Some of us worry a lot, maybe too much about global warming. I think it might be a blessing to have an IQ of 90 and less imagination and empathy. That combination might have allowed me to land a civil service job, maybe I could have become a police officer? That would have been cool. Guns and pepper spray. Intoxicating stuff.

Oh, well. That didn’t happen to me.
So here’s a picture of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina. Top view is about 1928, bottom view is about yesterday.

Are glaciers good? Should we care about these views or should we see if there are any fish in that lake? Could there be coal under yonder mountains that we can dig up and set afire?

Well, as it turns out, glaciers are good if the planet is heading in a dangerous warming direction. They reflect more solar heat by reflecting it back into space instead of absorbing more of it like ground and water, so if you like a stable and somewhat predictable environment with fewer Class 5 hurricanes, droughts, and floods, then glaciers are good. Maybe that dynamic is part of the explanation of why the planet ever comes out of ice ages. If you cover enough of the planet with ice, the planet reflects a lot of solar radiation and oddly enough, starts warming up.

So what cools the planet back down if it starts to overheat? Read more?
Strangely enough, huge forest fires, volcanic eruptions that throw huge amounts of particulates into the atmosphere - these cool the planet down by creating what we bipeds think of as smoke and pollution. These clouds of smoke reflect a lot of solar radiation back into space and the planet cools. So weird. Cover the planet with ice, the planet warms up. Set the planet on fire, the planet cools down.

Want examples and more information? Ok:

• A page about the [1] Mount Toba eruption a few years ago - this one says the magnificent biped population was almost wiped out by that ice age. That was not a fun time to be bipedal.
• Alan Robock (phd from MIT, yikes - that’s a lot of brainpower) has a teaching slideshow on his [2] website. Just click on the [3] Volcanic Eruptions and Climate link. It’s a big file, so you better not be on dialup.
• [4] Forest fires may cause short term warming and longer term cooling. Weather is not a simple system. Actually, more like temperature neutral than really cooling.
• [5] The Conservation Science Institute has interesting take on [6] forest fires.

Nuclear winter as a result of the detonation of a nuclear arsenal will also significantly cool the planet, but as a means to battle global warming, nuclear winter may the cure that is worse than the disease. Here’s a [7] nuclear winter game you can play if you have dice. (and anti-depressants)

And the nuclear winter treatment of global warming highlights the problem with these catastrophic means of cooling the globe. A small blue planet may get cooler in the process of huge volcanic eruptions, or massive forest fires, or a nuclear weapon exchange, but the immediate impact on the planet’s bipeds may be worse than trying to stay cool on a warming planet.

There appears to be a natural equilibrium to the planet’s weather. But at the extremes of the natural weather swings, it becomes pretty challenging to stay alive as a biped. Rats and roaches may have an easier time than homo industrialus in an ice age or a hothouse planet.