Here comes the next ice age

Ice ages are cyclic and we are heading into the next one, but given the scale of these cycles, I won't be worrying about it. But I would be pleased if we have a hard winter to kill off these bloody Spanish slugs.

If you fly even once a year, that wipes everything else out, NanaDenise.

I am a bit sceptical about global warming. I can remember predictions of an ice age coming some years ago with all the whacky ideas about melting the ice (sadly not with gin) in much the same way as we hear about rising sea levels now. The media are always ready to take a small scientific truth and then mangle it so it bears no relationship to the original research.

I do believe in leaving as light a footprint after me though. I recycle and upcycle where I can. We now cook and heat our house entirely with wood. We don't fly much (sometimes for business) and our elderly car is mended rather than replaced.

Ice ages and global warming have occured over millennia and I am certain they will continue to do so. Climate change - whichever way it goes - will not be helped by overpopulation, careless use of our precious resources and the destruction of our natural habitat.

Given that the Ice Age doesn't feature in the Bible, soontobe I imagine you have no fears on such a possible outcome of climate change?

However, I agree with nelliemoser and elegran about the popular media giving us their version of scientific research.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" ?

Or leave out bits.

They are not competent to read the science publications and understand what the researchers are saying, so they publish the most sensational bits they can find - and if those are not sensational enough, they exaggerate.

Is that because they pick up on things in science publications, Nelliemoser?
Which are only part findings usually?

Don't anyone get carried away. There is 5% chance. The tabloids as ever like to pump up any possible angst about anything science based.

The scientists themselves are usually cautious about such issues such as climate change or the possible sucess of "The new wonder drug".

Often the press publish there new research findings as the whole story when in fact most researchers want to test and retest their findings and get others to check their results. before making any firm conclusions.

When I was out with my geology group a couple of weeks ago, apart from us hobby geologists there were about four or five Geology acedemics all with slightly different opinions on the origins of one or other rock outcrop. Which discussion certainly makes for an interesting outing.

If scientists did not challenge each other's findings we would still think the world was flat.

This summer in The Hebrides is the coldest anyone can remember. The Deer are still wearing their winter coats, the grass is hardly growing, causing great concern to the crofters as to how they will feed their animals. Hundreds of lambs have died of pneumonia.
I hope this is just a one off

I seem to remember that in the 1970s all the weather forecasters were promising a mew ice age, which caused a lot of ribaldry in the summer of 76.

I am not sure I saw the programme you mentioned HildaJJ, but I certainly read about the expert and his predictions,

The only thing that will freeze over, before the experts get it right, is Hell!

Here in New Zealand there seems to be some excitement about whether the winter temperature will plummet below the lowest ever recorded over 100 years ago. Somewhere further south than I live, it has got as low as -20°C; the record is -25°C. Here, in the north of the South Island, morning temperatures are around -2 or -3°C. As far as I am concerned, that is quite cold enough and I am not in the least excited about breaking the record.

I think it has already started this summer . We've had lots of sun but little warmth.

This Met office aticle might just provide better information than the sensationalism of the tabloid press.

www.climatechangedispatch.com/met-office-temperatures-could-plummet-as-sun-enters-cooler-phase.html

How do you know those were the days, if you weren't even born?

Before I was born; that's why I do not remember it!
My parents were living in a caravan on the East Yorkshire coast, along with my brother and her mother. Those were the days.

It's not frozen over completely but in the winter of 1947 ships had to watch for pack ice on the river.

Gloom, doom.......
The 'experts' are as changeable as the weather, can't be consistent for more than five minutes., and 'Health Warning' -the Daily Hatemail is on the scaremongering again

There's bound to be cyclical hot/cold eras, it's been happening since the beginning of Time. The only things not currently forecast are a ginormous meteor like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and a massive volcanic eruption like the one that obliterated part of the Mediterranean yonks ago

That's why it's no longer called global warming, vampire, but climate change.

Has the Humber ever frozen over?

About fifteen years ago my DD and I watched a documentary on TV about the earth's cycle of warming and cooling. The expert from America said that the findings of his research were, that the earth was about to go into a period of cooling, and that we would probably enter the next mini ice age within thirty years. We seem to have been the only people in Britain to have seen the programme, as nobody I have ever spoken to about it remembers seeing it. I am waiting patiently to see if he was right.

As long as there's plenty of G&T to go with the ice. . . .