An Ice Age a terrible reality in earth’s history has never touched
men for we lived and evolved during a period of unusually calm weather.
But an Ice Age could wipe out life as we know it and a super Ice Age
could wipe out all life. Professor Starkweather's diligent and heart
breaking work over a period of 30 years had established beyond doubt in
his mind that an ice age was imminent in the very near future.
Unfortunately nobody took him seriously.
So it
came as a surprise to everyone when 2072 had the coldest winter in
Europe since1816. The next year was even colder, and 2078 was known as
the year without summer. By 2084 Southern India had roughly the same
climate that Canada had had earlier, and three years later in 2087, when
I could see icebergs in the sea near our home I knew that the Arctic
and the Antarctic had come to meet our Island just 5 degrees north of
the Equator. Incredibly in just fifteen years the Earth had turned from a
warm place to a horribly cold planet. The process was self enlarging
and unstoppable for as the ice sheet grew it moved forward as a
devastating glacier.
What
all scientists had ignored was a fall in solar radiation of 1.7 percent
that Professor Starkweather said had occurred 30 years ago, which would
lead he warned to cool summers, un-melted ice and a situation where the
Earth looses its ability to hold on to its heat. Unfortunately Professor
Starkweather was a loser. Everything he had done had ended in failure.
He was also an eccentric man not gifted literally and unable or
unwilling to play politics which less able scientists played. While more
socially adept scientists became famous Starkweather faded, and by the
time he realized it and tried to make amends he was very old.
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