Thanks Renfield.
Posted on 08/11/2013 6:07:09 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Scientists have long tried to figure out what causes the ebb and flow of ice ages. New data suggests a novel explanation for why the mile-thick blankets of ice retreat so quickly: They become too heavy.
For the last 900,000 years, mile-thick ice sheets have waxed and waned in the Northern Hemisphere with remarkable regularity – building over periods of about 100,000 years and retreating in the space of only a few thousand years, only to repeat the cycle.
Now, a team of scientists from Japan, the US, and Switzerland suggests that the North American continent is the breeding ground for these cycles. It's a region where climate and the ice's effect on the Earth's crust play off each other to draw out the length of a glacial cycle triggered by changes in solar radiation that come with changes in Earth's orbit.
This feedback between climate and ice becomes most dramatic at the end of the cycle, when an ice sheet that has bulldozed its way too far south and gotten too heavy for its own good meets up with a warming climate.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
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I blame G W Bush!
HA! They are asking us to believe that the sun actually has some sort of impact on our weather??? Everyone knows this is not the case. The only thing that ever affects the weather is man's release of CO2
Yeah, who would even suppose the little ball of fire up there in the sky would have any affect on the temperatures on the planet...no, let’s seek a reason for climate change which we cannot see or measure.
Really?
I'm thinking that a law of Thermodynamics is being violated here with orbital paths oscillating despite no energy change being recorded.
They need to add increased volcanic activity, and its related effects, into their simulations. They might be surprised how much effect that alone would have.
Canada’s fault.
“again and again/they promise the moon/they’re always coming and going and going and coming.”
Professor Von Schtup
The earth’s orbit and tilt are far form stationary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
Says it better than I can.
... and cow farts, dontchaknow.
That's okay, we've got big shoulders, we can take it.
Paging Algore. Paging Algore. Please pick up the white phone in the lobby.
I’m OK with orbits which are essentially eccentric. Up until Kepler, the orbits were expected to be perfect circles. Then Kepler showed that they were elliptical. Then we found out they were basically elliptical, but eccentric.
It just seems to me — and maybe I’m wrong — that if ice buildup were to increase the eccentricity, I do not see how a return to relative stability would be achieved. I would expect greater and greater degrees of eccentricity.
It goes hand in hand with ice shelves calving. The weight of the ice forces the shelf farther and farther out to sea. The ice flows. Eventually simple strength of materials tell us that the shelf is going to break off. I’m always amazed at the doomsayers who seem to think it should continue to the equator.
Ice on land is different but the same. The sheer weight forces it to flow. Eventually another force, temperature, is going to prevent the ice from covering the globe. It might be interesting for scientists to study what affect the increase in freshwater runoff has on climate.
I found the article to be a bit confusing. Are the changes in orbit because of the weight of the ice sheet, or does the ice sheet just melt faster due to the changes in orbit, aided by its gargantuan weight?
Other than that, the climate warmed all by itself? No man made intervention??? Shocking!
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