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Short video (less than 4 minutes) with some great special effects
8 May 09 – “We’re well on our way into the next ice age,” says this
video from the National Geographic. “One of our major challenges
will be how to keep us from killing each other.” (I agree.)
“We are hardwired at a genetic level to seek
survival at almost any cost,” says Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia
University. Our base survival instincts will kick in as the food chain
collapses, says Redlener, an expert at the National Cdnter for Disaster
Preparedness. Civilization as we know it will change forever. We could
see deadly competition for food, for water, and for power, as
civilization collapses. (I agree.)
“Global sea levels could drop 400 feet as water is
locked up in ice. Billions of people could perish as ice sheets
two-miles-thick cover the land. Cities like London and New York may be
buried beneath thousands of feet of ice.” . (I agree.)
I agree with all of the above, and even
though the video contains
some misleading statements, I
think it’s worth watching just for
the special effects.
The video contains the statement that
we could plunge into an
ice age “within 30,000 years,”
which is ludicrous. I have no idea
how they came up with such a
number. It also has a graphic
showing the entire globe
turning white, a most unlikely scenario.
And finally, the video says that
humans will survive in a few green
belts of agriculture on both
sides of the equator. I think there will
be many, many areas where
agriculture will thrive and humans will
survive, because it doesn’t
really get all that much colder during
an ice age – it’s just that we
get more precipitation in the winter.
During the last ice age, for
example, Seattle was buried beneath
4,000 feet of ice. But when
scientists look at the kinds of plants that
grew just a couple of hundred
miles south of the ice sheets, they
find that temperatures were
only about seven degrees colder than
today. We can easily survive a
seven-degree drop in temperatures.
The problem will be food. I
agree with Redlener. We’ll be killing
each other for a handful
of biscuits and – oh, how I hate saying
this – cannibalism will
be rampant. (Remember
Donner Pass?)
See video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/59993/national-geographic-channel-danger-ice-age-ahead
Thanks to John (JT) Tregidga for this link |