Earth in 1000 Years

Earth in 1000 Years

2013, Science  -   87 Comments
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Ratings: 7.00/10 from 455 users.

Each glacial period is followed by an interglacial period in which temperatures rise and the ice retreats. The Milankovitch cycles are not strong enough by themselves to cause the shift. What they do is get the ball rolling. A decrease in solar energy hitting the Arctic allows sea ice to form in winter and remain over summer, then to expand its reach the following year. The ice reflects more solar energy back to space. A colder ocean stores more CO2, which further dampens the greenhouse effect.

Conversely, when ocean temperatures raise, more CO2 escapes into the atmosphere where it traps more solar energy. With so many factors at play, each swing of the climate pendulum has produced its own unique conditions. Take, for example, the last interglacial, known as the Eemian, from 130 to 115,000 years ago. This happened at a time when CO2 was at preindustrial levels, and global temperatures had risen only modestly. But with higher solar energy striking the north, temperatures rose dramatically in the Arctic. The effect was amplified by the lower reflectivity of ice-free seas and spreading northern forests.

There is still uncertainty about how much these changes affected sea levels. Estimates range from 5 to 9 meters, levels that would be catastrophic today. That's one reason scientists today are intensively monitoring Earth's frozen zones, including the ice sheet that covers Greenland. Satellite radar shows the flow of ice from the interior of the island and into glaciers. In the eastern part of the island, glaciers push slowly through complex coastal terrain. In areas of higher snowfall in the northwest and west, the ice speeds up by a factor 10. The landscape channels the ice into many small glaciers that flow straight down to the sea.

Scientists are tracking the overall rate of ice loss with the Grace Satellite. They found that from 2003 to 2009, Greenland lost about a trillion tons, mostly along its coastlines. This number mirror's ice loss in the Arctic as a whole. By 2012, summer sea ice coverage had fallen to a little more than half of what it was in the year 1980. While the ice rebounded in 2013, the coverage was still well below the average of the last three decades. Analyzing global data from Grace, one study reports that Earth lost about 4,000 cubic kilometers of ice in the decade leading up to 2012.

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Jailem
Jailem
5 years ago

Since we are entering a mini ice age while the agenda non-science "scientists" lie about global warming... I can only hope that we burn plenty of burnables to create a whole bunch of CO2. Plants seem to like it. Animals seem to like plants, and I like animals. Win win. If it warms things up enough to keep from getting frost bite, all the better.

alyaa
alyaa
5 years ago

that's inspiring ! thank you

Geographer
Geographer
7 years ago

Take one step away from the pole, then turn right and take one step. You have just travelled east. As for east and west as regions, Antarctica is divided into east and west because one part of it is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere. This works whether you're a warmer or a denier.

mke m
mke m
7 years ago

Just get off the oil, crack heads

john noecker jr
john noecker jr
7 years ago

If you travel 1000 meters north, then reverse your direction of travel, are you still headed north ? I think...NOT.

Rod Martin, Jr.
Rod Martin, Jr.
7 years ago

Good video. Too many comments bashing humans, though. Responsibility is one thing; suicide is something else entirely -- wrong direction.

We live in an Ice Age and psychopaths want us to cool down the planet. And too much of this video shows a fetish for ice. Cold kills; warmth promotes life. End the damned Ice Age.

Sea level rise is not nearly as disastrous as the initiation of another glacial period of the current Ice Age. So what if people have to move? If we get more glaciation, then people are going to have to move, also. The problem with the cooling, though, is that cooler oceans have less evaporation, resulting in far less rain and far larger deserts. This is why human populations could never get above a few tens of thousands during the glacial period.

Global Warming made civilization possible; could cooling make civilization impossible.

And the notion that CO2 is pollution that some people are gullible enough to believe is nonsense. Glyphosate is pollution. Atrazine is pollution. Sulfur dioxide is pollution. CO2 is a vital gas of life and we've lived too long in CO2 starvation. Thirty million years ago, CO2 levels plummeted down to 800 ppm (2x modern levels), and plants evolved C4 species to cope with the CO2 starvation. Now, excess CO2 is helping to green the Earth. Hooray for humans! Plants are loving it.

For those of you who think humans are a plague, why are you still here? Grow up and get a brain. Some humans are bad. Start to know the difference. The only population problem we have is having more than zero corporations and more than zero psychopaths who are selfish enough to say things like "mankind is the disease."

