The Coming Ice Age From: Spencer W. Hunter Reply to: Spencer W. Hunter Date: 29 Apr 2002 17:02:23 GMT Organization: University of Arizona Newsgroups: alt.fan.art-bell Followup to: newsgroup I stopped listening to the Bell show regularly somewhere around the beginning of 2000, but every once in a while I'll tune in to sample the madness. This usually happens on a Saturday night after I've listened to an excellent local radio program on amateur astronomy, "Let's Talk Stars" ( http://letstalkstars.com ) hosted by David Levy, which runs from 11:30pm to 12:30am on 990 KTKT (a different station carries the Bell/Strieber programs after that time); or on a Sunday evening after "Music from the Hearts of Space." On April 14 2002, substitute host George Noory interviewed Robert Felix about the coming ice age. Felix turned out to be the typical Bell guest -- a non-expert with an unsubstantiated scary story. According to him, ice ages occur every 11.5K years based on the precession of the Earth and arrive abruptly with horrendous nine-stories-per-day snowfalls that blanket entire continents within a matter of weeks. Naturally, we are overdue for one any time now; so stock up on storable food, crank radios, and gold. I checked some old astronomy textbooks to verify what I thought was fishy about his story, and confirmed my recollection that the precession of the Earth is once in about every 26K years. Clearly, 26 is not evenly divisible by 11.5, so one wonders how Mr. Felix linked this periodic climate change to precession. I next asked an expert in astronomy and a geologist if the 23.5-degree tilt of the Earth ever changed during that 26K year period. It seemed to me that if it did, seasonal variations would be affected which in turn might influence climate. The geologist knew that the tilt remained constant; but also noted that some scientists believe precession does influence climate since, due to the eccentricity of its orbit, the Earth would be closest to the Sun during different seasons throughout the period. However, the data do not support their hypothesis. Most experts, he said, were more interested in fluctuations of solar luminosity over time, continental drift, and the ever-evolving composition of the atmosphere as triggers of climate change. He dismissed as "bunk" the notion that ice ages occur every 11.5K years or that they arrive abruptly. Ice ages come and go over spans of thousands of years. Finally, I checked Amazon.com for customer reviews of Mr. Felix's book, _Not by Fire, but by Ice_, and found the following particularly telling: 2 out of 5 stars Bad Science, March 9, 1998 Reviewer: walt@alaskabike.com from Anchorage, AK "Lots of psuedo-science in this disaster scenario scare book. Author blames magnetic reversals for almost everything; dinosaur extinctions, earthquakes, sea level changes, and most of all ice ages. He mixes enough actual science in to alarm people who are not well read on these subjects. Many scientists and scientific concepts are quoted way out of context to prop up author's theories. For example he confuses nuclear fusion in the sun with the aurora, calling it 'miniature atomic explosions'. Does he know he causes 'miniature atomic explosions' every time he turns on a flourescent light? Many of his ideas could be shown to be wrong with a couple of magnets on your desk." The really sad thing about Bell's show is that if it ever did stumble into something truly threatening or mysterious, it would be lost amid the exploitative exaggeration of the mundane, the silly, and the downright fraudulent. A show like "Let's Talk Stars" writ large would be (in time, at least) just as entertaining, and would actually inform the listeners by approaching mysteries as they should be, with our candles of knowledge fully lit. -- Spencer Hunter, Tucson, AZ gopher://www.u.arizona.edu:80/hGET%20/%7Eshunter alt.fan.art-bell FAQ: http://whiskeytown.net/curiosities/airstream/afab-faq.php