Changes In Earth's Orbit Were Key To Antarctic Warming That Ended Last Ice Age

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Changes In Earth's Orbit Were Key To Antarctic Warming That Ended Last Ice Age

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @08:11AM from the i-blame-kepler dept.

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."

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Climate change is human-caused, full stop by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:15 · Score: 5, Funny

It's Cavemanthropogenic Global Warming, if you want to get technical.
1. Re:Climate change is human-caused, full stop by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 09:03 · Score: 1, 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.
2. Re:Climate change is human-caused, full stop by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:51 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not usually this pedantic, but there's a huge difference between "there's not unreasonable evidence" and "there's not-unreasonable evidence". Hyphenate those compound modifiers!
3. Re:Climate change is human-caused, full stop by demonrob · 2013-08-15 15:16 · Score: 1
  
  I think its probably likely that this is the time in human pre-history when sun-gods worship overtook moon-god worship, which therefor broke the icy hold on earth's climate, so yes, it is human caused climate change.
Break the Ice by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:15 · Score: 2, Funny

Allow me to break the ice with the first post
Oh god... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:21 · Score: 1, Insightful

Cue unrelated arguments about modern global warming... time to flee Slashdot for a few hours....
1. Re:Oh god... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:34 · Score: 0
  
  Amen, brother! I know a cool place for ice cold cervezas!
2. Re:Oh god... by invid · 2013-08-14 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  To be fair, they did make a mention of modern global warming at the end of TFA.
  
  --
  The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
3. Re:Oh god... by BoRegardless · 2013-08-14 09:53 · Score: 1
  
  But did they mention Solar caused Global cooling during the Maunder Minimum?
4. Re:Oh god... by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-14 22:13 · Score: 1
  
  You got a flamebait mod.
  Should have been +5 insightful.
  After all the article itself was posted as troll/flambait.
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
5. Re: Oh god... by gzuckier · 2013-08-15 16:28 · Score: 1
  
  Gonna be wobbling after that.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

But warming is caused by man.
Got it.
1. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by SuperKendall · 2013-08-14 08:42 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Isn't it inconvenient when people who think differently than yourself speak up?
  Other religious fanatics have the same reactions when their ideals are challenged.
  I have found through the years, "shut up" is the sign of a weak and easily manipulated mind.
  
  --
  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:49 · Score: 0
  
  Sort of like when someone says we'll never colonize the universe, much less Mars?
3. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Gavrielkay · 2013-08-14 08:49 · Score: 2
  
  So, you dismiss some current science but want to make cute quips about how other current science backs you up?
  
  If you have an actual point to make about how hundreds of climate scientists are wrong, please cite your data. Otherwise you are just insinuating that hundreds of educated people are missing something that you see... as opposed to hundreds of educated scientists knowing something about how and why these occurrences are different and can have different causes.
4. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:53 · Score: 0
  
  I have found through the years, "shut up" is the sign of...
  You hear that a lot, do you? You sound delightful to be around.
5. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:53 · Score: 0
  
  Who died and made you Al Gore?
6. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 08:54 · Score: 1
  
  The fundamental hypocrisy here is one that is necessary to the scientific method. You must simultaneously be willing to accept that some components of a branch of study are flawed enough to warrant whatever hypothesis, experiment, or observation you are doing, while still believing in the fundamental soundness of the scientific method, and the general accuracy of most results, which form the basis of your own study.
  This is a case where they're just being intentionally obtuse, and have nothing interesting to say. Not a "not even wrong" moment, and more of a just plain wrong.
7. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 09:00 · Score: 1, 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?
8. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:02 · Score: 0
  
  Isn't it inconvenient when people who think differently than yourself speak up?
  Nope. It's very convenient when people who think differently than me speaks up.
  What is inconvenient is when people that are unfamiliar with basic facts come with their unfounded opinions, so that I can't hear when the people that think differently from me speak up.
  
  Other religious fanatics have the same reactions when their ideals are challenged.
  I have found through the years, "shut up" is the sign of a weak and easily manipulated mind.
  I've found it is the sign of a complicated area where most people with opinions are uninformed. I've not found it to say much about the mind of the person that says it.
9. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by blueg3 · 2013-08-14 09:08 · Score: 2
  
  Isn't it inconvenient when people who think differently than yourself speak up?
  No, it's just inconvenient when people who don't think speak up.
10. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Gavrielkay · 2013-08-14 09:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Better my trotting out a headcount of experts than others' trotting out gut feelings. I have a degree in chemistry, I understand the scientific method. I work in programming, I understand logic. Both of those concepts help me to understand that hundreds of scientists from around the world are not making this shit up. Perhaps new data will come to light and prove some or all of the current theories wrong, but it won't come from /. posters making snide remarks.
  
  And it won't come because some people have decided that science is great when it provides computers, internet and porn on DVD but is somehow stacked full of blithering idiots when it comes to climate change.
11. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by khellendros1984 · 2013-08-14 09:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  If someone makes a post that seems to be making a false-equivalence between two situations, then they aren't even challenging anyone's "ideals", they're just introducing confusion for no good reason. Anthropogenic climate change and climate change through natural processes (like Earth's orbital wobble) aren't mutually exclusive, and any argument that says that they are is either disingenuous or badly confused about the claims being made. If you take the former to be true (and I do), then "shut up" is the correct response to the trolling attempt.
  
  --
  It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
12. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by dywolf · 2013-08-14 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  warming is caused by many things.
  no one has ever said that only man causes it.
  however all of those things cause warming over a very very long time scale. except man.
  which is why the very very fast warming we've seen is attributed to man.
  
  --
  The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
13. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  It was plenty insightful, you just didn't like the point. The ~comment of "It's the republicans fault, or Bush's fault" is a no fail 5 insightful on this pitiful website so your argument is ludicrous.
14. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  Let me translate your comment: *I'm smart and informed and my opinion counts, you're stupid and we don't want your opinion*.
15. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:39 · Score: 0
  
  "What Ma'ab says is true; our ways are different. What the Klingon says is unimportant, and we do not hear his words."
16. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Silvrmane · 2013-08-14 09:45 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Generally speaking, the people who write the papers are the same cast of characters who do the reviews on the papers. Its a fairly incestuous process, so I don't put a lot of stock in "peer review" when it comes to something as unphysical as climate science. Peer review in general, in all sciences, is also undergoing a kind of crisis of confidence. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34518/title/Opinion--Scientific-Peer-Review-in-Crisis/
  People treat climate science like it was a hard science like physics or chemistry, where input A results in output B. It isn't. It is at best a "soft science" where opinion and confirmation bias creep in at every opportunity.
  Keep in mind that people are trying to make predictions about the future behaviour of a complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamic system based on poorly founded, unphysical simulations of the past behaviour of that system -- you cannot simulate a system unless you understand all of its inputs and outputs, and the physical relationship between them. Prediction is, if not impossible, is very very hard. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/504.htm
  
  --
  planet texture maps and more
17. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by rgbatduke · 2013-08-14 09:47 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  You might want to look at two things. One is the actual thermal record over geological time, which shows intervals of extremely rapid natural warming and cooling. Second, you might want to consider the fact that much of that record is essentially smeared out by imprecision in the proxies used so that one is comparing two different kinds of averages -- one averaged over a very short time interval, and another where the average might well be over a period longer than the entire time we have had thermometers. If you then perform a regression estimate of extrema, you will conclude that no, it cannot be safely or reasonably concluded that the "very very fastest warming we've seen is attributed to man".
  Curiously, not even most climate scientists would assert such a thing, I don't think. Some might. For one thing, there hasn't been any statistically significant warming for roughly 16 years, in spite of "man". For another, some unknown fraction of the observed warming post Little Ice Age was natural -- all of it, up to perhaps 1950, and very likely some of it since then as well. There are plenty of natural things that produce rapid warming, and cooling, as evidenced by the geological record. We just don't understand them yet.
  rgb
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
18. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:51 · Score: 0
  
  and apparently pointing out this fact is a sure fire way to -1
19. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:55 · Score: 0
  
  then would you be so kind as to keep your thoughts to yourself. The original comment, though sarcastic does point out a massive inconsistency in the current group think of slashdot, and climate science as a whole. It's fine to blame heating in the now on man made causes. But when evidence surfaces that there are much larger things at play which have modified the climate hugely in the past, it's heresy to so much as suggest these same things might at least somewhat be responsible as to what is happening now.
20. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:02 · Score: 0
  
  i have found through the years, 'shut up' is what you say to people who have no grasp of scientific reality yet talk as if they do.
21. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:22 · Score: 0
  
  It is inconvenient when people can't seem to tell the difference between climate trends at the scale of a couple of centuries and climate cycles at the scale of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, and they are unaware these scales could be controlled by different processes. We're talking about a couple orders of magnitude difference in timescale here.
  It's like a person who can't tell the difference between daily high and low temperatures and the seasons. Or a person who can't tell the difference between a wave and a tide. I sure wouldn't trust such a person to forecast weather or navigate on the sea, especially if they merely mocked people who suggested days and seasons or waves and tides were not controlled by the same things. Likewise I wouldn't place much merit in the comments of people who claim to understand climate science enough to critique it, but can't understand that Milankovitch cycles are pretty much irrelevant to what's going to play out in the next century or so (i.e. Milkanovitch cycles are SO slow you may as well regard astronomical effects as constant on that timescale).
  I can't tell if people really are that uninformed, or if they just desperately want to believe climate change on century scale can't possibly be anything human-related, so any old natural climate process will do, whether it is relevant on the time scale in question or not. It's rather a sloppy argument. Anyway, this has nothing to do with people "thinking differently". It's simply a misunderstanding about scale. That's the polite way to put it.
  While you are quite right that "shut up" can be the sign of a weak and easily manipulated mind that can't put together a good argument, it can also be a sign that the object of that statement is incorrigibly uninterested in actually learning anything about the subject, and would rather make fun of other people's futile attempts to explain things to them. I apologize, but it is a difficult challenge to maintain civility in the face of such a deep and abiding lack of understanding that is repeated over and over. When people offer only uninformed sarcasm as their contribution to the discussion, it makes it more challenging. Usually when people are woefully uninformed they have the common sense to stay quiet on their own rather than flaunt it. It's a common problem.
22. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by KeensMustard · 2013-08-14 10:34 · Score: 0
  
  You might want to look at two things.
  Or, you know, you might want to look in it, since if you are basing your theory on these things, then it's up to you to do the research which demonstrates how they are significant.
  