Thermophobia is a disease of ignorance. A new book out by the same name has the cure.

Truman Peyote
Truman Peyote
8 years ago

Interesting exchanges. Yes, the 'mob' is always wrong. "The earth has a skin, and that skin has many diseases...the major one being Man"...'thus spoke Zarathustra'.

I think Sartre got it right; "hell is other people". Too many of them, way too many. And, this is the central problem from which ALL others spring.

The bright spot for this ancient autodidactic misanthrope is that the end is near.

Spark
Spark
8 years ago

What will really end us is capitalism, when corporations have billions in the bank and blow up a mountain or rip out another rain forest just to add another billion, now that's insane!

happyMephisto
happyMephisto
9 years ago

Also,when the 30 billion barrels runs out,will be lucky to have any clean drinking water left.By then the great lakes will be on borrowed time.

Dave M
Dave M
9 years ago

The only thing that will save us is when the oil runs out and we are forced to switch to renewable (which we could already do if we really wanted). The sad part is there is still TONS of oil left on the planet. Especially in the oceans and in places currently covered by snow and ice. (The Arctic, Siberia, Greenland, Antarctica, etc.)

Dave M
Dave M
9 years ago

I guess they just found a tar sand patch (up to 30 billion barrels) in utah. If its not aleady game over it surely will be when this is exausted.

Travis Sichel
Travis Sichel
9 years ago

Earth has weather cycles yes and so does the sun, Why people think pumping CO2 and other gases would make no difference at all boggles my mind.
Of course it does, we are speeding the climate change, Whether it would naturally occur over a longer period of time does not matter,
either way its going to devastate our economies. The slower the change the more time we have to adapt.

Fossil fuels are also limited so its never too soon to try and ween ourselves off them, Might be good for our general health too and our children's pockets, who knows what the price of fuel will be in 10 yrs.

Guest
Guest
9 years ago

Earth has weather cycles yes and so does the sun, Why people do not think pumping CO2 and other gases would make no difference at all boggles my mind.
Of course it does, we are speeding the climate change, Whether it would naturally occur over a longer period of time does not matter,
either way its going to devastate our economies. The slower the change the more time we have to adapt.

Fossil fuels are also limited so its never too soon to try and ween ourselves off them, Might be good for our general health too and our children's pockets, who knows what the price of fuel will be in 10 yrs.

anastasius
anastasius
10 years ago

I like this documentary as it points out that earth (and it's climate) is a dynamic system. Milankovitch cycles are atributed to changing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it possible that our sun is also a dynamic system with varying outputs of solar energy?

Maybe one day our scientists will address that question rather than regurgitating the politicized "manmade" global warming agenda.

Lord_Kral
Lord_Kral
10 years ago

Earth will be just fine. It'll keep on going and evolving like it has for billions of years. Humans are screwed, though.

whoopi goldberg
whoopi goldberg
10 years ago

climate change or not who wants to live with such air pollution? look at northern china right now.. I'll take sunny blue skies over that smog any day.

Wayne Siemund
Wayne Siemund
10 years ago

If carbon sequestration is required to create an ice age, then we may still prevent it. Even when oil runs out, the planet will suck up all of that nice delicious carbon into plants and trees which future people will use for energy causing all of that carbon to be shoved back into the atmosphere along with the heat capturing abilities of forests and cleared land.

rudeboi
rudeboi
10 years ago

there is some proof that we are indeed headed for another ice age, which leads me to believe science has no clue as to what's going on here.

urban deadite
urban deadite
10 years ago

Question is why are the polar caps on Mars melting really fast too?

