Surely most people, listening to the speeches of scientists concerning global warming and, almost simultaneously, the onset of a new ice age, feel some kind of contradiction. Indeed: how can there be both a warming and an ice age at the same time? It turns out that one thing fully follows from the other, and there is even historical evidence of this.
Day after tomorrow
In 1956, geophysicists Maurice Ewing and William Donne hypothesized that glaciation (ice age) occurs precisely as a result of climate warming. The thawing of the polar ice caps (during global warming) leads to almost unpredictable climate change, including instantaneous temperature jumps to negative values. Such a leap is most vividly shown in the film "The Day After Tomorrow", released in 2004. When, due to the stop of the so-called Great Ocean Conveyor (the constant movement of water and air around the planet), the air temperature in certain points of the Earth dropped to -100 degrees Celsius, which entailed the death of all living things in these places.
Not a movie anymore
However, these are all hypotheses, plus a Hollywood movie. And could it happen that the temperature actually drops so sharply that people simply do not have time to do anything to save themselves? Oddly enough, there is at least one historical evidence of such an event. This is the story of the ship Octavius.
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In August 1775, the Herald whaling ship sailed along the shores of Greenland. Suddenly, a huge ice floe broke away from the nearest iceberg and exposed a wooden ship frozen into the ice, on board of which you could read its name - "Octavius".
The whalers who boarded the ghost ship found that it was literally filled with corpses - the entire crew, from the captain to the cabin boy, were in place, but these people, apparently, died from the instant cold. Several sailors "slept" on their bunks, the captain was sitting at his desk, the helmsman stood, clutching the steering wheel. But the most mysterious composition was represented by one sailor: he was kneeling with a flint in his hands, and in front of him on the deck was a handful of shavings. Apparently, the poor fellow was going to start a fire, but did not even manage to strike a spark …
North instead of China
With fear, but nevertheless carefully examining the ship, the whalers went home, not forgetting to take with them the ship's log, or rather, what was left of it. From the records it became clear that on September 10, 1761, the Octavius left Liverpool and went to China. Further, most of the records were not preserved, but from the latter it could be concluded that the ship somehow fell into an ice trap - an area of a sharp drop in temperature. At this, the already few entries in the logbook are cut off. And since his meeting with the whalers, Octavius himself has never been seen again.
