what is now frozen tundra? It will take millennia for sea levels to rise like they did in that movie and the whole time our descendants can be preparing for it, but there's just not much you can do to defeat a mile-high glacier outside your door. Better to worry about the sun setting off an ice age than anything warming could do to us.

As for glaciers melting, overall ice levels have already rebounded to close to their old levels and Antarctica stubbornly refuses to stop growing more ice. Since both it and Greenland lie in basins, it will take a very long time for either to melt, they both survived the last few interglacials, just like the polar bears did. Arctic ice is already in the ocean so it won't raise sea levels when it melts. This doomsday scenario will be replaced with another one as soon as more data comes in and it becomes obviously wrong. It will take a lot longer for science to regain it's reputation after it's been manipulated so blatantly than it will for us to lose the small amount of warming we've had.

Answer 14

im not sure, but im really afraid about it. i mean, maybe i wont be alive when it happens, but what about my children? my children's children?

i can't understand why people could be so selfish, and not care about global warming. what about the polar bears in ANTARCTICA!?

Answer 15

It's been said that's what could happen.check out this link

Answer 16

No one knows just as no one knows if man is contributing to the current warming.

Answer 17

I Still Have Thoughts That It Is A Conspiracy Theory

Answer 18

Back in the '70s & 80s they said we were heading into another ice age.

Now everything has heated up and there are droughts all over the world.

I doubt that any of "them" can accurately predict what will happen to the earth a few generations from now.

Answer 19

I think the levels of global warming in reality (and the film) would need to be extremely dramatized for it to ever happen......

and not in your lifetime!

x

Answer 20

i think another ice age was predicted before they realised how bad global warming had become now they think earth wil die before it gets that far. or some c**p. who cares , really!

Answer 21

Global Warming is real. There is no denying the temperature trend since the 70's. All over the world the temperature is up year on year since then.

More then anything it's probably related to both the world wide population boom and the longer lives of this larger group of people.

Could the rise in temp trigger and Ice Age? Maybe. Do we know that much about the Earth and weather? No.

It appears the currents have shut down before during previous ice ages so it is possible. Mother Earth seems to have a way of healing itself.  Major disasters are followed by bad periods only to be rejuvenated. The dinosaurs died for us to live. Their predecessors passed allowing them to get huge. it's like the circle of life on a Millenia scale.

Answer 22

yes it could

Answer 23

Look up any modern geology textbook and you'll see that the earth goes through trends of warming and cooling.

Look up any information on the so-called "greenhouse gases" that are supposedly destroying the ozone layer, and you'll see that the gases are heavier than the air we breathe, and could not get up to the ozone layer.

The only thing that's being warmed is Al Gore's wallet -- stretching because there is too much money in it.

Answer 24

NO  !!! I don't think so ,not in our generation . The environment is by the same people that generated Global Warming,which is a scam.It was originally aimed at big oil ,but it has helped big oil far beyond anything Gore could imagine. It is generated by the Left to keep the Republicans on defense.

Answer 25

it's probably unlikley, but if the currents were shut down, the effect would be the icecaps expanding, which would re-aline the saline balance wouldnt it? it would be very slow if it did happen, plus it relies on the ice reflecting sunlight back out of the atmosphere to lower the temperatures further.