  One is the actual thermal record over geological time, which shows intervals of extremely rapid natural warming and cooling. Second, you might want to consider the fact that much of that record is essentially smeared out by imprecision in the proxies used so that one is comparing two different kinds of averages -- one averaged over a very short time interval, and another where the average might well be over a period longer than the entire time we have had thermometers.
  So, in fact, you have no proof of your assertion that there have been previous periods of warming in the same timescale as the present warming phenomenon? Thanks for letting us know.
  
  Curiously, not even most climate scientists would assert such a thing, I don't think. Some might. For one thing, there hasn't been any statistically significant warming for roughly 16 years, in spite of "man".
  Go for you, contradicting the actual observations. That puts your statements in the right light.
23. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:40 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  There is little insight in a sarcastic comment expressing a common point of confusion: that climate change processes on the scale of tens to hundreds of thousands of years are going to matter to what happens in the next century or two.
  I don't mind sarcasm if it's founded on an insightful understanding, but this isn't. It's just dumb. It promotes confusion, not understanding. Here, I'll rephrase it for you with an analogous situation:
  "Tides are caused by the Sun and Moon"
  "But waves are caused by wind"
  "Got it"
  What, is this supposed to be a contradiction? That the surface of the sea could be determined by *two* different processes at the same time at two different scales of observation and timescales? Gasp! Insanity! Sea level skeptics unite and resist the global sea level conspiracy!
  See, I can use sarcasm and hyperbole. But it doesn't really help my argument. What matters here is the observation that the guy making his sarcastic comment about controls on climate doesn't understand that there isn't anything contradictory about climate variations due to astronomical cycles at long time scales (thousands of years) being different from human inputs at shorter timescales (centuries). It's no more contradictory than the different processes responsible for the temperature variation seen over a single day versus a season. Or does he have a problem with that as well? At least it would be consistent.
24. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:43 · Score: 0
  
  Shut up!
25. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by cusco · 2013-08-14 11:12 · Score: 2
  
  Previous "intervals of extremely rapid warming and cooling" were centuries and millenia long. We're seeing changes over the period of decades, and ice cores from Antarctica show no similar pattern for at least the last 850,000 years. If you look at the timing of the 'Little Ice Age' you may notice that it starts almost immediately after the Black Death killed off 1/3 of everyone from India to Iceland and forests re-covered eastern Europe, sequestering huge amounts of CO2. I would be surprised if your "unknown fraction" wasn't the cutting down of the forests to restore it back to farmland.
  
  I like how the "no warming for 16 years" line has now changed to "no statistically significant warming". If I make my error bars wide enough I can also claim that there's "no statistically significant" difference between auto fatalities at 50 kph and those at 150 kph (just to make a car analogy).
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
26. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  No,
  If you had bothered to read the entire article, you would have noticed this:
  "Changes in Earth’s orbit today are not an important factor in the rapid warming that has been observed recently, he added."
  Wherein and actual expert who had studied the effects of wobbles on the Earth and its climate indicated that the wobble is not influencing the current rapid warming
  Reading is fundamental, flippantly spreading your own notions is not
27. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  yes, the same 'incestuous process' that brought you physics, mathematics, astronomy (not astrology), engineering, medicine, virology, genetics...
  yeah, the scientific method, publication and review, what a fail
28. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 11:18 · Score: 0
  
  And I'll translate your comment:
  "I'm unwilling to introduce science into the discussion because it's easier to imply people are elitist eggheads and take other cheap shots rather than make a substantive argument myself."
  What you're confused about is why people who are informed end up having opinions that count. In a discussion about plumbing, plumbers kind of have an advantage. Likewise climate scientists when talking about climate science, or computer scientists when talking about computer science. That does not mean they can't be questioned, but it's a bit silly to spout a very common misconception (that there's something contradictory about different climate processes operating at different scales) and then ridicule people for expressing their frustration over hearing the same old silliness yet again at the top of a discussion thread.
  I'd love to hear your opinion if there is any substance to it. Don't be shy. But if all you've got to offer is more cheap shots, don't bother. The internet is full of those.
29. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2013-08-14 11:29 · Score: 1
  
  The original comment, though sarcastic does point out a massive inconsistency
  The original comment didn't point out absolutely anything of value.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
30. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by techno-vampire · 2013-08-14 11:45 · Score: 1
  
  I've never run across your suggestion that the after effects of the Black Death might have caused the Little Ice Age before; it's an interesting idea. I do have two questions however. First, is this just speculation on your part or are you offering it as an explanation of what happened. Second, if you do think this is a serious theory, do you have any evidence other than the timing? I'm not trying to shoot you down, here, but if you have any more information, I'd like to see it.
  
  --
  Good, inexpensive web hosting
31. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 11:55 · Score: 0
  
  Let me translate your comment: *I'm smart and informed and my opinion counts, you're stupid and we don't want your opinion*.
  (Original AC here)
  Another potshot. No. I am smart, and I am informed about *some* things, and I try my best to avoid having opinions about the things I am not informed about - and double try to avoid expressing opinions in those areas I'm not informed about. Sometimes I fail.
  I think each of you out there have something to contribute, and that the best way to make this all work is by each of us attempting to do what I attempt to do - that is, avoid expressing an opinion before having learned about the area. Asking is fine; quipping or claiming things is not.
32. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Mashiki · 2013-08-14 12:18 · Score: 1
  
  In all of those cases factual observation+results were the name of the day. In the field mentioned above, 99% of it is based on computer models. The same models that can't predict the path of a hurricane, or whether it's going to be pissing rain on Canada for the next 14 days(though common wisdom says it will be).
  
  --
  Om, nomnomnom...
33. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 12:36 · Score: 0
  
  The problem we have with your thinking is that climate scientists are way ahead of you on thinking those thoughts about what comes into play in climate change and have already examined that possibility. You would know that if you seriously investigated climate science so when you suggest that they missed that it just shows your ignorance.
  Regarding the "planetary wobbles" (collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles) the shortest of the different factors that goes into it is around a 26,000 year cycle so a matter of a few centuries is not long enough for them to cause changes of the magnitude that are currently occurring.
34. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 12:53 · Score: 2
  
  The purpose of peer review in general is not to determine if a paper is right or wrong but to make sure there are no obvious mistakes or elementary errors that would make it a waste of time for others in the field to read it in the first place.
  And I think that climate science is not nearly as soft as you seem to think it is. Yes, it is very complex but the interactions are all physical and it's probably not necessary to know every single one. The top 10 or 20 probably cover well over 99% of the effects.
35. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 12:55 · Score: 0
  
  What inconsistency? Is the daily fluctuation in temperature controlled by the same process as the seasonal fluctuation? They don't have to be related.
  There is no inconsistency. These are completely different scales. These astronomical cycles fluctuate on scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years -- far beyond the scale of changes we've seen in the last couple of centuries. If you have evidence that these astronomical cycles drive significant change on the scale of two centuries rather than tens to hundreds of thousands of years, let's hear it. Otherwise they're as irrelevant to each other as the waves on the sea are to the process controlling tides. Probably less so.
  You're not proposing heresy to suggest there could be a linkage, but what you're saying doesn't make sense if you work it out. If you calculate out the expected effect of astronomical changes over only two centuries, it's essentially nil. Worse, we happen to be in a time period when the amplitude of the effect from astronomical cycles is lower than average (the three main cycles -- eccentricity, tilt, and precession are tending to cancel each other out for a while), so this should be a good stretch of 20000+ years with comparatively little orbit-related climatic effects.
36. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 13:19 · Score: 0
  
  So, you said those who have an opinion other then yours should shut up, in long form?
37. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 14:01 · Score: 0
  
  Was that sarcasm? I can check the other criteria off the list. I'm just not sure about 'sarcastic'...
38. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by a_n_d_e_r_s · 2013-08-14 14:16 · Score: 1
  
