[rextorres]

I don't watch broadcast news cause it sucks so I'll continue the digression.

We are overdue for the next ice age - based on core samples from the glaciers - the Last 11K years have been a relatively long time between the ice ages allowing humans to develop a civilization other than hunter gatherers.

An interesting idea is that Civilization - as we know it - could have developed in any interglacial period in the Last several hundred thousand years if there had been enough time. In other warm periods as soon as any hunter gatherers decided to venture out of his cave it got cold again.

A scary side note is that data shows that global cooling happens fairly rapidly in as little as a few decades.

No one knows how the green house gases will affect this ice age cycle but some scientists suggest that global warming is actually a precursor to global cooling. Global warming would shut down the gulf stream causing the northern latitudes to freeze.

Anyway I would place my bet on an ice age over runaway global warming due to green house gases as the likeliest global catastrophe.

[ February 19, 2004, 21:21: Message edited by: rextorres ]