posted
Soylent Green was a major motion picture, starring Charlton Heston, not some minor indie film. Released in 1973, the setting is in 2022, where various dialog indicates that the temperature rarely dips below 90 and the winter isn't cold anymore. Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) explains that this is caused by the greenhouse effect.
I keep hearing that "in the 70's, they told us we were going to have another ice age, and now they've changed their minds, and we've got global warming." I point out that I first heard about global warming in 1973 in a 16mm movie shown by my 3rd grade teacher, but no one seems to remember that anyone made such predictions back then, bacause they were busy telling us about ice ages. In fact, my teacher told us about both, but the ice age was presented as the natural cycle that operated on a geological time scale (we might have an ice age within the next 1000 years... which is a relatively short time) while global warming was presented as a man made change that was occurring rapidly as part of the industrial age and population growth. It remained a question which effect would be stronger.
It was heartening to me today when I watched Soylent Green for the first time, that the greenhouse effect played a prominent part. I remember the 70's quite well, thank you, and I knew that it wasn't something that appeared out of nowhere in the late 80's. I knew I wasn't crazy, but there must be other references that go back that far. It's just a matter of remembering them.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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[derail]You never saw Soylent Green before today???? Wow.....[/derail]
I always wondered how we could be fighting to survive both an ice age and global warming at the same time. I remember my teachers also telling us similar information. The best anyone could come up with, and I never really bought into it, was that the rapid effects of global warming would cause a massive downswing and trigger the next ice age.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:The best anyone could come up with, and I never really bought into it, was that the rapid effects of global warming would cause a massive downswing and trigger the next ice age.
The theory was, and the fear still exists, that massive melt from the glaciers caused by global warming will pour too much cold, fresh water into the ocean too quickly, and it'll shut down the thermal conveyer belt that makes northern Europe liveable. If it were to shut down, Great Britain and everything to the east of it would have the same climate as Siberia. The Day After Tomorrow had the basic idea right, just radically melodramatic with their timeline of events.
Talk to Rabbit about the real timeline of climate science, it's not quite what the critics make it sound like when they claim scientists have flip flopped.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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[derail]You never saw Soylent Green before today???? Wow.....[/derail]
I've known the punchline for 30 years, so it didn't seem like there was much point. But it was on Turner Classics today, so I figured it was worth seeing.
There are two different ice age predictions that I'm aware of. The one Lyrhawn describes is also described in "An Inconvenient Truth." It's based on a sort of aftershock of the last ice age that covered North America, when all the glaciers melted and the Great Lakes basin emptied out into the North Atlantic and shut down the Gulf Stream by interfering with the saline concentrations.
The other ice age prediction is the one I described above, which is simply a cyclical pattern, that can be inferred from the climate data that describes the ice ages as we know them. It's not like the cycle is a perfect sine wave, or anything, but an eyeball approximation shows that we have been in a warm period for long enough that a new ice age ought to come along some time soon, on a geological time scale. To the best of my knowledge, no one really understands the mechanism that drives this cycle, although CO2 concentration seems to be part of the equation.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
So the people looking for the Northwest Passage were right after all, just a couple hundred years too early! Well, I guess that's a silver lining. I wonder how Panama feels about that.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Considering they've just recently broken ground on a multibillion dollar major expansion to the canal to accomodate the ultrasized tankers coming from Asia, and that it will cost $6 billion (not chump change to Panama), I'll bet they aren't thrilled about it.
Someone shipping from Asia to Europe or the US east cost (assuming they aren't using intermodal shipping) can save almost 6,000 miles by using the Northwest Passage instead of the Panama Canal, they won't have a wait time due to crowding, and they won't have to pay as much as $150 thousand in passage fees, depending on the size of the vessel. On the flip side, the Northwest Passage is currently a disputed waterway, with the world saying it's free for navigation and Canada saying they own it. Also, it's navigable to ships that aren't the US super reinforced ice breakers, but that doesn't mean it is 100% ice free. For the next decade probably, while it is navigable, they would still run the risk of hitting ice.
Some might solve that problem by reinforcing the hull of some ships specifically meant to traverse the Northwest Passage. The cost savings would be readily apparent, but I don't know if they'd consider it worth it. Still, it's a ways away before you'll see a good amount of shipping head up there, probably at least until the territoriality problem is solved.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
you know, i figured out it was his sled in the first scene of the movie. Didn't seem like such a big shocker to me.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
On a slight tangent, the thing most people forget is that Global Warming precedes the next Ice Age. At the end of every Hot Age, there has been a spike in Greenhouse Gases and a sharp spike in temperature, then a slide down into the Ice Age. Typically, Hot Ages last (ballpark) 20,000 years and Ice Ages last 100,000 years.
The sooner we cause an increase in greenhouse gases, the sooner we cause the spike in global temperatures, the sooner we force a new Ice Age.
Now, the next Ice Age could be 1,000 years away, or 5,000 years away, or if we aren't careful 100 years away. The question is, when the Ice Age comes will we have the technology and the energy resources to deal with it?
In the last Ice Age, human population was small, and was not scattered across that much of the earth. Today, that is not so. In the next Ice Age Minnesota won't exist; it will be under an ice sheet. All of Canada and the upper 1/3 of the USA will be gone. The southern states will have the climate of the northern states. The same will be true of Europe. Millions and millions of people will be displaced. Energy demands will be enormous. Where will that energy come from? Also, keep in mind that most of our food comes from the states that are going to be under an ice sheet.
Here is another thing to consider, we actually have an effect called 'Global Shading'. Part of pollution is particulate matter in the air; in other words, general pollution. This particulate matter is actually shading the earth keeping it cooler while at the same time greenhouse gases are growing. That means global warming is far worse than we imagine because other pollution is causing a shading effect.
This shading effect buys us some time, but not much. We are already seeing temperature rises overwhelming the shading effect.
So, in short, the faster our global temperatures rise, the sooner the next Ice Age is upon us. If we don't have our energy issue resolved by then, it bodes very very very very very badly for mankind. Once again, keep in mind that the next Ice Age is likely to last 100,000 years or more.
For the sake of mankind, pollution and greenhouse gases must be reduced.
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