  From:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
  Decreased human populations
  Some researchers have proposed that human influences on climate began earlier than is normally supposed and that major population declines in Eurasia and the Americas reduced this impact, leading to a cooling trend. William Ruddiman has proposed that somewhat reduced populations of Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East during and after the Black Death caused a decrease in agricultural activity. He suggests reforestation took place, allowing more carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere, which may have been a factor in the cooling noted during the Little Ice Age. Ruddiman further hypothesizes that a reduced population in the Americas after European contact in the early sixteenth century could have had a similar effect.[78][79] Faust, Gnecco, Mannstein and Stamm (2005)[80] and Nevle (2011)[81] supported depopulation in the Americas as a factor, asserting that humans had cleared considerable amounts of forests to support agriculture in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans brought on a population collapse. A 2008 study of sediment cores and soil samples further suggests that carbon dioxide uptake via reforestation in the Americas could have contributed to the Little Ice Age.[82] The depopulation is linked to a drop in carbon dioxide levels observed at Law Dome, Antarctica.[80]
  
  --
  Just saying it like it are.
39. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Rockoon · 2013-08-14 14:51 · Score: 2
  
  Or, you know, you might want to look in it, since if you are basing your theory on these things, then it's up to you to do the research which demonstrates how they are significant.
  This statement right here is the problem with most people. They, like you, dont understand what the fuck they are talking about.
  
  All the long-duration proxies (more than a few hundred years) do measure as an average over hundreds and even thousands of years because there is too much short term noise in the signal. Thusly statements about the rate of warming on short time scales cannot be made about periods in the past more than a few hundred years. He doesnt need to look into why this is because its proven within mathematics (more specifically, in the fields of statistics, calculus, and now information theory) rather than physics, chemistry, or "earth science."
  
  Thousand-year running average cannot ever make meaningful statement abouts hundred year derivatives. because its impossible. You just argued that he should re-prove whats already known for an absolute undeniable fact.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
40. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by SuperKendall · 2013-08-14 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  You hear that a lot, do you?
  Well, yes - I browse Slashdot and don't filter out AC's.
  Which is also how I learned you have weak minds...
  
  --
  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
41. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by techno-vampire · 2013-08-14 15:04 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you; that was very interesting. From what the article says, lower human population caused by the Black Death and resulting reforestation is one of several possible causes, but there's currently no way to tell just which cause or causes are responsible. Still, it's something to think about.
  
  --
  Good, inexpensive web hosting
42. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by cusco · 2013-08-14 15:29 · Score: 1
  
  I first saw this in an article in Scientific American about a decade ago (won't bother searching for it, as it's behind the paywall) titled something like, "Did Agriculture Stop The Ice Age?" This was when Sci Am articles were still long and full of graphs and charts, one of which showed the extremely regular inter-glacial cycles of the last half million years, the exception being the current one. CO2 and temperatures started dropping on schedule (well, as "on schedule" as a cycle 10,000 years long can be) and then stopped approximately the same time as rice cultivation (which creates huge amounts of methane) started in Asia and slash and burn farming started in Europe and Africa. Dips in temperature and CO2 content (as measured in glacial bubbles) also occur around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire (plagues and depopulation of some areas by barbarians), the Hunnish invasion of Europe (areas the size of some modern countries entirely depopulated), and the Great Dying in the Americas (after the arrival of European diseases). The authors very clearly said that their paper was speculative (and I think they even said "correlation does not equal causation"), but that the data was a fairly good fit.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
43. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 15:59 · Score: 0
  
  This thoughtful reply will have about the same effect as "Please, never comment on this subject again."
44. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 20:22 · Score: 0
  
  Shut up is also what an arsehole says to someone who they don't like the opinions of and want to ridicule into silence rather than face the truth.
  There are more than even those two reasons for telling someone "Shut up". Something you apparently have no idea of; apparently you think there can be one and ONLY one reason for things. That, in your case, is probably asserted to be "God".
45. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 20:52 · Score: 0
  
  "There are two schools of thought on whether or not you need a crew. Every other captain says you do, I says you don't."
  You're not acting as an idiot like Tom Baker was, you ARE an idiot of that calibre.
46. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by TapeCutter · 2013-08-14 21:38 · Score: 2
  
  Any reputable climatologist will tell you the resolution on ancient climate reconstructions is nowhere near fine enough to pin things down to decades. The ancient climate is reconstructed by interpolating samples taken centuries apart. This article is a good example, past studies indicated the south lagged the north by 2kyr. That didn't make sense from a physical POV but that's what the sum of the evidence was telling the researchers. To say more than what the evidence is telling you is speculation, not science. This new study appears to have found evidence that there was no lag, meaning the discrepancy between theory and observation raised by the previous study is likely just a side-effect of the limited resolution of the previously available evidence..
  
  Your claim suffers from the same limited resolution as the previous studies, neither you nor the GP can credibly claim the current change is more/less rapid than ancient changes seen in geological layers. Having said that and also acknowledging interpolation has a smoothing effect on the curve, I would be very surprised to find a 50yr spike like that of the last 50yrs in the geological record. Beside the lack of hard evidence, the basic problem I have accepting your speculation that the such spikes exist in the record is that, apart from space rock impacts, I can't think of any other natural process that would have such a rapid global effect.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
47. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-14 22:22 · Score: 1
  
  The same models that can't predict the path of a hurricane, or whether it's going to be pissing rain on Canada for the next 14 days(though common wisdom says it will be).
  Why did you say that. Even you know why it's not worth saying that.
  Dishonest people make dishonest arguments.
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
48. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 01:40 · Score: 0
  
  He does have a point. The models for weather seem to be more wrong then they are right. Watch the weather and go look outside. There is a good reason why they use %. It the only job you can get wrong 90% of the time and still get paid. Even when they say we are watching this storm they show 4 or 5 tracking models and will take out the ones that are wrong as the some movies.
  So how can we really trust globe warming models when no models really match up?
49. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 02:38 · Score: 0
  
  My god, who's moderating today? That comment was stupid (willfully ignorant perhaps), exactly the opposite of insightful. There are a lot of variables that affect climate, including milankovitch cycles (which hemisphere is summer ar perogee), volcanic activity, the Earth's orbit's wobble (which is the subject of this discussion), possibly even gamma ray bursts.
  And yes, our industrial emissions have raised the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The scientific consensis is there.
50. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by IndieVoter · 2013-08-15 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  Got it.. Actually, Global Warming has two causes. A. Availability of government grant money B. Availability of good booze and cheap hookers in GW conference city.
51. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 04:34 · Score: 0
  
  You have found wrong. "Shut up" is often a sign that an impatient or intolerant mind has been forced to listen to fools.
52. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by tbannist · 2013-08-15 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  It's about as insightful as insisting that continental drift is the primary reason that Usain Bolt may be the fastest man on earth.
  
  --
  Fanatically anti-fanatical
53. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 05:09 · Score: 0
  
  apart from space rock impacts, I can't think of any other natural process that would have such a rapid global effect.
  Now, you are just not using your imagination. ;)
  
  Wide-spread or simply large seismic or volcanic activity could (e.g. supervolcano). It has also been theorized that a wide-spread pandemic could (through rapid changes of activities on Earth, like agriculture). There is also some evidence of rapid geomagnetic field changes that have happened in the past.
  
  That doesn't even touch any number of other type of cosmological bad luck that could befall us (you mentioned impact events, but how about an unlikely but unfortunately well timed gamma ray burst or maybe prolonged and radically increased solar activity).
54. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by rgbatduke · 2013-08-15 05:31 · Score: 2
  
