Ice ages and climate change

Most of us are aware that the world is getting warmer. Most of us are also vaguely aware that the world was much colder in the past. The world has gone through ice ages. 20,000 years ago, all of Canada was covered in ice.

Beyond those basic facts, people have a lot of misconceptions. There are some people that think that today’s global warming is part of some natural cycle. There are also people that think that global warming is a good thing, because it will prevent the next ice age.

This article looks at some misconceptions, then gets into some of the science as to what causes ice ages and how quickly they happen. At the end, I go over some predictions as to what will happen to our planet in the distant future, with and without human CO2 emissions.