Ice Age Topography and Extent
Original Image from: http://www.iceagenow.com/Glacial_Maximum_World_Map.jpg. Click for a larger version.
OK, I’ve completely lost track of who pointed me at what where and when. I’ve been fighting DSL wars and swapping between 3 computers on 4 or 5 networks and, well, things get misplaced in the shuffle. (Right now, my DSL is completely dead. I hope it’s not an earthquake indicator…)
But, this map was in one of my ‘saved windows’. Someone pointed me at it some time or other.
I find it interesting on several counts.
Maybe An Ice Age Isn’t So Bad
First off, the ice doesn’t extend nearly as far into Asia and South America as I’d expected. It’s probably that USA Centric thing; but knowing that Canada got covered, I’d figured something similar would happen to Siberia (and maybe the rest of Russia) along with South America and New Zealand or South Australia being icy too. Not quite so…
Looking at this map (where I have no idea what it’s based upon…) we see that yes, we lose Canada. Heck, Sweden and Norway too. But really, that’s not all that many people in the grand scheme of things. In exchange, we get a giant chunk more Florida (where most of them want to move anyway) along with Argentina getting a lot more land (for all the Germans along with the odd Dane and maybe a few of the Scotsmen who don’t like the idea of Florida). Oh, and it looks like the Gulf of California may turn into a very nice long fertile valley. Just the thing for growing a lot of food. (What with the extra water in the Colorado River system we could even let some reach Mexico for a change… ) And just look at how much the Gulf of Mexico shallows up! We’d be able to drill all that “very deep water oil” with needing much more than a jack up rig!
It looks like we might lose Chicago, some of New York (if we’re lucky, most all of it ;-) and New England, but heck, they are a pain anyway. It looks like Texas and the whole gulf coast grow more than New England shrinks, and, frankly, the folks in Texas seem to have a better handle on reality anyway.
South East Asia and Indonesia merge into one giant mega lush area, and Australia joins with Papua New Guinea adding a boat load of land.
All in all a very ‘livable’ result.
Sadly, it looks like California doesn’t change much, so we’re still going to be getting plastered with debt. probably a few $Trillion by then. And with China gaining the South China Sea (and Taiwan…, they would like that…) we’d probably be expected to actually pay them back. I also note that with the ice sheet cutting off Alaska, but with the land bridge connecting it to Russia, we’d probably have to give it back to the Russians. Maybe we could trade it to them if they would pay off the Chinese for us? Oh and maybe then they could drill and pump the oil, then sell it to us… (Wonder where the Caribou end up? Looks to me like somewhere between Montana and Denver… That’s OK, all the Rabid Greens who live in Denver will gladly move out to make room for the new National Caribou Reserve in all of Colorado.)
On a positive note, it looks like the middle of Africa is more green in a wider band. Oh, and Greece has all those pointless little islands joining hands into a more decent chunk of land. Look! England gets to join the EU, no, for real this time! Land bridge, currency, and all!
In Conclusion
It looks like sliding into a new Ice Age Glacial is not so bad after all. Yeah, some disruptions. But really, is it all that much more migration than what happened in the Irish Potato Famine or during the “Migration Era Pessimum” (AKA The Dark Ages) when folks like the Goths went all the way from the Steppes of Asia to North Africa. On foot, no less. Heck, now we could do it in a few months, by air.
Given that it takes about 100,000 years for all the ice to accumulate, the advancing Ice sheet moves about 800 feet a year, so we’d have plenty of time to adjust. Even if a 3 x burst happened, it’s only about 800 meters a year. Heck, I could walk that in one weekend without trying.
So, for all my worry about us being on a slow decent back into an ice age (which began about 6000 years ago, BTW) and even with it having been a bit of cold back in The Little Ice Age during the last down cycle of things, it’s really not all that bad. So we’ve had a bit of a warm run from that point (in the several hundred year cycle). So we’ve reached the point where it’s time to turn down again. So the sun has gone into a cold heartless funk and it’s snowing like crazy in Sweden, Norway, Scotland… No reason to panic.
Heck, we ought to just offer them all an option on some new Gulf Coast Land… What the heck, the Finns too. (And if they REALLY want to stay where it snows a lot, well, heck, maybe we could just give them Alaska and the Bering Land Bridge. They’re good with Russians and know how to work things out…)
All in all, it looks to me like there really isn’t all that much of a problem from The New Ice Age. Plenty of nice warm land created closer to the Equator to make up for all that frozen stuff up where it’s already too cold and frozen.
Me? I’m eyeing a nice little patch of Nouveaux Coastal Land down near Uruguay…
Musings from the Chiefio 
When the sarcasm flows it snows ;-)
Atlantis will no longer be a myth of the ages.
