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."
Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are so many blatant errors in just this one sentence that it's publication is astounding. First, the Earth is currently in the middle of its 5th "ice age," the "Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation," (which began 2.5 million years ago) and what the article calls 'ice ages' are termed by real scientists to be "glacial periods" within the current ice age. The Earth is presently in what is called an "interglacial period" and the next "glacial period" is likely to begin within the next 1,000 to 2,000 years. Next, there is certainly no consensus that either the Earth's "Ice Ages" or "Glacial Periods" are caused by wobbling of the planet's orbit. General consensus by scientists is that both ice ages and glacial periods within those are caused by a variety of factors including atmospheric changes, solar changes, changes in the position of tectonic plates which affect ocean circulation, variations in the Earth's orbit (which are currently considered more likely to affect glacial and interglacial cycles rather than to initiate or end ice ages), and volcanism. In short, TFA is utter bullshit.