Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists - Telegraph

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that 630 million years ago the earth had a warm atmosphere full of carbon dioxide but was completely covered with ice.

The scientists studied limestone rocks and found evidence that large amounts of greenhouse gas coincided with a prolonged period of freezing temperatures.

Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed, the university's school of geography, earth and environmental sciences warned.

While pollution in the air is thought to trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere, causing the planet to heat up, this new research suggests it could also have the opposite effect reflecting rays back into space.

This effect would be magnified by other forms of pollution in the earth's atmosphere such as particles of sulphate pumped into the air through industrial pollution or volcanic activity and could create ice age conditions once more, the scientists said.

Dr Ian Fairchild, lead investigator, said: "We came up with an independent test of a theory that the earth, like a baked Alaska pudding, was once hot on the outside, surrounding a cold, icy surface.


Click for Animation"It happened naturally in the past, but the wrong use of technology could make it happen again." ...

via Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists - Telegraph.

There is not a vast conspiracy of the majority of the world's scientists to manipulate and misinterpret climate data. Stop listening to industry propaganda radio stations. Humans are responsible for climate change, and for natural resource depeletion and for species reduction, but it is also true that a supernova gamma ray burst, a massive solar flare, a comet, asteroid, or a super volcano could take us out entirely and then our pollution of the planet over the last 1000 years would not matter. Oh, I left out hostile Alien Invasion. Anyway, whatever the threat, warming or cooling, we should recognize our fragile situation and work on finding a backup planet.

More realistically, we will face issues of displacement, scarcity, new resources and national sovereignty which could lead to new wars as we adjust to a new planet.