I’m reading up on the Antarctic in anticipation of a vacation trip to that continent.
Antarctic Science, editied by D.H.W. Walton, Cambridge University Press, 1987
Page 220
(I haven’t had to do footnotes in years, so pardon me.)
“Ice cores from the Antarctic ice cap can provide baseline information on CO2 levels for before the industrial revolution and insights into the consequences of CO2 changes contained in the geological record. The latter reveals a very interesting paradox. The mean level, and total change in CO2 over the past 100 years, is not significantly different from that which pertained during the 5000 years of warming marking the end of the last ice age 20,000 years ago. This appeared to have been accompanied by a mean temperature increase of about 7 degrees C, but no such increase has occurred in the past century. It is unclear how this paradox can be resolved...:
“It is unclear how this paradox can be resolved.”
Check my dates for me:
20,000 years ago marks the end (maximum ?) of the last Ice Age? Thought that was 50,000 years ago.
Or is 10,000 years ago marking the recovery from the last (minor) ice age? (Assume 12,000 years ago being the Clovis campsites that were introduced by people crossing the Bering Sea on foot from Siberia only to get wiped out by a comet impact in Canada); and the beginning of agriculture in the lower MidEast valleys?
Are we overdue for the resumption of the last minor ice age by 2000 years?
Or at the peak of the routine 100,000 year Ice Age max temperatures, getting ready for a major drop of ten degree C in the next 800 years?