peg, I can only hope that they can explain the ice ages
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the hook in the report
>>> The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they wrote.<<<
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so, we can hope for an ice age
or not ??
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Causes of ice ages (Wikipedia)
The causes of ice ages are not fully understood for either the large-scale ice age periods or the smaller ebb and flow of glacial–interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are important: atmospheric composition, such as the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane (the specific levels of the previously mentioned gases are now able to be seen with the new ice core samples from EPICA Dome C in Antarctica over the past 800,000 years) changes in the earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles, the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the earth's surface, which affect wind and ocean currents, variations in solar output, the orbital dynamics of the Earth–Moon system, the impact of relatively large meteorites and volcanism including eruptions of supervolcanoes.[43][citation needed]
Some of these factors influence each other. For example, changes in Earth's atmospheric composition (especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases) may alter the climate, while climate change itself can change the atmospheric composition (for example by changing the rate at which weathering removes CO2).
Maureen Raymo, William Ruddiman and others propose that the Tibetan and Colorado Plateaus are immense CO2 "scrubbers" with a capacity to remove enough CO2 from the global atmosphere to be a significant causal factor of the 40 million year Cenozoic Cooling trend. They further claim that approximately half of their uplift (and CO2 "scrubbing" capacity) occurred in the past 10 million years.[44][45]
Changes in Earth's atmosphere
There is evidence that greenhouse gas levels fell at the start of ice ages and rose during the retreat of the ice sheets, but it is difficult to establish cause and effect (see the notes above on the role of weathering). Greenhouse gas levels may also have been affected by other factors which have been proposed as causes of ice ages, such as the movement of continents and volcanism.
The Snowball Earth hypothesis maintains that the severe freezing in the late Proterozoic was ended by an increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, mainly from volcanoes, and some supporters of Snowball Earth argue that it was caused in the first place by a reduction in atmospheric CO2. The hypothesis also warns of future Snowball Earths.
In 2009, further evidence was provided that changes in solar insolation provide the initial trigger for the earth to warm after an Ice Age, with secondary factors like increases in greenhouse gases accounting for the magnitude of the change.[46]
Human-induced changes
There is considerable evidence that over the very recent period of the last 100–1000 years, the sharp increases in human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has caused the parallel sharp and accelerating increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases which trap the sun's heat. The consensus theory of the scientific community is that the resulting greenhouse effect is a principal cause of the increase in global warming which has occurred over the same period, and a chief contributor to the accelerated melting of the remaining glaciers and polar ice. A 2012 investigation finds that dinosaurs released methane through digestion in a similar amount to humanity's current methane release, which "could have been a key factor" to the very warm climate 150 million years ago.[47]
William Ruddiman has proposed the early anthropocene hypothesis, according to which the anthropocene era, as some people call the most recent period in the earth's history when the activities of the human species first began to have a significant global impact on the earth's climate and ecosystems, did not begin in the 18th century with the advent of the Industrial Era, but dates back to 8,000 years ago, due to intense farming activities of our early agrarian ancestors. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations stopped following the periodic pattern of the Milankovitch cycles. In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis Ruddiman states that an incipient glacial would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the arrival of that scheduled glacial was forestalled by the activities of early farmers.[48]
At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (December 17, 2008), scientists detailed evidence in support of the controversial idea that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last 1,000 years. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming, possibly forestalling the onset of a new glacial age.[49]
Position of the continents
The geological record appears to show that ice ages start when the continents are in positions which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles and thus allow ice sheets to form. The ice sheets increase Earth's reflectivity and thus reduce the absorption of solar radiation. With less radiation absorbed the atmosphere cools; the cooling allows the ice sheets to grow, which further increases reflectivity in a positive feedback loop. The ice age continues until the reduction in weathering causes an increase in the greenhouse effect.
There are three known configurations of the continents which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles:[citation needed]
A continent sits on top of a pole, as Antarctica does today.
A polar sea is almost land-locked, as the Arctic Ocean is today.
A supercontinent covers most of the equator, as Rodinia did during the Cryogenian period.
Since today's Earth has a continent over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean over the North Pole, geologists believe that Earth will continue to experience glacial periods in the geologically near future.
Some scientists believe that the Himalayas are a major factor in the current ice age, because these mountains have increased Earth's total rainfall and therefore the rate at which carbon dioxide is washed out of the atmosphere, decreasing the greenhouse effect.[45] The Himalayas' formation started about 70 million years ago when the Indo-Australian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, and the Himalayas are still rising by about 5 mm per year because the Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm/year. The history of the Himalayas broadly fits the long-term decrease in Earth's average temperature since the mid-Eocene, 40 million years ago.
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