We know we’re supposed to be concerned about global warming–or global climate change, since that covers just about anything that happens–if for no other reason than it looks good, as Automotive News editorial director Peter Brown advised GM major domo Bob Lutz. Apparently one needn’t believe in global warming as long as one doesn’t say so. Or else people who think they’re being green won’t buy your cars. To paraphrase Henry Ford, truth is bunk.

We may have more pressing needs than global warming, however, and it affects Detroit auto manufacturers in a very direct way…at least if you consider ice a mile thick over downtown Detroit an “effect” and “direct.”

It could happen. It has happened before. The Great Lakes, in fact, were created by the weight of ice on the earth in the upper midwest. Ten thousand years later it’s still rebounding. And although we like to think of human history as occuring during a ”normal” climate, the fact is that for much of the earth’s history, cold temperatures and heavy glaciation of North America and Europe has been the norm rather than the exception.

Based on historical data, we’re due, and CO2 levels notwithstanding, the sun’s heat output is the biggest player in temperatures on Earth. And the bad news is that sunspot activity - or more accurately the absense of it - suggests that Chicken Little just might be right about the sky falling. Or at least snow.

And even if we don’t get the Big One, we could be in store for another Little Ice Age or a spell of really cold weather. Ask Napoleon, for example, what a dearth of sunspots did to his Russian campaign.

It’s all speculation, of course, but no more so than global warming. In fact, it’s more likely in that we know cooling has happened before.

And according to geophysicist and astronautical engineer Phil Chapman (who also bears the distinction of being the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut), it all could happen very fast, over a period of twenty years.

So what does all this have to do with cars? Well, how about the demonization of the automobile as the major contributor of “greenhouse gases”? Maybe driving a big SUV could be the best thing one could do to keep the planet from frosting over. Then too, Bridgestone might want to get a headstart on making a few extra batches of Blizzak winter tires. We just may need them.

Read Mr. Chapman’s full treatise in The Australian.