“Heck, we ought to just offer them all an option on some new Gulf Coast Land… What the heck, the Finns too. (And if they REALLY want to stay where it snows a lot, well, heck, maybe we could just give them Alaska and the Bering Land Bridge. They’re good with Russians and know how to work things out…)”
Alaska would be fine. Nothing too warm for us. Summertime temp max. +30C would be great and winter temps shouldn’t preferably go under -34C because my car stops running. Happened to me this christmas. Annoying.
But I don’t think we’re that good with working things out with russians – unless you mean this: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9cHkMILP4_A/Su8p3GFJJOI/AAAAAAAABHc/yywQlkVuUD4/s800/fdccax.jpg
;)
there is only a problem with your Ice age analysis, with a colder climate there is less rain . so whit an ace age a bigger part of the world is tundra , dry step like the omngolia now or dry savana , the amazon forest almost desapear tin that time , in South America the Ice age was much more a DRY AGE .
hot is better
Sadly, it looks like California doesn’t change much, so we’re still going to be getting plastered with debt. probably a few $Trillion by then
The millions of new immigrants, caused by cold, will make for a bigger economy. Population is good not bad as many “Green Nuts” believe;
Back in the 1950’s there was a big wave of newcomers from the highlands of Peru to the coastal areas. Then they were criticized because of “reproducing like rabbits”, and they were all unemployed, however after decades they have become the main source of new entrepreneurship making for the 45% of a 8-9% per year growing GDP.
Just one example: A guy who came in those years began selling two to three 2-3 T-shirts a day (bought from then existing manufacturers); now he employs more than 3,000 people and exports 1 million t-shirts per month to Europe.
….BTW the New Ice Age it is a justification for all of us who have a greasy belly: A tendency inherited from past glaciations. :-)
This site has information the area called Beringia, which is present day Russia, Alaska, and Yukon.
http://www.beringia.com/
http://www.beringia.com/research/index.html
We tend to think it “normal” that the seas should occupy the center of Beringia and intriguing or unusual that the floors of those seas have been exposed as dry land in the past. In fact, the Bering Land Bridge has been dry land more often than not for the past two million years or more.
Malibu residents aren’t going to like the loss of their beaches!! Not to mention all the other beach front property loss. Should make some great political and actual wars over who gets ownership and control of the new land.
The archaeological finds should be pretty amazing also if we manage to keep a relatively stable society through the disruptions.
An amusing – and informative – look at the next ice age. Even though California does not lose much, I think Florida and Texas’ gain will supplant them as the largest states. Of course all the Beach Front owners in Florida today are going to be pissed tomorrow! ;)
@a finn:
Yup, that was exactly what I meant…. Finland has a long and proud record of “effective” when it comes to “working things out” with Russia ;-) One of the most amazing demonstrations ever of what a little spunk and skill can do.
@B Jordan: Notice the tags? “Humor”? ….
@PhilJourdan and Kuhnkat:
Most of the title law I’ve learned says that incremental land growth as a water way moves belongs to the person who owned the land onto which it gets glued. (Never buy the outside bend of a river, always buy the inside bend…) This would imply that the present sea front property owners will be the landlords and get to repeatedly move one plot further out and sell off the “overlooking the beachfront with a house” behind them… I think they will like that ;-)
@Adolfo: TMI… and I don’t wan’t to know what you do with it after it’s all lubed up, either… I mean, a little whipped cream on the spouse I can understand but,… no, no, I mussent go there… ;-)
Looking at the ‘World View’ 18K years ago, above. Always thought, perhaps wrongly (but who knows really:-) that when the ice on land levels got to a point, and the ocean level fell enough, and the current around Antartica was disrupted to flow North because there was no longer a way around the pole, that something big happened. Bet there were a heck of a lot of anchovies and sea gulls making guano for later use. Think maybe it’s all that methane that sets off the end of the glacials and the starts the interglacials? AKA – “Global Warming”?
(Slap)
Sorry! Can’t believe I said that. Must be getting cold and stupid. It’s the snow! Has to be all that @#$@ snow!
@E.M. “Most of the title law I’ve learned says that incremental land growth as a water way moves belongs to the person who owned the land onto which it gets glued. (Never buy the outside bend of a river, always buy the inside bend…) This would imply that the present sea front property owners will be the landlords and get to repeatedly move one plot further out and sell off the “overlooking the beachfront with a house” behind them… I think they will like that ;-)”
Yes, but if the Army Corp of Engineers will dreg a canal along the existing shoreline, then the State can claim all that new land on the other now-dry side of the trough. :)
The real reason the Great Wooly Mamoth died off was because of lawyers, The Corps of Engineers, and anchovies and sea gulls. As I recall, there was a short period when all the lawyers died off too. Hummmmm… must have been something they were served and ate.
