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Definition of
The Coming Global Superstorm is a 1999
book by Art Bell & Whitley Strieber which predicts that global
warming might produce sudden and catastrophic climatic effects. The
2004 movie, The Day After Tomorrow is based in part on this
book.
The book discusses a possible cause of
the failure of the gulf stream: that the melting of the polar ice
caps could drastically affect the salinity of the North Atlantic
drift by dumping a large quantity of freshwater into the world's
oceans.
Since no such society exists in the modern record - or, even, in legend - this society must have been destroyed by dramatic means. While other explanations beside a global meteorological event are possible, a correlating evidence set is presented in the woolly mammoth.
Strieber and Bell assert that, since
mammoths have been found preserved with food still in their mouths
and undigested in their stomachs, that these animals must have been
cut down quickly, in otherwise normal conditions, and been preserved
so well by quick freezing. This is taken as evidence of a rapid
onset of a global blizzard or similar event.
These
fictional accounts of "current events" as the meteorological
situation deteriorates provided background and inspiration for the
2004 science-fiction film The Day After Tomorrow and, indeed,
some events from the book are portrayed in the film with little
modification.
The actual facts state that the Earth goes through a cycle unknown to man until recently. As you might know, the Earth has been hit with ice ages many, many times before. Now science knows why. Earth foregoes a dangerous cycle which includes hundreds of thousands of years of ice and glaciers known as an ice age until the Sun is finally able to force the glaciers back and a climate similar to the one we know now comes to the places where glaciers once ruled.
This period of warmth is brief in the actual scheme of the planet. It ends when there are enough greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere to trigger another ice age, introduced by a superstorm. These greenhouse gases are put into the atmosphere naturally and accustom themselves with the cycle of the planet. No problem there.
Another ice age starts, ends, and the warmth comes back. This is where humans come in. Millions of factories have sped up this precious cycle by such a great amount of time that predictions for the next ice age were left in the dark with those who predicted them. Now we are living in the precious few moments before another ice age begins.
Although an ice age doesn’t have to happen, (fossil records show that around 7,000-10,000 years ago, a superstorm hit in the summer and the ice could melt before winter struck and placed more snow on the already existing snow) they are more like an after-taste, the main feature being the reckless storm crushing down hard-packed snow on top of half the world.
Once the ice melts up north, the fresh water will disturb the fragile combination of salt and fresh water that make up the North Atlantic Current (NAC).
The NAC, as soon as it failed, would allow freezing air to come swooping down from the arctic. This air would collide with the warm air moving up from the south, where it was heated. The collision would produce a storm we cannot imagine. The movie “The Day After Tomorrow” illustrates the storm in the formation of a hurricane with an eye (Although a storm would be produced, I cannot say for myself that it would have an eye, or even be hurricane like, yet I have not concluded studies on it).
This eye would be like a gateway to the
above atmosphere in which air would fall to the Earth, dropping the
temperatures by 100°F and further. The theory of global warming
tells us that the greenhouse gases would trap heat from leaving our
planet. This means that the above atmosphere isn’t receiving the
heat it used to and so the temperature is dropping about 50°F a
year, therefore providing those extreme temperatures that would fall
down the eye and smother the people of the northern hemisphere,
freezing them instantly.
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