According to Milankovitch's cycles, an ice age could start sometime within the next 1,000 or 2,000 years. But geophysicists have realized for. years that while the cycles are real and influence climate, they alone cannot explain ice ages. For one thing, Milankovitch's timing of glaciation may be broadly correct, but major glacial episodes happen when his cycles call for minor ones, and vice versa4
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A NEW ICE AGE (2)
Just as last week's tremors were destroying highways, buildings and lives in Southern California, an even deadlier natural disaster was advancing slowly but inexorably south from Canada into the U.S. By midweek a huge mass of frigid arctic air had practically paralyzed much of the Midwest and East. Temperatures in dozens of U.S. cities dropped to all-time lows: -300C in Pittsburgh; -320C in Akron, Ohio, and Clarksburg; -330C in Indianapolis. Chicago schools closed because of cold weather for the first time in history, Federal Government offices shut down in Washington, and East Coast cities narrowly escaped widespread power cuts due to the overuse of electric utilities to keep homes heated. Hundreds of motorists in New Jersey had to be rescued by snowmobile from an impassably icy highway, and thousands of homeless crammed into New York City's shelters to avoid freezing. By week's end, the unprecedented cold wave had killed more than 130 people.