  So you're saying that the Bern model for CO_2 sequestration is wrong, then? I don't think we know enough to say that it is right OR wrong yet, and won't for some time yet, but sure, it might be wrong.
  However, you need to actually do the numbers before you conclude that killing off 1/3 of everybody from India to Iceland might have sequestered "huge amounts of CO_2" and you might point out some evidence that this occurred in the various CO_2 proxies before basically making something up to explain something that we currently cannot satisfactorily explain or predict even WITH the knowledge we have from proxies.
  As for no warming vs no statistically significant warming, they are precisely the same thing, are they not? Or do you claim perfect knowledge WITHOUT error bars. For part of that interval there is equally statistically insignificant cooling. The point is that the GCMs have almost without exception predicted significant warming across that same interval. Indeed, if one uses actual statistical analysis and hypothesis testing the way it is axiomatically supported, to test the GCMs instead of to take untested GCMs en masse and use them to make literally indefensible statements about the probability of future warming scenarios, one would reject nearly all of the GCMs one at a time, easily at the 5% confidence level and many of them at the 3% or even less confidence level. They are all significantly too warm.
  Finally, you might consider what the error bars on our probable knowledge of things like global temperature really are, instead of introducing a false analogy. For example, how many significant digits do you think you might get measuring the average air temperature in your own back yard? How many thermometers might it take, and where might you locate them? How well would they agree with thermometers located across the street, or two blocks over? How would you measure this average? How well would this average extrapolate and infill to predict the average temperature of your city, your county, your state, the United States (if you American)?
  Curiously, James Hansen has spoken on this in a Q/A and the answers might surprise you.
  In the meantime, the way temperature is reported is as an "anomaly", in part because the various models used to extrapolate, infill, and otherwise massage the actual raw data produce global averages that differ by over a degree F. Since there aren't that many of them, this is a reasonable lower bound estimate for sigma. Of course, the models themselves all extrapolate and infill and use data that is itself corrupted and imperfect in various ways, so that the models have a model error that is almost certainly at least as large, and because they are using overlapping data one cannot conclude that the spread in model means represents this internal purely statistical and experimental error. I would be rather surprised if we know global average temperature to within 1 C.
  Now let's put your analogy into true perspective. The actual absolute temperature involved is pretty close to 300 C, so let us go with that and equate it to 30 mph. Our probable error in this number is around 1 C, or 0.1 mph. The entire post LIA warming is around 1 C -- barely resolvable. The entire warming from the beginning of the instrumental era to the middle of that era is around 0.4 C, with almost all of that increase occurring from 1910 to 1940 and not, according to climate scientists, attributable to increased CO_2 (as this was largely pre-industrial as far as the world is concerned and CO_2 hadn't started to bump yet. So we have 0.4 over 30 years, mind you, little or no CO_2 involved, all instrumental records and hence at least moderately reliable although -- note well, we're really talking about variation that is on the order of the error bar on absolute temperature (where we could then get into a HUGE discussion of whether one can cheat statistics and claim a smaller one on the ANOMALY, arguing effectively that we somehow know the second moment of a distribution mo
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
55. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by cusco · 2013-08-15 05:42 · Score: 1
  
  some evidence that this occurred
  
  The economy of that whole section of the world collapsed, farmland away from population centers was abandoned and reverted to forest. Travelers reported that a squirrel could travel from Vienna to Warsaw and never have to leave the trees, a region that was heavily farmed both before and after the population collapse.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
56. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by rgbatduke · 2013-08-15 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  Seriously? There is a 0.4 C spike from 1910 to 1940, compared to 0.6 C from 1970 to 2000, and you think that the extra 0.2 C is sufficient evidence of runaway anthropogenic global warming, given a non-anthropogenic spike 2/3 as large in the only two samples of spikes we have in the moderately reliable instrumental record e.g. here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png?
  Note well that I am not claiming that the latter spike is or isn't natural. I'm asserting that the instrumental record is sufficient evidence of natural climate spikes at least as large as 0.13C/decade sustained over at least three decades because there is one of them present in that record. Indeed, the actual record -- woefully inadequate as it is -- suggests that spikes like this are common, that the climate often fluctuates and/or rises on average by 0.13 C per decade, for decade-long intervals. That is evident even in the noise. The noise is important, because of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for non-equilibrium thermodynamical systems (that is, it is relevant to the problem). It suggests that the relaxation rates apparent in the noise should indeed be characteristic of the response to changes in the drivers. I'd say that this is obviously very likely true in the instrumental graph above, and furthermore that the record strongly suggests that there are natural drivers with long (multidecadal) lifetimes that make nearly discrete changes in the "equilibrium" set point of the system.
  It is early to conclude things (not that that ever stops anyone who wants to make egregious claims for the second of the two spikes being almost entirely anthropogenic while ignoring the first:-) but it is by no means clear that the latter spike is continuing at anything like its peak rate, and we frankly lack the data to be able to determine if that peak rate is normal for precisely the reasons you state above -- outside of the instrumental record the error bars grow and the coarse grained intervals to which a given average temperature is assigned grow faster, to where we really cannot make very strong statements concerning the scale of natural fluctuations based on the actual instrumental data at our disposal beyond the obvious one -- with two clearly visible spikes with very similar slopes plus fluctuation-dissipation, it is at least even odds that spikes like the one in the latter half of the twentieth century are commonplace over any given interval of 1000 years or more. Seriously.
  rgb
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
57. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  "Thousand-year running average cannot ever make meaningful statement abouts hundred year derivatives. because its impossible."
  We have better than thousand-year running averages for records such as tree rings and glacial ice cores. Annual layers of ice can be counted as far back as about 100000 years, and record such events as individual volcanic eruptions, some correlated to historical events going back a few thousand years. Dendrochronology doens't go as far, but still gets 10000 years or so with annual rings. That's a decent sample. If you are talking about the *rock* record, yeah, that tends to be integrated over century to millenia scale, making resolution of events shorter than a thousand years pretty tough, but the record within the last 100000 years is certainly down to decadal scale, and often better than that (annual).
58. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 07:05 · Score: 0
  
  Hundreds, eh? Tens of thousands of scientists say that man made global warming is utter crap.
  So yeah... Definitely.
59. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by cundare · 2013-08-15 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  Using words like "religious fanatic" is pretty much the same thing as saying "shut up."
  But other than that, I pretty much agree. The significant contribution of man-made greenhouse gas to climate change has been supported by an incontrovertible body of evidence since the late 1990s -- and even before that, the greenhouse gas model was generally accepted as likely to be true by most of the scientific community worldwide in three fields of science. You're not going to convince people who believe otherwise that their beliefs are just silly, because they're operating on faith, not science. Faith is a bad thing when it's passed off as fact.
60. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by infinitelink · 2013-08-15 07:21 · Score: 2
  
  It is full of blithering idiots when it comes to climate change: blithering idjuts who were wise enough to make a stink about the initial publications of warming offworld corresponding with that on earth...because it could threaten grants (one on my campus who happened to be world famous started receiving death threats when he took a hard look at it, and changed his mind to deem human activity real, but insignificant); blithering idiots who hide and manipulate data and just make it up (they've got deadlines and entire careers that can go out the window: the university is about the furthest place from where people will care for you as there is); blithering idiots who know damn well (I've talked to a few at some prestigious research institutions with labs that are influential in this crap--it's good to have friends) that the models are bullshit, because even with all the apparently complexity and supercomputers running them, relative to actual conditions they're simplistic guesswork: Freeman flippin' Dyson brought this up and despite being a physicist had climate scientists screaming that he was unqualified because "you're not a climate scientists!!!!" The last one I spoke with said that since there is little to no actual data or modelling on the effects of biota on all this (which are terribly important and well-known to be), that existing studies correlate a little between them and changes but can't scale or adjust as biology would, and don't take particulates into account (exceedingly important, diverse, and...really hard to include) at all, he doesn't understand why they even get any funding: except the politics and that they engage in FUDing everyone.
  
  Either way, things CAN'T change (regards human activity) even if we are affecting things in terrible ways, fast enough to undo any of it: billions of people are struggling to survive/eat still, s owe might as well just try to fix things, build dikes, walls, and ways for swimming things to get-through to somewhat-preserve ecosystems, and try to get along with an earth that actually really genuinely is-acknowledge-as-truly-started start to warm before any of the industrial revolutions began. It's not anti-science but realism. The Indonesians, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, "Indians" (in quotes because that place is far from a nation-state), etc. all need to keep developing, so the do-gooders here either get over it (and stop hindering development and direct funds instead into fundamental research as well as practical developments to mitigate harms as much as possible) or get left behind.
  
  --
  Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
61. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 07:42 · Score: 0
  
  I have found through the years, "shut up" is the sign of a weak and easily manipulated mind.
  SHUT U.....ooh, shiny!
62. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by rgbatduke · 2013-08-15 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  Heavily farmed? You might take a glance at the population of the world then and now. I'll help:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates
  As you can see, even though the black plague may have killed 1/3 of the world's population, it didn't kill them all at the same time, and it isn't even clear that the world's population ever actually receded during the events, at least according to this table (which also exposes a fundamental limitation -- look at the spread in estimates for the total population in the 1200s and 1300s -- at least 150 million or about 1/3 of the total value, making it difficult to resolve even 120 million people dying all at once from the natural noise in the estimates. None of the table columns show a decrease of a third of the world's population even in the fourteenth century, and most show a pretty steady slowly increasing population across even that time. By 1500 -- still an easy 100 years before the LIA -- the world's population was back to being larger than it was in 1300.
  A single human needs so many hectares of land to survive whether or not they live in urban or rural settings, and the total world population at the time ranged from 300 million to just under 600 million just before the actual start of the LIA. The largest population drop on any of the table columns (where as noted we can assume error bars much larger than the estimated drop) was 70 million out of 443 million at the start, or around 1/6 of the world's population (and not a third), and it was concentrated in Europe. I'd have to consider this very weak, speculative evidence that the LIA was caused by CO_2 sequestration in rapidly reforested land. You might want to rethink your assertion that farmland was abandoned away from population centers -- it was my understanding that the plague worked even more efficiently in the population centers than in the countryside (it's where the rats concentrate and the probability of all variants of rat-flea-human transmission is maximized, after all) and that the reforestation was anything more than a blip as the post-plague generations rapidly recolonized the lands. Urban populations also needed firewood to burn and wood to build and pulled wood in from a much larger area than just the farmland. Finally, trees take a fairly long time to grow, but a short time to cut down.
  Even reforested lands would not sequester that much carbon, that rapidly, given the buffering evident in the Bern model, not unless the critics of the Bern model are correct and the timescale of CO_2 sequestration is centuries.
  Overall, the argument is an interesting one, but not exactly a convincing one. In particular it is difficult to explain why the actual LIA started around 1600 and persisted for some 125 years before slowly warming, then descending a lesser amount to a less protracted minimum that lasted all the way up to the mid to late 1800s before beginning the post-LIA warming of roughly 1 C (inclusive) that persists today. Why a lag of almost 200 years, with an effect that appeared long after the CO_2 sequestered in the forest regrowth had been returned the atmosphere times two? The solar dynamics arguments have better agreement than that, and they are far from proven as well.
  Basically, we do not know why the LIA occurred. There are competing theories, none of which have real predictive/hindcasting value. We do not know why the MWP preceded it. We cannot explain any of the features of the climate variation of the Holocene save through heuristic arguments -- we are incapable of quantitatively hindcasting it. I know it is popular to think that the climate is a one-knob linear system, but it is not. It is also popular to claim that the existence of many papers from studies conducted to demonstrate the existence of CO_2 based catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is sufficient proof that the those papers are all right, but as Sanjay Gupta confessed
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
63. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-08-15 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't it inconvenient when people who think differently than yourself speak up?
  No, it's just telling when someone can't even tell the difference between "starting" something and "ending" something. That clearly shows he's not into "thinking differently" but into "not thinking at all".
  
