If heading for the ice age means that there will be bisons (and mammoths) way up in arctic Sibertia again, then sure, lets have an ice age
We'll if we could find a 20,000 to 40,000 year old frozen mamoth buried in Siberia that had some decent DNA, we might be able to start the process for "clonning" a mamoth today. It would probably take a few generations to produce a mamoth again, but's it's possible..... Yob Atta
Norman, I seem to observe that you have a very distinct ability to put the emphasis exactly on the wrong place. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's not about the perished pachyderms, it's about the luscious lawns that could never have existed there, but yet they did.
Curious, that must have meant that this grass even grew too. Something that requires at least 10 degrees C temperature for several months. Something that is quite a rare event in the nowadays Taymir peninsula.
Now seriously, why do we think that there have been ice ages as in waning-and-waning-ice sheets? Small sheets in between, immensly big ice plains during the glacial periods. We have all the glacial remains: kames, eskers, drumlins etc. There is little doubt that those have been caused by moving ice sheets. We have also the cores. Ice cores and sediment cores from lakes and ocean bottoms. We see in the mud and the ice differences in certain ratios of atoms. We know that those ratios use to differ with temperature. We see all those 100,000 years spikes in those ratios or temperatures(?). Et voila, there you go. Ice ages. No doubt about it. But why don't those stubborn trunky woolly monsters obey to that logic? And when you really start digging you find a whole lot more. After working our way through several dozens of geologic exploration reports we reconstructed a picture of the Northern hemisphere of some 35,000 years ago: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (reposting, has been here before)
Oh, I see that lawn mower. Can't say that I can cite the discovery but, look, there it is, must be true. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
In 15,000 years or less, I hope you have enough warm winter clothing to last you for the next 10,000 to 20,000 years. If not, better stock up now, either that or grow a lot of hair!!! Yob Atta
Anywayz going back on topic if earth doesn't head into an ice age on its own which i think is going to happen.. Could a big enough asteroid or something like that send us into an ice age?
A big enough ateroid impact would most likely send the planet into another ice age. Of course, we may not survive the initial impact (if its a global killer) but it's not to say an ice age wouldn't follow as billions of tons of dust would be thrown into the atmosphere and blocking out the sun for several years. Also, a complete destabilization of the atmospheric and ocean circulation is all that is needed to start the next ice age as well ... and a large asteroid is more than enough to do just that. The resulting shockwave of the impact would spread throughout the planet disrupting climatic and meteorological patterns ... like throwing a large rock into a calm lake and watching the ripples spread out in all directions ... though the shockwave would be more than just a displacement wave. Even a medium sized asteroid ... about several hundred meters across ... may be enough to even start a regional ice age since all the dust that is thrown up in the air during impact is enough to plunge the area into a deep cold spell (since the sun would be blocked for quite some time).
Don't think so. Volcanic ash only last a few years. The most of it doesn't make it thought the first year, so why would debris of meteorites could stay aloft longer. Besides about some 35 ice ages have started the last two million years, the first million years about 40,000 years apart, the last million years about 100,000 years. Those intervals are too regular to account it on random meteorites but not regular enough to account it on recurring astronomical events from comet type of orbits. Besides many impact craters on Earth have been stored in a database but they are not associated with ice age starts.
Let's keep in mind that upon an asteroid impact ... all that dust and debris are collectively ejected into the atmosphere in a very short amount of time whereas a vocano spits out its volcanic ash during moderately long period of time. And with the resulting shokewave for an asteroid impact, any atmospheric currents are disrupted and/or altered whereas it would take much longer to disperse all that debris. Consider this, an asteroid of 10 Km in diameter with a density of 4 grams/cubic meters, a impact velocity of 30Km/s, and a graze angle of 65 degrees would result in a kinetic energy of 94247779607 terajoules (or the equivalent yield of 225 gigatons of TNT) ... I got this from a "asteroid impact calculator". And all that is released on impact. I would think that would throw enough dirt and debris into the atmosphere and disturb the natural atmospheric circulation to cause considerable cooling of the surface. OK ... maybe not a full sized Ice Age like those in the past ... but maybe enough to cause a moderately damaging cooling of the planet. I don't think a volcano can release that amount of energy and dust to cause an ice age. Like you said, volcanic ash only remians suspended in the atmosphere for a few years but that's because atmospheric circulations aren't severely altered. It's not gravity which brings down those dust particulates ... its atmospheric patterns which distributes them everywhere and spreads them out thin across a large area until it is completely immerse into the atmosphere.
What if a large or even small asteroid impacts into middle of Yellowstone Lake, the home of the worlds largest Supervolcano that last erupted 640,000 years ago and is approx. 40,000 overdue for another huge super-eruption.......I think we would have a global near-exinction event if this were to happen and it could! Remember TOBA (Circa: 74,000 years ago)!!! Yob Atta
Supervolcano eruptions would be the exception to my statement ... but the reason why I didn't mention it was because it's not a common occurance. I wouldn't know how an asteroid impact directly on top of the supervolcano would result in but I can imagine it won't be a pretty sight (well maybe it would look pretty but I wouldn't want to be around it)
If the meteor that crashed in the Arizona desert nearly 25,000 years ago would have impacted in the Yellowstone Supervolcano area, we would have a much smaller global population today.........You can bet on it!!! Yob Atta
An asteroid and a supervolcano, i dont know how you came up with that random idea, but yes the results will be disastrous. The Yellowstone Caldera is like a bulging bubble, if anything applies so much pressure as an steroid, i think you get the picture Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. But i would love to see a spectacular scene like that.
