Changes In Earth's Orbit Were Key To Antarctic Warming That Ended Last Ice Age 180
vinces99 writes "For more than a century scientists have known that Earth's ice ages are caused by the wobbling of the planet's orbit, which changes its orientation to the sun and affects the amount of sunlight reaching higher latitudes, particularly the polar regions. The Northern Hemisphere's last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago, and most evidence has indicated that the ice age in the Southern Hemisphere ended about 2,000 years later, suggesting that the south was responding to warming in the north. But new research published online Aug. 14 in Nature (abstract) shows that Antarctic warming began at least 2,000, and perhaps 4,000, years earlier than previously thought."
Before anyone drags climate change into it.. (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA: "Changes in Earth's orbit today are not an important factor in the rapid warming that has been observed recently...Earth's orbit changes on the scale of thousands of years, but carbon dioxide today is changing on the scale of decades so climate change is happening much faster today."
Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles (Score:2, Informative)
How about thousands of well documented papers, all carefully reviewed, many retested with other instruments, based on fundamentally valid physics, with no meaningful contrary assessments?
Re:Climate change is human-caused, full stop (Score:2, Informative)
Well, there's not unreasonable evidence that early human slash-and-burn farming caused a reduction in important negative feedbacks (vis-a-vis forests) and the carbon cycle. But that has basically negligible effect compared to the rates of change (and rates of change of rates of change) seen since 1800.
Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. (Score:2, Informative)
Please, before you post anything on this topic, go to this site [skepticalscience.com] and check if it hasn't been debunked. By endlessly repeating long [skepticalscience.com]-discredited [skepticalscience.com] views, you're only adding noise to the discussion.
Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. (Score:4, Informative)
What's really funny is all the people who say we're in a cooling trend lately when the warmest year on record was 2010. All I can say is enjoy it while it lasts, I doubt you'll still be able to say that in 2020. The greenhouse effect is still in effect.