  --
  Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
64. Re: Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by gzuckier · 2013-08-15 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  It is pretty clear you are unfamiliar with what has been happening in physics for the past, oh, 50 years.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
65. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by haruchai · 2013-08-16 13:15 · Score: 1
  
  Let's get Congress and 5th graders ( is that redundant? ) to conduct peer review on scientific papers.
  
  --
  Pain is merely failure leaving the body
66. Re:Ice ages are caused by planetary wobbles by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-18 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  Oh for fucks sake.
  Weather is not climate.
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
Don't let ice build up! by NotQuiteReal · 2013-08-14 08:31 · Score: 3, Funny

All that ice on the poles made the Earth all wobbley, which led to Bad Things. We should de-ice the planet, as a precaution so it doesn't happen again!

I mean, you don't let ice build up on your roof, in your freezer, or on airplanes... ice is always bad unless it is in my drink!

--
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
1. Re:Don't let ice build up! by Darinbob · 2013-08-14 08:50 · Score: 2
  
  More margaritas for everyone, to save the planet!
2. Re:Don't let ice build up! by roc97007 · 2013-08-14 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  All that ice on the poles made the Earth all wobbley, which led to Bad Things. We should de-ice the planet, as a precaution so it doesn't happen again!
  I mean, you don't let ice build up on your roof, in your freezer, or on airplanes... ice is always bad unless it is in my drink!
  Hmm. So these orbital wobbles... are they nature's defrost cycle?
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
3. Re:Don't let ice build up! by msauve · 2013-08-14 11:09 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe we just need ice at the equator. Ice-9, baby!
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Antithesis by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:36 · Score: 0

More likely, the ice ages of past were caused by a meteor striking the planet and sending cataclysmic dust around the planet that was thick enough to block out the sun for thousands of years, changing the entire planet's weather for eons.
1. Re:Antithesis by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 08:50 · Score: 1
  
  We can actually tell when this happens, you know. We can examine the soil layers around the earth, and a consistent layer across the whole planet in the same strata identifies a time when substantial dust was settling. I'm pretty sure that's not the case here, but haven't actually looked at what experts say.
Re:So basically... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:36 · Score: 1

Short answer: No, with an "if".
Long answer: Yes, with a "but".
Re:So basically... by geek · 2013-08-14 08:39 · Score: 1

Short answer: No, with an "if".
Long answer: Yes, with a "but".
Which equals - No answer at all................
Clearly we need to spend a few trillion more to find out the answer.
Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by sl4shd0rk · 2013-08-14 08:44 · 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."

--
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
1. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by iggymanz · 2013-08-14 08:50 · Score: 0
  
  you commit the fallacy of asserting the consequent
2. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:58 · Score: 0
  
  Reading TFA all the way to the last sentence? Show-off!
3. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by tlambert · 2013-08-14 09:03 · Score: 1
  
  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."
  Yeah, I read that part too, and it's the only part of the article that bothered me. It was something of an unnecessary sensationalist jab in an otherwise informative article. Had they left that last sentence off, it would not have been any less informative, without dragging in T. J. Fudge's poke in the eye of the anthropogenic global warming controversy. Anything to bait the clicks, I suppose...
4. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Gavrielkay · 2013-08-14 09:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Or, it was a (partially) successful attempt to deflect the rash of comments about how their research on the previous ice age must invalidate lots of other research on current climate change.
5. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:37 · Score: 1
  
  It was something of an unnecessary sensationalist jab in an otherwise informative article. Had they left that last sentence off, it would not have been any less informative, without dragging in T. J. Fudge's poke in the eye of the anthropogenic global warming controversy.
  Right, because no one would say, this or this which were both modded up. The news article is pretty bad, because Vince Stricherz confuses ice age with glacial. The Nature article is about the end of the last glacial period, not the end of the last ice age. We're still in the last ice age, so the subject line is obviously stupid.
6. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Arker · 2013-08-14 09:47 · Score: 2
  
  Ah yes, the requisite recitation of faith.
  And the rest of this is horribly confused. They talk about 'orbit' when they mean 'rotation' (as in around the poles, not around the sun) and they keep talking about an ice age when they are referring to an individual glaciation.
  
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7. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by bluefoxlucid · 2013-08-14 09:48 · Score: 0
  
  The funny part is we're in a cooling trend, and the "Carbon Dioxide" explanation was "Global Warming" because of "The Greenhouse Effect". Now that it's not getting hot, it's "Climate Change" but we keep the same explanation and everyone treats it like the same guy with a new haircut and we all know all about the dude. Makes for hilarious stupidity.
  
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  Support my political activism on Patreon.
8. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 12:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Please, before you post anything on this topic, go to this site and check if it hasn't been debunked. By endlessly repeating long-discredited views, you're only adding noise to the discussion.
9. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 13:20 · Score: 3, 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.
10. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 18:19 · Score: 0
  
  Sure they will be able to, the claim will just have morphed into "The Earth entered cooling trend in 2010".
11. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  :) Yeah, I forgot about that factor, didn't I.
12. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 18:55 · Score: 0
  
  too bad only 37% of scientists and engineers agree with your inane rambling http://oss.sagepub.com/content/33/11/1477.full
13. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by bluefoxlucid · 2013-08-15 01:39 · Score: 2
  
  There was a Russian scientist who took that bet in 2000 and won. Are we there again? Can I bet you $1000 and win?
  The charts are showing me a 0.8C movement since 1900, which doesn't seem to be correlated to anything interesting. CO2 levels are strange--I'd like to see a chart of industrial CO2 output and the INTEGRAL of CO2 output (i.e. total CO2 output since baseline), because warming would tend to make CO2 less soluble and thus CO2 would emit from the oceans (or dissolve less). That means that CO2 output might not have an impact immediately because it gets dissolved; then it suddenly comes back into the atmosphere as it warms, creating an anomaly that doesn't line up. Or it could mean that sunspots cause the earth to warm, driving more CO2 into the earth, creating a pretty graph that correlates CO2 ppm to temperature.
  All kinds of funny shit. Given the rate at which we burn fuel, and the massive fluctuations (including trends that are solidly and disturbingly down), a graph of industrial output would be interesting. Since we can't scrub CO2 out of the air except by ocean absorption, how in the hell do we actually go down in global temperature so solidly as around 1900-1910, 1940-1950, 1960-1968, etc? How did the Great Depression signal a massive increase in global temperature, when the economic climate would indicate a slowing of industry and reduction of output (CO2, thermal energy, etc.)?
  Actual human *activity* is actually of interest to me. All I hear is a calling out of CO2 numbers and "Man it was hot this year". The funny thing is the fluctuation is so small that nobody should be able to notice it--the limit of human hearing is 1dB but you can subconsciously respond to differences in volume of as low as 0.2dB (louder sounds better); while 1 degree C is 1/100 of the temperature difference in the liquid phase of water, and Farenheit is just arbitrary shite, it stands to reason that a fluctuation of 0.2 degrees shouldn't be causing "Man it's hot this year, last year wasn't so damn bad!"
  Overall to me I've seen normal temperature--when I was sent home in second grade due to an in-classroom temperature of 102F and an outside temperature of like 105F, it was uh... 1990. In 2011 when the temperature hit 106F people were like... damn, that was a hot day. It seems to me that there were more sustained hot days in the summer when I was a kid, but I probably more just remember hot summers because they were hot; more likely it went up and down and I didn't leave my house enough to care. These days I wonder why my summer's so cold because it hasn't been consistently above 98F all the fucking time.
  So yeah. The science, the numbers, they're telling me 0.8C degrees in 100 years should be panicking me, and folks are telling me wait another decade and see how I like the heat. The real-life environment, it's like, I don't notice anything really spectacular, and I wonder why it doesn't snow (we had a blizzard 3 feet of snow in 1995 and 1998, and also in 2011 ... other than that, once in a while we get a few inches of snow; most winters are unspectacular) and why it's not extremely hot (it's been extremely hot a few times, I expect extremely hot in the summer). And then people waive the "cause" of this only-noticeable-on-paper non-issue in my face, and I'm like, "... so there's correlations both ways, an increase in temperature will cause this and you're telling me this will cause an increase in temperature... it doesn't seem to line up with human activity, but you're telling me this is human-caused. Are you sure?" and people point and laugh and go "U SO DUM!" like they heard it on TV and it must be true.
  You're all nuts.
  
