Story Friday September 06, 2019

[Don Edwards 548]

24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Do you THINK there will be any "next ice age"?

Well, first - before we can have a next ice age - we gotta wait for this one to end.

Yeah, we're in an ice age right now. It's the third since the end of the oxygen explosion. Outside of these ice ages, which collectively take up about 40 million of the past 540 million years with the current ice age being about 15 million years old, global temperature was *at least* 2 Celsius warmer than today, and often considerably warmer than that.

But we happen to be in an "interglacial" within the current ice age. This is a temporary relatively warm period, typically lasting up to about 12,000 years (the current one is about that old right now). The periods that aren't interglacials last tens of thousands of years and are often as much as 2 Celsius colder.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

But you may want to consider taking Fulton's Steamboat up the Hudson, a barge through the Erie Canal, and then sail with La Salle on Le Griffon around Michigan (making sure to stop at Mackinac Island for Fudge on the way)

No no. The classical way involves crossing the Atlantic on the Ra III built after Thor Heyerdahl's plans with an obelisk for a figurehead.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Do you THINK there will be any "next ice age"?

Certainly. It might be a while, of course. Not necessarily in your or my lifetimes, obviously, but the Pharaoh has been around here for a couple or three millenniae already. He might need his bandages replaced a few more times by then, but he'll highly likely be there to see another one before his pyramid has eroded all that much.

[Amiable Dorsai 70]

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Note: Europeans often (not always) know how to read maps and to access airports. I am well aware of the fact that Chicago is lying smack dab in the centre of the North American continent. I was planning on going either by plane or by train.

One of the things that used to trip up a friend of mine from Oxford is the fact that when our east-west interstates (even-numbered for your convenience) hit Lake Michigan they turn southward. While this is cheaper and more logical than tunneling under a Great Lake, the road signs don't change. This meant the signs kept telling him he was on "East 94" when he knew damned well he was going south and had been for some time.

After complaining about it a bit, he admitted this was not the most confusing thing he had encountered in the USA.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Amiable Dorsai
"southward," not "eastward"

[The Old Hack 2,448]

21 minutes ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

After complaining about it a bit, he admitted this was not the most confusing thing he had encountered in the USA.

Big talk from a guy who if asked if he has a flashlight will reply, "I have a torch in my boot."

And who drives on the left side of the road.

[Amiable Dorsai 70]

18 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Big talk from a guy who if asked if he has a flashlight will reply, "I have a torch in my boot."

And who drives on the left side of the road.

Snerk. Many years ago, Mrs Dorsai, who knew precisely what she was doing, embarrassed him quite bit when she asked him how he liked her new fanny pack.

[ChronosCat 155]

13 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Well, first - before we can have a next ice age - we gotta wait for this one to end.

Yeah, we're in an ice age right now. It's the third since the end of the oxygen explosion. Outside of these ice ages, which collectively take up about 40 million of the past 540 million years with the current ice age being about 15 million years old, global temperature was *at least* 2 Celsius warmer than today, and often considerably warmer than that.

But we happen to be in an "interglacial" within the current ice age. This is a temporary relatively warm period, typically lasting up to about 12,000 years (the current one is about that old right now). The periods that aren't interglacials last tens of thousands of years and are often as much as 2 Celsius colder.

True; however the greenhouse gasses humans have pumped into the atmosphere stand a good chance of significantly delaying the next glaciation (or from another perspective, causing several glaciation events to fail to occur). According to an article linked on the wikipedia article on ice ages, the next glaciation might not occur for at least 100,000 years.