Imagine our world in the not-too-distant future In parts of the northern hemisphere, the temperature plummets to -9F. At 13 below, public transportation fails. Those caught outside freeze to death. Buildings collapse under the weight of snow and ice. The power goes out, society collapses, and anarchy takes its place. Could this be a vision of our future? Naked Science examines what may cause temperatures to plummet and how this could spell disaster for our planet.
That is the teaser for Naked Science: The Big Freeze airing on the National Geographic Channel. I only caught a few minutes of it (it airs again) but was quite surprised at some of the discoveries. Scientists drilled ice cores in Greenland representing millions of years in time and climate change. Not surprisingly (to me, at least) we are currently, and for the last 10,000 years, experiencing an uncharacteristically steady climatological period. The ice cores reveal that most of the time the earth’s climate swings in drastic and devastating cycles of global cooling and warming, sometimes by as much as 21° C in as little as ten years. And man has absolutely no control over it. National Geographic has really been pushing the manmade global warming bull. It will be interesting how they reconcile past shows with this one. I’ll try and catch the whole thing next time it airs. Not Friday morning at 2am, though.