The painting ‘George Washington Crossing the Delaware’ depicts a boatload of colonial American soldiers making their way to attack English. ‘Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away,’ says Curry, ‘I grew up in Philadelphia. The place in this painting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.’
‘It could happen in 10 years,’ says Terrence Joyce, ‘Once it does, it can take hundreds of years to reverse.’ And he is alarmed that Americans have yet to take the threat seriously.
Persistent chilling could have devastating consequences. A 2002 report produced by the National Academy of Sciences, pegged the cost from agricultural losses alone at $100 billion to $250 billion while also predicting that damage to ecologies could be vast and incalculable.
Isn’t the earth actually warming? Indeed it is, says Joyce. He explains how such warming could actually be the surprising culprit of the next mini-ice age.
The freshwater trend is major news in ocean-science circles. Bob Dickson who sounded an alarm at a February conference in Honolulu, has termed the drop in salinity and temperature in the sea ‘arguably the largest full-depth changes observed in the modern instrumental oceanographic record.’
Questions
1. Most Americans are not prepared for the next ice age.
2. The result of abrupt climate change is catastrophic.
3. The world is not as cold as it used to be.
4. Global warming is closely connected to the ice age.
5. Alerted people of the change of ocean water in a conference.