Ice Age Wahhabism

The ice may slowly be breaking in the land of intolerance ...

Family Stands The Future In The 'Reformed' Saudi Arabia .....

.... under pressure from a population, 70% of whom are under 30 yrs of age, and who have had access to the outside world, Saudi Arabia will finally allow women to attend sports events in stadiums for the first time from next year, despite following a strict form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism.

Tough As Wood

The expression "Tough As Wood" has taken on new meaning, after scientists in Scandinavia reported that many of the trees in that area of the world are direct descendants of trees that inhabited those lands before the last Ice Age .... they had always thought the trees all migrated back in to the area 9,000 yrs or so ago.

Scandinavian Forests - Ice Age Survivors

The researchers came to this conclusion by studying the DNA of both the modern spruce (which distinctly show two Scandinavian types), and by analysing the composition of pine and spruce DNA contained in the sediments taken from lake-core samples from before the ice age. 

 

The exact mechanism for this amazing survival in the middle of the ice sheets for tens of thousands of years is not known, but its speculated that trees could have survived on nunataks (mountain tops and other bits of land sticking out above the miles of ice sheet), and then were able to spread once the ice retreated.

Nature never ceases to amaze in its abilities to survive the worst, but whether it can survive mankind is another matter.

Good News Bad News

First the 'Good News'. We are not going to have a new 'Ice Age' within the next 1,500 years or so, which is when it was due to have started. The last one ended about 11,500 years ago, and as they cycle through every 12,000 years or so, according to scientists (its all to do with Earths orbital cycles known as 'Milankovitch cycles' - subtle variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun), we were about due one. So probably we can all be grateful for this bit of information, and granny can stop knitting the Woolly Mammoth jumpers.
 

Not In The Neighbourhood Soon

Now for the 'Bad News'. The reason why there isn't going to be a new 'Ice Age' next week, or even next millennium, is that 'Global Warming' is preventing the conditions that triggers the start of the next 'Ice Age' from firing up. This because scientists believe that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm), before the glaciation could begin, and as the levels are currently about 390 ppm, then obviously it won't be happening soon.  

Incidentally, before we all started worrying about 'Global Warming', I can remember newspapers discussing how we were overdue for the next 'Ice Age' .... even with the warming up. So unless we get a runaway 'Greenhouse Effect' (like the planet Venus), we will still have another 'Ice Age', its just a matter of when, not if.