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14. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 05:47 · Score: 0
  
  That has to be the most inappropriately named site in the history of the web. It is neither skeptical or scientific.
15. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 07:13 · Score: 0
  
  "the rapid warming that has been observed recently"
  Really? What rapid warming would that be? Maybe the warming of Al Gore's bank account, but measurements show that global warming hasn't even happened in over a decade.
16. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Areyoukiddingme · 2013-08-15 07:24 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, not to quibble, but Fahrenheit is no more "arbitrary shite" than Celsius. The Fahrenheit zero is the freezing point of salt water vs the freezing point of fresh water for Celsius. The 100 point for Fahrenheit was supposed to be human body temperature. As it turns out, his thermometers weren't very good, so he got that end slightly wrong. 98.6 was supposed to be 100. Admittedly, "normal" human body temperature varies quite a bit more than Fahrenheit knew, so as a choice of where to peg his scale, it wasn't very good, but he didn't just pull 212 for the boiling point of water (at STP) out of his ass. It's a result of the 0 to 100 scale he picked.
17. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by bluefoxlucid · 2013-08-15 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Salt water, wonderful! How much salt in the water?!
  It's more complicated than that, and it's based on a scale that's rather arbitrary with water boiling at 60 degrees. Farenheit multiplied all the numbers by 4 and recalibrated.
  
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18. Re:Before anyone drags climate change into it.. by Areyoukiddingme · 2013-08-27 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  As I recall, sea water, specifically. The people who cared the most about the low end of the temperature scale at the time were mariners. When the ocean would start to freeze was important to them.
  Also not a very good choice for pegging a scale, but what do you want. It was a long time ago.
Re:So basically... by DexterIsADog · 2013-08-14 08:44 · Score: 1, Insightful

Short answer: No, with an "if".
Long answer: Yes, with a "but".
Which equals - No answer at all................
Clearly we need to spend a few trillion more to find out the answer.
No, not at all. It would only cost a few tens of millions to keep "studying" the problem until everyone agrees it's too late to do anything about it. Either of the Koch brothers could just write a check. And in 100 years their descendants will still be rich enough to live on the new coastlines... wherever they wind up.
Interesting to see a detectable shift. by intermodal · 2013-08-14 08:45 · Score: 1

I'm not surprised that they happen over time. Has anyone detected a solidly provable shift in modern times?

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In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
1. Re:Interesting to see a detectable shift. by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 08:57 · Score: 1
  
  "Solidly provable" isn't a definable term. If you want hard evidence, set hard criteria. Should you do so, I think people might be able to comply.
2. Re:Interesting to see a detectable shift. by intermodal · 2013-08-14 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  The thing is, I don't actually care that much. I'll leave the specifics up to the people in that field.
  
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  In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
3. Re:Interesting to see a detectable shift. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:50 · Score: 0
  
  What do you mean? Astronomical changes are ticking along like clockwork all the time. Of course there's a shift. But although it is detectable because the astronomical instruments to measure it are so precise, it is a very small change when measured over such a short period of time. It's kind of like continental drift. You can directly measure every year that the distance between London and New York gets a couple of centimetres longer. You set up a special type of high-precision GPS base station into the ground, and it's right there. It's obvious and there's no ambiguity about it happening. That doesn't mean you need to worry about it when you're trying to decide how much fuel to load on a plane to make the trip across the Atlantic, because a couple extra centimetres don't matter at the scale of the trip. Same for obliquity, eccentricity, and precession. Astronomers can measure it year by year.
  These are *very* slow astronomical changes, and they amount to *very* small changes in the solar insolation at high latitudes. Look at this plot of solar insolation variation at 65N. "ky" = kiloyears = thousands of years. Over that long a period it looks like a lot of variation, but on century scale, it may as well be constant. It's why orbital cycles aren't relevant to what's happening with respect to climate on a century scale. Once you get up to the thousand-year scale they start to matter significantly, but it's really in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands range that it becomes an effect that is strong enough to provoke ice ages or cause their end.
Earth's balance off because of too many people? by VinylRecords · 2013-08-14 08:48 · Score: 3, Funny

Maybe the earth's orbit changes right now are because there are too many people living in one area and they are weighing down the earth like a seesaw? Like if too man people live on one side of an island the island tips over?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q
Re:So basically... by i+kan+reed · 2013-08-14 08:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, it's pretty much just "no". The phrase "global warming" conventionally describes the unprecedentedly rapid rise in temperatures since the industrial revolution. That is entirely "our fault" because of aforementioned unprecedented rate, and that data is quite incontestable without dramatic misrepresentation of what is being compared.
The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by handy_vandal · 2013-08-14 08:52 · Score: 0

What is inconvenient is when people who have nothing to say -- nothing better than sarcasm and "meh", anyway -- insist on saying it anyway.
Example: "But warming is caused by man. Got it."
Tell me something interesting, useful, relevant, meaningful. Then you get my attention and respect, regardless of how similar or different my opinion is from yours.

--
-kgj
1. Re:The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  Tell me something interesting, useful, relevant, meaningful.
  ok, here goes-
  The parent started his comment with the title of his post, so it would read as follows: "Ice Ages are caused by planetary wobbles, but warming is caused by man. Got it."
  Yes, it's sarcastic and not really much of a post, but it does illustrate the problem with the entire "debate" about how climates change on Earth. Perhaps if you took the time to explain this apparent conflict of information you'd be helpful yourself. As it is, you've offered even less to the discussion than the initial sarcastic/humorous post in the thread.
2. Re:The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by KeensMustard · 2013-08-14 13:51 · Score: 0
  
  but it does illustrate the problem with the entire "debate" about how climates change on Earth.
  No it doesn't. It illustrates a typical use of fallacy.
  
  Perhaps if you took the time to explain this apparent conflict of information you'd be helpful yourself. As it is, you've offered even less to the discussion than the initial sarcastic/humorous post in the thread.
  The fact that there is no such conflict is obvious to anyone with a basic, starting understanding of the underpinning theory of anthropogenic climate change. Regardless of whether you accept that theory or not. If the OP is ignorant to that extent, that is their own fault, and likely they could only be that ignorant by being wilfully so. It is not the job of those adhering to scientific orthodoxy to explain that orthodoxy to others - if you want to contribute to a scientific discussion, you need to grasp both the scientific method and at least the basics of the theory that you are debating.
3. Re:The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 07:10 · Score: 0
  
  It illustrates the different between yourself and the author of the "offending" post. The poster, homosapien, is capable of rational thought, and therefore does not accept the ridiculous theory.
  You, homoerectus, can stand upright, but are otherwise incapable of higher reasoning or even following the news that exposed the falsification of records used to justify said theory - and receive funding. You know.... x, y, z....PROFIT!
4. Re:The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-08-15 08:57 · Score: 1
  
  Tell me something interesting, useful, relevant, meaningful.
  ok, here goes-
  The parent started his comment with the title of his post, so it would read as follows: "Ice Ages are caused by planetary wobbles, but warming is caused by man. Got it." Yes, it's sarcastic and not really much of a post, but it does illustrate the problem with the entire "debate" about how climates change on Earth.
  
  Yes, indeed it does. It tells us that the "skeptics" can't tell the difference between starting an ice age and ending an ice age. And the replies defending the post confirm that.
  
