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."

Comments

The current Ice Age?

[NewsWatcher]

I have studied paleoanthropology and geology, and I am unsure of why they would say that the "current ice age" began 40 million years ago. We are currently in a Holocene (warm period) which began about 11,000 years ago. The last glacial maximum was 18,000 years ago. Since then we have gradually been getting warmer.

For what it is worth, these fluctuations have usually been attributed to fluctuations in the earth's tilt. Wikipedia has a fairly good explanation.

Saw a talk about this

[neurostar]

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")

Re:There may be a link

[sumdumass]

This study actually contradicts nothing.

yes it does contradict something. It is this idea that humans are the sole cause of global warming and that humans need to sacrifice everything, pay more for newer technology coming out because it is said to help cure global warming and the worst idea of we have to pay other countries because we emit more green house gases then they do.

Now, I'm not going to claim humans don't have an influence on global warming. I'm not even going to try and minimize it. I am going to claim that this proves we don't understand the forces behind it completely enough to take drastic actions like what some people are purposing. Kyoto is more or less a redistribution of wealth scheme more then a fix. Although it might be a decent band aid, it definitely isn't a "fix" unless you consider penalizing growth in one area and limiting it on another a "fix". We need more research, science, and less politicking with aims to benefit whoever has the "cure".