Part 2 Temperature

recent readings (400 years ago) to give us a fairly decent record our planets recent history. The figure below is from the Vostok ice cores in Antarctica. According the Ice Core records we have had more cold periods with just intermittent periods of warm periods – correct? As a matter of record we have had more

cold

than

warm, a lot more! And according to the

records

we’re

headed for another cold spell – and in some experts minds there is little we can do to stop it. While

we’re

talking about “cool spells”,

what

were they like?

Are we talking a cold blast of air hovering over

Washington D.C. leaving a few centimeters of ice on the cherry blossoms or we talking cold? Are we talking about a life-ending event?

Look at the Milankovitch cycles above, man has been

walking around on this planent during the last 200,000 years or so, surviving some pretty harsh climate. Not in the numbers that we are today, granted – but we have survived to some extent when it comes to cold and heat. As you can see, (graph on right) at the end of the last Ice Age, the Earth began to warm and the Ice began to crawl back north – and so called life was on the mend.

At about

12,000 years ago the

temp

peaked

and since then has oscillated

up

and

down and at one time dipping back down to give us a mini-ice age.

On

the

right

is

a

comparison of the Milankovitch cycles and period of warming during the last 1,000 years – the

theory

is

that

the

“precession”

of

the

“equinoxes”,

and

the

variations in the tilt of the Earth’s

axis

(obliquity)

and

changes in the “eccentricity” of its orbit are cause for the 100,000

year

cycle

for Ice

Ages – by varying the amount of sunlight in the high northern latitudes. There are many who find fault

with

the

cycles

he

predicted and they don’t fit some other scenarios, other maintain that if you ignore other mitigating factors this cycle we are in now, which began some 8,000 to 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years, other claim that our warm climate will continue for the next 50,000 years. I noted a little further back I mention the “interglacial’s” periods of warming between Ice Ages, the “Eemain Interglacial” which happened about 131,000 years ago and lasted till about 113,000 years ago (28,000 years long) was warmer than it is now – some scientists tie this period the Milankovitch cycle. During this time were some temperatures that were all over the map, but in general the sea level has been estimated to have been 16 feet to 26 feet higher than they are today (as a result of the higher sea level Scandinavia was an island, and hardwood trees (hazel and oak) grew as far north as parts of Finland. You could fine trees as far north as Baffin Island (Canada) and the prairie-forest of the Midwestern United

States extended as far west as Lubbock, Texas – whereas today it only reaches Dallas.