  --
  Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
5. Re: The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by gzuckier · 2013-08-15 16:32 · Score: 1
  
  What makes it funny, however, is that the skeptics are the ones who up to now would be insisting that climate change is caused by the sun.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
6. Re:The Inconvenience of Sarcasm by KeensMustard · 2013-08-15 21:47 · Score: 0
  
  -401 Obvious troll was obvious.
Are they confused? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:53 · Score: 1

Do they mean orbit (around the Sun) or revolution (around the Earth's axis)? I know the Earth's revolution has changed quite a bit in the past, but I thought the orbit was pretty stable. The use of the term "wobble" also leads me to believe they are talking about the revolution of the Earth, and not it's orbit.
1. Re:Are they confused? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:40 · Score: 0
  
  They are indeed confused. The Earth's orbit does not wobble or indeed change in any appreciable way over a timespan as short as a few thousand years. The Earth's axial tilt with respect to its orbit does change, going through a complete cycle in roughly 26000 years.
  So the summary is ill-informed nonsense. The comments mostly seem to have been written to match.
2. Re:Are they confused? by DaveAtFraud · 2013-08-14 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  They also talk about the wobble changing the amount of solar radiation incident on higher latitudes which also implies that they were really talking about the inclination of the axis of rotation, not changes in the orbit. Never heard of orbit wobble but it's well known that the Earth "wobbles" somewhat in a way that changes the inclination of the axis of rotation.
  Cheers,
  Dave
  
  --
  They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
  Ben
3. Re:Are they confused? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:28 · Score: 0
  
  Wobble is a bit unscientific.
  The Earth's orbital elements do vary over time. According to wikipedia, the eccentricity of the earth's orbit varies from about .0034 to almost .058, being currently about .0167. Additionally, the plane of the earth's orbit changes over time, although the description that I found in wikipedia would take more time for me to understand than I have at the moment.
4. Re:Are they confused? by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 13:26 · Score: 2
  
  Both the revolution of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun change over time. The changes in the orbit are driven by interactions with the gravitational fields of other objects in the solar system, primarily Jupiter and Saturn.
5. Re:Are they confused? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 13:45 · Score: 0
  
  The very minor orbital perturbations balance out in practical terms. The slight deflection away from the sun results in a corresponding deflection toward the sun at the side of the orbit. In terms of solar energy, it would be a zero sum for the Earth. This is not to say one hemesphere wouldn't become slightly warmer as the other becomes slightly cooler.
  Regardless - these changes would not occur as rapidly as current climate changes.
6. Re:Are they confused? by Skrapion · 2013-08-14 15:19 · Score: 1
  
  The very minor orbital perturbations balance out in practical terms
  Depending, of course, on your definition of "practical terms". One of our hemispheres has significantly more water than the other, which I suspect would be particularly important to anybody studying how climate changes over thousands or millions or years.
  However, if "practical terms" means "with regard to global warming", then yeah, planetary wobble it's pretty far from being the prime suspect here.
  
  --
  The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
7. Re:Are they confused? by hutsell · 2013-08-14 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  Do they mean orbit (around the Sun) or revolution (around the Earth's axis)? I know the Earth's revolution has changed quite a bit in the past, but I thought the orbit was pretty stable. The use of the term "wobble" also leads me to believe they are talking about the revolution of the Earth, and not it's orbit.
  Trying to decipher what was happening in both the summary and the article was difficult for myself. The lack of clarity seems to be due to the article's informal explanation; their not being concerned about the accepted definitions of the terms they were using. I don't know if it was laziness or confusion on their part or my understanding about present day astronomy.
  The original article in Nature probably does a better job.
  Although I haven't seen the Nature article (due to the payed wall), I suspect it's about, or related to, observations by Milutin Milankovitch, his understanding of orbital variations and the resulting climate theory explaining how the very long term cycles interact and affect the climate in major ways.
  The theory, in excruciating mathematical detail, points out positions, cycles and temperature correlations over the past 600,000 years occurring between axial obliquity, axial precession and orbital precession caused by the eccentricity of the Earth's elliptical orbit. Interesting stuff in itself, even if it turns out to not be related to the Nature article.
  Because of many successful correlations, including with deep sea sediment cores, Milankovitch theory has been accepted by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
  
  --
  Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
8. Re:Are they confused? by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 16:34 · Score: 2
  
  Don't forget that as the orbit gets more eccentric it shortens the time spent near perihelion and lengthens the time near aphelion. Also the relationship between insolation and distance from the Sun isn't 1 to 1. To quote the eccentricity section of the Milankovitch Cycles article on Wikipedia:
  
  For the current orbital eccentricity this amounts to a variation in incoming solar radiation of about 6.8%, while the current difference between perihelion and aphelion is only 3.4% (5.1 million km).
  The cycle of glaciations for the past million years appears to follow the 100,000 year beat cycle of eccentricity most closely.
WRONG! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 08:55 · Score: 0

I caused the last ice age
k thx
Re:So basically... by bluefoxlucid · 2013-08-14 09:12 · Score: 0

Well, kind of. A change in orbit caused this before; but that's not what's happening now. What's happening now is sunspots, hence why we've been peaking over the U curve for the past decade (no real warming trend for 15 years!) and in the past 4 years it's been getting colder: sunspots are responsible for global cooling and global dimming (yes, those are real things; yes, I'm talking about a different global cooling than the 1970s ass-on-head clownshoes stupidity).

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it's too damn hot by confused+one · 2013-08-14 09:17 · Score: 1

It's too damned hot. Let's all start jumping up and down, start the Earth a rockin' and induce an ice age.
A critique by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 09:42 · Score: 1

Parent post commits a fallacy of equivocation, if I read its interpretation right. If not, then there is no fallacy at all. Either way there is a distinct lack of either logic or reading skill present. The post also lacks punctuation and a failure to discern the difference between 'affirming' and 'asserting'.
2/10
Would not read again.
I tell you Krypton is merely shifting its orbit by sandbagger · 2013-08-14 09:45 · Score: 2

Relax, Jor-El.

--
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Re:So basically... by Silvrmane · 2013-08-14 09:53 · Score: 1

The Gaming Museum website in your sig is riddled with PHP errors. You might want to have a look at that.

--
planet texture maps and more
I thought by rossdee · 2013-08-14 10:12 · Score: 1

I thought the last ice age was in the northern hemisphere,(Europe, North America) not Antarctica.
Re:So basically... by KeensMustard · 2013-08-14 10:26 · Score: 0

Nothing that the article says would draw you to that conclusion. Quite the opposite. Have you observed any out of cycle changes in the earths orbit over the last 100 years? Where were these findings published?
And what happened to the warming that should have arisen from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases?
Well you know what that means. by Stumbles · 2013-08-14 10:31 · Score: 0

This whole global warming because of mans activities just took a hard nose dive into concrete.

--
My karma is not a Chameleon.
1. Re:Well you know what that means. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:51 · Score: 0
  
  This whole global warming because of mans activities just took a hard nose dive into concrete.
  Only if you didn't RTFA.
2. Re:Well you know what that means. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 10:58 · Score: 0
  
  Or, just as likely, he lacked the education to understand it.
3. Re:Well you know what that means. by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 13:27 · Score: 1
  
  Dream on.
Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by dtjohnson · 2013-08-14 10:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

"For more than a century scientists have known that Earth’s ice ages are caused by the wobbling of the planet’s orbit.

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.
1. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 12:01 · Score: 0
  
  The terminology is how you tell if a paper is written by people with applied science degrees in global warming computer modelling to get impact in the media and thus funding, and not by real scientists.
2. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 14:01 · Score: 0
  
  For a single sentence, it's not that bad.
  The ~100ka glacial-interglacial alternations are indeed thought to be controlled by Milankovitch cycles, and the intervals when the Earth is configured to be sensitive to these are thought to be due to longer-term things like plate tectonics (e.g., where continents are located with respect to the poles, ocean basin geometry and circulation, atmospheric composition, etc.). If you don't have other things set up right, like having a continent near the pole, then Milankovitch cycles don't push the system far enough to trigger continental ice sheets to form.
  For geologists, yeah, there's a distinction between "Ice Age" in the long-term tens of millions of years sense and in the ~100ka glacial-interglacial sense, but for most people in common language, if you're covering half of North America and Europe in ice, that's an "Ice Age" whether talking about the long term or short term pattern. Most people don't know there have been multiple glacial-interglacial cycles AND multiple ice ages too. They also don't know that technically we're still in an Ice Age in the long-term sense. Most geologists avoid the term "Ice Age" because of that ambiguity, call them glaciations, and then specify what scale they're talking about.
  Oh, and if you *really* want to quibble, the most recent Ice Age probably commenced earlier than the Pliocene (pre-2.5Ma). Although we argue about it, there were continental ice sheets in Antarctica probably by the Early Miocene (23Ma), and possibly as far back as the Oligocene (~34Ma), so the current Ice Age doesn't have a particularly clear start. It certainly intensified near the start of the Pliocene, but it was already well underway in some parts of the world. It was a phased expansion first on Antarctica and then eventually on northern North America, Greenland, and northern Europe and Siberia. Restricting it to the Pliocene-Quaternary is therefore pretty debatable, and Quaternary is somewhat deprecated in favour of Pleistocene and Holocene anyway, so we tend to toss around the terms "Pleistocene glaciation", "Quaternary glaciation" and even "Neogene glaciation" almost interchangeably with the understanding that the beginning of it is fuzzy, not the rather precise 2.5Ma that you imply.
  It's the difference between a popular article and a scientific paper. You try explaining those distinctions in a sentence to a non-technical audience. I usually just put up a chart.
3. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by Billly+Gates · 2013-08-14 14:34 · Score: 1
  
  Oh please.
  First off, there is a general sense and a scientific sense definitions. The world has less methane and CO2 then when the dinosaurs were around and the atmosphere was thicker so of course the world is much colder.
  We wont ever leave the scientific definition of an ice age until the sun expands as a result.
  In a general sense we are out of an ice age. In the real world only scientist use such definitions as glaciation only happens in a few spots in the world today. Ice only happens in the winter typically in latitudes over 45 degrees occasionally and more towards 50 to 60 does snow and ice occur regularly for a portion of the year hence why people do not consider the current time frame an ice age.
  Second, it is a fact that the ice ages (in a general sense) occur from the following:
  1. Variations in Earth orbit is accepted as science
  2. The sun is closer in winter which means the southern hemisphere has less energy in its winter time where it is almost all water which moderates temperature. The summer solstice in the last glacier period occured in December and land cools much faster than water. Hence why Seattle sees rain almost all winter and Minnesota sees Arctic conditions. Likewise the southern oceans are hell of alot warmer than its anti latitudes of its Siberian and Canadian counter parts.
  3. As snow and ice expand they reflect sunlight away from the surface and cool things down so the spring and summer sunlight does not warm things up as much as if it were all melted. Which is why it is always bone chilling cold after it snows typically for a few days
  4. There are some theories that when it cooled down CO2 froze into dry ice and accumulated at the poles. Currently Antarctica can get down to -80 and -109 is when CO2 freezes which is not such a far fetched theory. This would cause a chain reaction with less C02 creating more dry ice and lower temperatures
  
