Global Warming Induced Ice Age

     Journalists are usually quite reserved about using the military as arbiters of scientific credibility. One may recall, for example, the outraged skepticism expressed over the Pentagons plans to study the feasibility of using markets to predict the next terrorist attack. Anyone passingly familiar with media coverage of recent events in Iraq may be surprised to learn that a journalist is now citing an organization reporting to Donald Rumsfeld as a credible source of evidence regarding an imminent threat requiring preemptive action.

     Readers of the current issue of Fortune magazine may be taken aback to learn that the magazines science writer finds the fact that the Pentagon recently studied possible scenarios resulting from abrupt climate change to devise plans to defend against it represents prima facie evidence that a global warming induced ice age could indeed be imminent.

     As dramatic as it is, however, the novel theory engenders only the same, tired, reduce industrial activity and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions immediately or were doomed prescription that governments from the United States to Russia have failed to embrace. Of course, those refusals came in the face of earlier, somewhat less dire threats that merely included mass extinction. Perhaps the junk scientists are hoping weve forgotten how the 1970s edition of this global cooling fable turned out and concentrate on their new message that the wolf is really, really close this time.

     If you prefer to go straight to the film version, and feel comfortable waiting until the summer before taking precipitous action, then we recommend The Day After Tomorrow, described as a big budget disaster movie from 20th Century Fox. It will star Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world from an ice age precipitated by (can you guess?) global warming. more