In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

COMMON-DREAM.ORG - Global Warming could cause another Ice-Age

(THEORY)

ECOBRIDGE - Future Human Extinction

(THEORY)

In January, 2003 a study by lead author, biologist Terry Root, and 5 colleagues at Stanford's Institute for International Studies involved reviewing scientific studies pertaining to 1,400 plant and animal species. The Stanford researchers determined that about 80% of those species have undergone range or behavioral changes likely caused by climate change. "If we've had so much change with just 1 degree, think of how much we will have with 10 degrees," Terry Root said, referring to the estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of a 3 to 10 degree Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century. "In my opinion, we're sitting at the edge of a mass extinction."

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

NATIONAL POST - Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

(PARTIAL THEORY, PARTIAL FACT)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Global Warming: How Hot? How Soon?

(THEORY)

"Any time you get into projections, you get into a lot of uncertainties. But the [climate] models are getting a lot stronger," said Jay Gulledge, a senior research at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia.

Gulledge says some current projections point to a rise in average global temperature of 0.5°C (slightly less than 1°F) by the year 2030.

The estimates are based on greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere. While the temperature increase is small, it would be significant. Over the past century Earth has warmed about 1°F (0.6°C).

Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist.

Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade.

FOX NEWS - Scientist: Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

(MUST CONFIRM WITH DATA)