  --
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4. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-14 22:54 · Score: 1
  
  The terminology is how you tell if a paper is written by people with applied science degrees in global warming computer modelling to get impact in the media and thus funding, and not by real scientists.
  The terminology comes from a press release, not a paper.
  It's written by a guy called Vince Stricherz:
  
  I spent more than 20 years as a reporter and editor in broadcast, print and wire service news, and have been covering physical sciences at UW for more than a decade. I currently cover Earth and space sciences, chemistry and physics, and also handle some editing duties for UW Today and the Faculty & Staff Insider Web pages.
  No need to indulge in uninformed speculation about "people with applied science degrees in global warming computer modelling" when two clicks will tell you it was written by a journalist.
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
5. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by atherophage · 2013-08-14 23:47 · Score: 1
  
  Heat is required to make the moisture to make the ice. Cold air does not hold as much water. Cooling the planet will not bring on the glaciers.
6. Re:Author is so full of it his eyes are brown... by cthulhu11 · 2013-08-15 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  The first thing that struck me is that "orbit" != "rotation"
Mother nature does not have menopause. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 11:23 · Score: 0

Modern Flat Earthers (climate deniers) have to get thier lies in some intellectual order. You can't argue that there is no global warming AND that it's just natual cycles.
When they lose one arguement, they flip to the other. When you pin them down on that, they flop to the other. Intellectual dishonesty is just a fancy way of saying liar.
The disgusting part is that climate denial was started by tobacco companies in an attempt to delegitimize science with the public - they feared laws limiting second hand smoke.
1. Re:Mother nature does not have menopause. by haruchai · 2013-08-16 13:22 · Score: 1
  
  You haven't been keeping up - they are way beyond that.
  Often in the same sentences where they'll criticize AGW-proponents for being overly alarmists, they'll then warn that we really need to worry about global cooling which may have already begun and will wipe out food crops and poor people will die.
  
  --
  Pain is merely failure leaving the body
2nd recent 'new' anti-climate change story by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 12:21 · Score: 0

A week or so ago we heard that Greenland ice melting is miscalculated because it didn't include enough heating from the earth itself. ie the Earth's core heat supposedly is causing lots of melting even though it didn't explain why that would be the case now for increased melting.

Now we hear that supposedly it's well known that a wobble in the poles caused ice ages.

I'm thinking some wonderful thinktank is spinning out these things to fend off more data from NASA and other science orgs showing recent increased warming trends are real and man induced.
1. Re:2nd recent 'new' anti-climate change story by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 12:38 · Score: 0
  
  the Earth's core heat supposedly is causing lots of melting even though it didn't explain why that would be the case now for increased melting.
  That would be because heat is cumulative.
Re:So basically... by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 13:01 · Score: 1

And in 100 years their descendants will still be rich enough to live on the new coastlines... wherever they wind up.
That assumes there is enough civilization left that they're not just scrabbling to survive like everybody else.
On the ropes by SuperKendall · 2013-08-14 14:47 · Score: 1

It's telling that proponents of that failed AGW religion are all posting AC these days...
Talk about needing to get some intellectual order! On the other hand, if all you have is emotion and no intellect, it's hard to order anything except another glass of whine.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:On the ropes by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-14 22:51 · Score: 1
  
  Play the ball, not the man.
  What is your argument?
  
  Waaah, he won't tell me the nickname he uses to hide his real name, AGW is a scam and Al Gore is fat.
  Can't see a lot of intellect there.
  So, do you agree with Stumbles that:
  
  This whole global warming because of mans activities just took a hard nose dive into concrete.
  and what in this article makes you think that?
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
Not with the AGW religion! by SuperKendall · 2013-08-14 14:50 · Score: 1

The purpose of peer review in general is not to determine if a paper is right or wrong but to make sure there are no obvious mistakes
The obvious mistakes were pointed out repeatedly, but still the papers were published...
The point of the peer reviewers in regards to AGW was always "No paper from anyone committing blasphemy against our religion must ever be allowed to publish", regardless of the science therein.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Not with the AGW religion! by riverat1 · 2013-08-14 16:41 · Score: 1
  
  What obvious mistakes would those be?
  I know the supposed suppression of papers is a meme on the climate contrarian side but it doesn't hold water as far as I can see.
2. Re:Not with the AGW religion! by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-14 22:23 · Score: 1
  
  The obvious mistakes were pointed out repeatedly, but still the papers were published...
  [Citation Needed]
  
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  Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:So basically... by Urkki · 2013-08-14 16:02 · Score: 1

Global warming is not our fault.
Why do several people repeat this here? Is it an attempt at sarcasm? Trolling? Does anything remotely related to AGV turn stupid up to 11 in some people? Are some people just inherently lik that?
Hint: Similar phenomenon, such as different changes in global climate, can happen for different, unrelated reasons.
CO2 people unite by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 18:41 · Score: 0

You should tell that to the CO2 guys and the tax voulchers all over Europe.
No, why would they make that up? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 20:15 · Score: 0

Since that wasn't the case, the sun was less active and temperatures were lower (as they have with every solar cycle before around 1980). It's only because since 1990 the sun's gotten to a miniumum and people want to believe that a cooler sun leads to today's warmer temperatures so that AGW is "falsified" that this claim is made.
So being wrong is "thinking different"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 20:17 · Score: 0

When someone claims that computer displays are made by screen pixies paiting on the inside of your glass monitor, is that "thinking differently" or just plain fucking nuts?
Isn't it inconvenient when someone who knows what you want to believe is a pile of shite calls someone out for repeating the same shit you believe in?
If thicker air causes warming by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 20:33 · Score: 0

Then why is it that Venus at 1atm is still a hell of a lot warmer than Earth (even taking into account being closer) and why is Mercury so damn fucking hot with ZERO air pressure?
Or are these just phrases you mouth without understanding, like an autistic parrot, no comprehension just repetition?
Only if it does nothing. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-14 23:09 · Score: 0

Your car's engine cools down. It doesn't appear to be cumulative, does it.
Moron.
Re:So basically... by dave420 · 2013-08-15 03:39 · Score: 2

He probably blames them on the left.
Re:So basically... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 04:42 · Score: 0

Short answer: No, with an "if".
Long answer: Yes, with a "but".
Which equals - No answer at all................
Clearly we need to spend a few trillion more to find out the answer.
No, not at all. It would only cost a few tens of millions to keep "studying" the problem until everyone agrees it's too late to do anything about it. Either of the Koch brothers could just write a check. And in 100 years their descendants will still be rich enough to live on the new coastlines... wherever they wind up.
Ahhhhhh. Class warfare. How cute.
Ahhhhh. Fox talking point. How nauseating.
Still in an Ice Age by toquams2190 · 2013-08-15 05:51 · Score: 1

The Earth is still in an Ice Age. During this Ice Age, the ice has advanced and receded twenty times. A betting person would wager on the pattern, expecting the ice to advance again. [Please do not tell Al Gore. Despite the millions he's made off of his dime-store science, the truth might prove fatal.]
Crust displacement vs. orbital wobble by smartalix · 2013-08-15 05:55 · Score: 1

I believe Hapgood's crust-displacement theory explains the climate change at the turn of the ice age better than orbital wobble.

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Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
Re:So basically... by operagost · 2013-08-15 08:22 · Score: 1

No, I blame them on Yahoo, which broke its RSS feed weeks ago and hasn't fixed it. I have a job, so I haven't had time to redo the page yet.

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Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Al Gore by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-15 08:37 · Score: 0

But Al Gore told me I was causing Global Warming when I drive my car.
Then Al asked me for a bunch of money to save the planet.
Re:So basically... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 03:09 · Score: 0

When Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, was spoofed by a journalist into thinking he was talking to David Koch, he verbally got down on his knees to suck the dick of what he thought was his master. He assured "Koch" that he would never negotiate with the Democrats, but was going to trick them into returning, in order to achieve a quorum so the Republican majority could ram through a union busting bill.

You can argue over the Democrats' tactic of avoiding passage by leaving the state, but the point here is that Walker knows where his money comes from, and he panders to them.

The Koch's use their money to outright bribe elected officials to hurt people, in order to further their personal wealth. Is that clear enough, you troll?

Posted AC to avoid getting this well known troll fixated on me.
Stellar explosions are caused by natural forces by haruchai · 2013-08-16 13:11 · Score: 1

But Hiroshima was caused by men.
Got it.

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Pain is merely failure leaving the body