Are We Going Into An Ice Age?

[Lafiel]

mjk45 said:

Lafiel said:

I'm a geologist and there are several sound hypothesises how global warming can result in the next glacial period (or "Ice Age", although we consider this earth-epoch, the holocene, to be an "Ice Age" anyway with glacial and interglacial(warm) periods, yet most of the time it's cold).

Ofcourse other more popular hypothesises state that our climate changes to a "hot house climate", yet we have seen heatspikes at the end of several interglacial periods, so I personally think it's very possible that at the end of this current one we will see another glacial/ice age. Interesting times are ahead :).

How does this relate to the on going trend of  glacial retreat.

uhm.. I don't denie global warming, it's getting hotter, especially in the polar regions and glaciers are melting at an alarming pace, yet there are mechanisms how this might actually lead to a drastic cooling

the hypothesis is that europe and north america are warm right now mainly because of the gulf stream which flows from the caribean gulf to north of norway/svalbard and carries warm/ low on salt water at the surface and cold/highly saline water at the bottom - now global warming means that a lot of cool/cold fresh water is added to the ocean, but that water can't sink down as quickly as highly salted water does so the stream might weaken and not lead as far into the north anymore or even stop completely resulting in very very drastic cooling for the northern hemnisphere

different hypothesises say very similar things may happen in the pacific ocean, but frankly pacific ocean streams are barely researched at this point