Harry Nutzack
Harry Nutzack
10 years ago

here is how i see "climate change". i see a fairly unavoidable cycle, borne out by millenia of evidence. i have no doubt at all we do indeed sit on a "cyclical cusp". i also have little doubt "modernity" has contributed to, and probably hastened the arrival. however, the previous cycle's evidence shows our "contribution" is less than 40%, while it was a 300% change that ushered in the last cycle. that 40% includes ALL the deforestation, industrialization, livestock flatulence, and other biosphere damage done since the dawn of civilization. so, to "correct our ways", even to the extremes of "going paleo", killing off the vast majority of our population, and "johnny appleseed-ing" forests will be nothing but a minor speedbump in the road to an inevitable end: increased temps, higher oceans, and sub-aqueous former coastlines. our "best efforts" can be no more than the insertion of a finger in a crumbling dike.

to claim "50 years of science shows WE did it" is ludicrous, at best. in that half century time span, our instrumentation for collecting evidence has gone through several generations of ever increasing accuracy, with the majority of progress in the past 2 decades. our knowledge of what "drives the engine of environment" has indeed grown by leaps and bounds, but is still FAR from "comprehensive". ANY conclusions we draw are, at BEST, "educated guesses of ignorant observers". need i remind all here that a half century ago plate tectonics was a "radical new rogue hypothesis", though geology had been studied for a couple of centuries already. thousands of years of head scratching concluded "illness is a manifestation of spiritual imbalance" for many "learned scholars" until germ theory laid such foolishness to rest. "environmental science" is in it's infancy still. we have no basis upon which to declare absolutes. for all anybody truly "knows", our "global warming" could be a minor hiccup that will self correct no matter what WE do, or it could just as easily be the first steps to an unstoppable "planetary doom" that eventually leaves our planet as barren as mars, no matter what scrambling and buttressing we do. we just don't have enough data points borne of educated observation to prove, or disprove ANYTHING.

does this mean i think we should just "do nothing"? of course not, getting a grip on our wasteful ways, and moving toward that which lessens the damage we do can CERTAINLY do no harm, and would be beneficial even if it had NO effect on climate change. that's just common sense. but, i also think an attitude of "if we just cut CO2, everything will be just fine" is NO less imbecilic than "bah, tree-hugging nonsense, drill baby DRILL!!". from what we can see, cleaning up our act a bit, AND "slowly moving to higher ground" is the ONLY sensible course of action. ol' mother earth has these cycles with, or without our contribution, after all.

in closing, i'd also like to add "the differences between man and chimp can best be summed up in these 3: 2 fused chromosomes, power tools, and a hyper-inflated ego". don't let that ego lead you to "declaration of fact" when none are truly available.

dsagfsdgdsg
dsagfsdgdsg
10 years ago

Another liberal story, just in 2013 it has been reported that Greenland has gained, not lost miles on it ice sheet.

henrymart81
henrymart81
10 years ago

yikes the climate changers are out in droves today

1concept1
1concept1
10 years ago

Science at its best. Beautiful photography Thank You - TDF/Vlatko

southab403
southab403
10 years ago

I also really enjoyed this even handed film on past and future global climactic change.
One thing caught my attention: If the global cooling due to the orbit of the earth is due to start again in 1500 years and the global warming trend of increased CO2 is projected to reach the level of other inter-glacial periods as measured in the past (1000 ppm in 1000 years), wouldn't they sort of cancel each other out?
As stated towards the end, the earth will survive and life will adjust no matter what happens.
I understand that using up our resources in an unsustainable way in a one way trip to poverty and hunger for people and will put stress on much of the environment, but as for destroying the planet, I think humans give themselves too much power and credit.

Harry Nutzack
Harry Nutzack
10 years ago

as far as "filmcraft" goes, the doc above is superb. stunning vistas, superb cinematography, even-handed fact based narration, neither a mantra of "impending doom", or "nothing to see here folks, move along". well worth the watch, even if just for the incredibly impressive landscapes presented. no propaganda, or conclusions, more a joe friday-esque expose of "just the facts, ma'am", TYVM Vlatko and TDF et al for this piece (among MANY others)

jay
jay
10 years ago

Enough with this CO2 s*it. The sun's output fluctuates, and drives the temperature up and down with it. The Farmer's Almanac has been right on about 80% of its weather predictions because it follows the solar output. The co2 carbonazi's have been dead wrong for the last 25 years about everything.

spencer
spencer
10 years ago

no proof c02 being greenhouses psudo science

yellowmattercustard
yellowmattercustard
10 years ago

Good doc. Great cinematography.

The narrator referred to western Antarctic and eastern Antarctic. Aren't all directions from the south pole north? You can't have a northern Antarctic or a southern Antarctic so how can you have an eastern or western Antarctic?

Ponderings of a weed addled mind.

Susan Kalish
Susan Kalish
10 years ago

this is a fascinating documentary.