Posts Tagged ‘little ice age’

People ice skating on the canal of Pompenburg in 1825. Something to while not starving?

Starting in the 1300’s and lasting into the 1800’s our planet experienced what is referred to as the little ice age.  This was a period of time when the Earth cooled down.  There was a lot of skiing and ice skating, people keeping warm by their fires at night and all that good, pure wintry fun.  There were also great famines that led to millions of deaths due to crop shortages because plants tend to not growing very well in frozen ground.

The little ice age is attributed mainly to low solar activity and volcanic activity, but in 2008 William Ruddiman proposed carbon dioxide levels were in effect caused by humans chopping down too many trees.  He has little support from the scientific community on this theory but I have to say his thoughts on the matter are interesting to read and a bit different from the common thoughts posed by scientists on either side of the debate and power hungry politicians.

The fact is, our climate changes and we know little about the reasons why.  In the 1970’s we were scolded about an oncoming ice age.  Read this Times article and see how cold weather affected us then.

So now we are beset with global warming.  A potential disaster to mankind and utterly altering the Earth as we know it.  There are Scientists all over the world who are screaming at us to do something.  Scientists like Nasa’s Jame’s Hansen.  These scientists have little to gain in crying doomsday, right? Well read for yourself.  The truth is, the doomsayers enjoy fistfulls of cash and a very supportive media who loves to trumpet the next great tragedy.