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Ice Ages Linked to Plate Tectonics
CorSci81 writes "A study by scientists at Ohio State University indicates the possibility that ice ages may be triggered by plate tectonics. Scientists speculate that the current ice age may have been triggered 40 million years ago by the uplift of the Himalayas, and this study provides further support by linking a much earlier ice age 450 million years ago with the uplift of the Appalachian mountain range. Additionally, this study reinforces the notion that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a major driver of climate."
Just raise the Appalachians again.
We're doomed, I tell you, DOOMED!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Proof we're not causing global warming! It's all plates! Oil guys - keep on pumpin! Me, I'll be out in my SUV crusin' for ladies.
Or we could just move the Earth a bit farther from the sun. That's how they solved global warming in Futurama.
Not just in that cartoon either. As teenagers we've all read about awesome feats of planet-moving in Greg Bear's Moving Mars or Larry Niven's Ringworld . But now that I'm older and more pessimistic, I suspect we'll all drive ourselves extinct through some screwup or another before reaching such a level of technology. Slashdot is partly to blame for my becoming bitter and crotchety because of all the coverage of climate doom here.
I think the researchers are suggesting there *may* be a relationship. It's tough to say anything concrete when researchers/scientists propose a theory making headline news and then someone else throws an idea out either suggesting another cause or contradicting a previous announcement. So far, among the many factors I've heard about ocean salinity, magnetosphere reversal, jet contrails, fossil fuels, green house gases. A lot of it seems more speculation than anything. Maybe it's just me.
the current ice age
Did I miss a memo?
"Because we are currently living in an ice age -- or, more precisely, in a slightly warmer interglacial period within an ice age -- CO2 levels worldwide would ordinarily be low; but scientists believe that humans have raised CO2 levels by burning fossil fuels."
"A study by scientists at Ohio State University..."
that should read:
"A study by scientists at THE Ohio State University..."
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The ice ages have been happening on regular repeating intervals (every 41k years from 3 million BC to 1 million BC, and every 100K years after that). Unless we have been getting uplifted mountains due to some regular repeating pattern, then I don't buy it.
I'm just trying to keep up, here. As long as I park far enough away from that Tahoe down the block, though, that should keep the other end of our street from tilting up and altering the weather. Um, unless we want that to happen. It's confusing, now. I'll carry around some extra sandbags if that will help.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...my theory is that the current ice age began when women started wearing pants instead of dresses and skirts. Clearly, the interaction with the weather has changed. A good stiff breeze... and nothing. Then pantyhose replaced stockings, and all the garter snakes died. Putting your mind in the gutter no longer results in something to look up at. Er, to. Yeah.
Interesting theory, but there's a far more plausible explanation, as every believer of Pastafarianism knows. It's a severe lack of Pirates that's causing global warming.
Ice ages are triggered by too many pirates, of course. Just ask anyone of Norse descent. Or those who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
For what it is worth, these fluctuations have usually been attributed to fluctuations in the earth's tilt. Wikipedia has a fairly good explanation.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
Go Bucks!!
The first Futurama solution was adding ice cubes cut from Halley's comet into the world's oceans...oh yes, that worked until robots were classified as SUV's and light trucks...but that is not our problem...
Hmmm...What would Wild E Coyote do?
How about we get a bunch of Acme freezers with icemakers and dispense the ice into a series of meat grinders. The meat grinders can be belt driven at the axle by a fleet of gas powered tractors. Another belt can run from the grinder to a wheel with a bunch of snow shovels tied to it, shoveling the ice onto a needlessly long conveyer belt to dump the ice into the middle of the ocean! This idea will need a lot of long extension cords and three way splitters, but the technology is here! I thought I would point this idea out before Dubya did... Ah, what a world we occupy...
A researcher who I believe is on this project was at RIT (where I'm a student) and gave a talk on this. It was quite interesting. Unfortunately I had to leave partway through, but the indications were very interesting. Also very cool was a plot of amplitude of temperature variation against period (time). There were spikes at 1 day (24-hour temperature variations) and 1 year (seasonal variations). But the most interesting were spikes at millions of years, indicating there were large scale temperature cycles with periods of millions of years, consistent with global warming being a natural phenomenon. (I'm not saying we aren't affecting though). It was a very interesting plot. (I'm not sure where they got the data from, or how they verified it actually is periodic. My guess is that they took temperature differences though the ages and used the amplitudes of the various instances to infer which were corresponding to the same "cycle")
'nuff said
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Earth's tilt! Plate movement! Greenhouse gasses! Changing weather systems! El Nino! El chupacabra! By God are you implying that global temperature is a complex system with no single cause for temperature fluctuation?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
GO BLUE!!
No offense intended to believers ...
...
I've wanted to know about the reasons for ice ages since I first found out about them as a kid. To live in an age where scientific research is finally revealing their actual history - probable cause and effect over a timescale of hundreds of millions of years - is a joy and a privilege!
And so relevant to the concerns of our day and age
This is much more interesting and plausible than doctrinal handwaving!
SLM
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You are quite right.
>> Scientists speculate that the current ice age may have been triggered 40 million years ago by the uplift of the Himalayas
Speculate is the most important word in the whole writeup. To infer any more would be incorrect.
If you spend a few months examining the theory and implementation of the various types of Global Climate Model, you cannot fail to become aware of the incredible number of assumptions and inherent limits and intentionally narrowed scope and couplings in the models. This is on purpose, because it makes the simulations computable with current supercomputers. What's more, the sheer lack of scientific understanding in the more complex areas like cloud formation limits what we can do just as badly. Scientists know this, but outsiders often do not.
Climate modelling is in a state of infancy, despite the many decades of work, and like human infants it largely works though shortcuts and assumptions rather than insight and knowledge. To a very large extent, the results of our current simulations are both mathematically invalid and physically incorrect, but it's the best we have currently. This is not for want of trying nor dishonesty, but simply because it is *HARD*. Very very hard.
And it does no good when non-scientists think that something really concrete is being discovered through current modelling, as it just brings science into disrepute. This applies also to "scientists" who are wearing their Science hats only very loosely while riding the political bandwagon.
It you want to find and assess scientific climate modelling, look for results in which the premises, the computations, and the results are presented along with the ERROR BOUNDS for each of them, plus references to how those error bounds were obtained. You won't find much of that anywhere in climate modelling.
In general, if you see no stated error bounds (which express the meaningfulness of a claimed value), then it's not really science, to put it rather bluntly.
Admittedly, even just a handwaving precursor to actual scientific work is still useful, even *very* useful, but you have to understand the fundamental difference here --- it cannot be used to make any scientific claims whatsoever, because it cannot be refuted. Any value equals any other, in the absence of error bounds.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
No, pirates are triggered by Ice Age.
The sun will go supernova in 5 billion years and burn up the earth, then, if that doesn't kill off all humans - even ones that escaped the earth - our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy effectively destroying all remnant life and if that doesn't do the trick the universe will end entirely in 10 billion years by folding in on itself, so, why do I give a shit about some insignificant atmospheric event that MIGHT threaten our species that won't even be a real issue until long after I'm dead. I've got bigger fish to fry, and more gas to burn in my large displacement sports car. Alarmist schmucks.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.