E.M.Smith
Troubles with fat..synonyms….which became grease :-)
@Pascvaks
Hope not economists like E.M. …., anyway SP uses to eat all “endangered species” with mash potatoes..:-)
In my playing with the World Wind sea level layer, I have noticed that one thing that also happens is that the Newfoundland Banks eventually become dry land. It might be surrounded by enough ocean to keep it from being iced over.
Florida becomes absolutely huge. The Adriatic sea becomes a fertile valley as does that gulf that lies between Arabia and Persia. The North Sea, Irish Sea, and English Channel become farmland probably warm enough to keep a lot of ice forming. The Rhine and the Thames become meandering rivers over a flat plain.
Canada gets deposited in a field somewhere in Indiana but that’s probably ok. We could use the scrap iron and there is something oddly appealing to the notion that Chicago would be under thousands of feet of ice.
@ Pascvacs “Think maybe it’s all that methane that sets off the end of the glacials and the starts the interglacials?”
I have wondered something similar. Here is my “senario.”
Long, slow seeping of methane from deep crust nanobacteria comes out mostly from the thinner oceanic crust, where it combines with frigid water at high pressure to make methane clathrates. Not much methane actually makes it to the atmosphere from those deep sources. Along comes an Ice Age, and with it the drop in ocean levels. Remember that clathrates are only stable when they are both cold AND under high pressure. As the ocean depth decreases, some of the methane clathrates find themselves in shallow water, so shallow that they undergo (to use an old NASA phrase) “rapid spontaneous disassembly” and dump truely massive amounts of methane into the air. So much methane that they actually do have a green house effect, at least enough to kick start another interglacial. Of course the methane is slowly oxidized to CO2 and eaten by plants, at which point we are back (as far as the atmosphere goes) to where we started.
Screw this, where is my freaking global warming?! I’m from Sweden, goddarn it, and I strongly object to any Ice Age of any sorts. I do not want 2 kilometers of ice on top of my house! I demand that the IPCC immediately explain what the purpose of all this is! Yargh!
*running off to burn up more fossil fuels and shovel ash on snowpiles*
hpx83
Melt it down with an old fashion light bulb :-)
George
sory but all that area in the northem europe like irish sea in the last Ice age were tundra , so not more fertile than the inuit lanl and the noth west territory in the Canada.
the wether were incredible dryer, in the cold wather do not evaporate , with lass sea superfice you have less wather to evaporate to , htoing about it.
a world line the cazakistan or mongolia, grassland dry and cold deserts in the most part.
thing agout it , how the cazakistan isn`t a agricultural powerhose in the world ? a gigantic plain perfect to plow.
* they don`t have wather
I posted this over at WUWT Tips & Notes, but I thought you might be interested too. Totally off topic here, but I’m not sure where I ought to put it.
John
“I made my semiannual visit to the local cinema yesterday and managed to survive the barrage of previews. One, however, caught my attention, not for its plot, which was silly, but for its title: “The Adjustment Bureau.” There is no way this is not going to be applied to one of our bureaucracies, the question is, ‘Which one?’ I suggest a poll on WUWT, so we all get a say….”
hpx83,
start collecting filament light bulbs and establish a line of defense with them!!! Christmas tree lights, floods, sun lamps, they will all work to good effect!! Maybe you can get the stadium lights from abandoned northern stadiums cheap!!
A few nuke reactors and you can hold the ice at bay!!
Burn lots of bio stuff for the carbon black to sprinkle on the snow and ice for increased albedo also!! Burning stuff is good for the soul especially when it is getting colder!! Lots of blacktop parking lots on top of the houses might be an idea also.
“A few nuke reactors and you can hold the ice at bay!!”
I have thought about that before. Maybe one could build what amounts to a convection heater, a core that is “hot” using something like a “pebble bed” configuration that is surrounded by an area where ambient water is drawn in, is warmed, and exits at the top for keeping ice thinner along channels to what would normally be ice-bound ports and harbors.
Of course, I have had other strange ideas, too, like terraforming, well, terra. Imagine knocking down the coastal mountains at around Oceanside, CA. That would bring some serious moisture inland from the Pacific.
Or imagine drilling a tunnel through the mountains say, just South of San Bernardino. Now you shape that tunnel something like a jet engine where it “pinches” a bit in the middle and put a turbine in there. Wind velocities would probably get to a couple of hundred miles/hour at that point. Talk about a wind generator! And the tunnel could also be used to transport infrastructure (power/communications links) through the mountains. And when the wind is blowing inland, it would provide a way for the polluted air in the valley to escape to the desert on the other side of the mountain providing cleaner air to the Los Angeles area.
There would need to be one heck of a screen there, though, to keep trash (and people?) out of the turbine blades.
@kuhnkat:
I intend to sacrafice myself as part of the “Beer and yellow snow” melting team ;-)
@George:
Then there is always that old standby of nuclear excavation of Panama to let the oceans mix… Though I understand the locals might not like it ;-)