Sunday, January 6, 2008

Let's Throw Some Gas on the Fire

During my restful holiday period I was able to do the rousing, partying things that de-I is noted for -- like watching two hour series on Discovery and History Channels about the geological history of the earth and the Dark Ages. It really doesn't get more exciting than that especially if you're sipping a cognac and eating some homemade chocolate truffles.

While watching the former, the history of the earth, at the end they came to a very interesting part where they were talking about how we've been through and extended (I think a million years or more) period of ice ages and that we were in one of the brief inter-glacial periods and that another ice age was certainly in our future. We've had a very cold winter so far so I've been making a lot of global warming jokes. But the show and this winter got me to thinking. "What if we really are just in an inter-glacial period. And what if all our obsession with global warming is in fact going to make it colder faster."

Well I'm no scientist and I just let it rest until a week later I was having breakfast with a friend who brought it up. He told me he has been fascinated by this subject for years and had a whole library of web sites for me to check out if one wanted to get beyond the hype.

I'm just getting into them but to get the passions flowing I offer for you this BBC show that was produced on the subject.

3 comments:

Lakeview Coffee Joe said...

I saw in one of the more recent shows on National Geography or Discovery Channel that the latest analysis shows that there are "short" ice ages as well. These fall in between the larger, nastier ice ages and can arrive in as few as 10 years time. The last one, according to the show, struck just prior to the spread of the bubonic plague and may have been a significant cause in the spread of the plague: people were inside more because of the cold weather and rats ALSO sought shelter, heading indoors with all their germs. Ugh.

alexis said...

I'm going to hold out on buying shares of parka companies just yet. You are quoting a television channel that devotes 30% of its programming on investigating whether the shroud of Turin is real or not.

Michael Podolny said...

Well Alexis that would be ALL of the television networks. I found it very interesting. My contact has sent me all sorts of information. I will pass them on as I start screening them.