Posted on 03/19/2021 8:14:57 AM PDT by zeestephen
Imagine not a white, but a green Arctic, with woody shrubs as far north as the Canadian coast of the Arctic Ocean. This is what the northernmost region of North America looked like about 125,000 years ago, during the last interglacial period, finds new research from CU Boulder.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
The continents have drifted in the last 125K years, but I doubt to the extent it would have much of an influence on climate.
Some say the gravitational influence on earth's orbit by Jupiter and Saturn have caused the ice ages, as the 100,000 year cycle caused by this effect is similar to the ice age cycle. However, there are issues with this theory. Another theory is resonant solar diffusion waves, but I haven't seen any more mention of it other than the original paper.
The current interglacial period has last longer than those previous, but I'm not certain why we are technically in an ice age. What defines the transition?
The Late Devonian Extinction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of species disappeared. Scientists are still trying to establish exactly what happened, when and why, but this was not as sudden as when an asteroid hits Earth. The Devonian Period had seen the first trees and soils and it had such a diversity of sea life that it’s known as the Age of Fishes, some of them massive and armoured, and, in one of the iconic stages in evolution, some of them moving onto land for the first time. One of the most important theories for the first stage of this extinction is that the new soils washed into oceans, leading to algal blooms that left the waters without oxygen and suffocated the marine life.With...
Jessica Whiteside, Associate Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton
David Bond, Professor of Geology at the University of Hull
Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Bristol.
Imagine not a white, but a green Arctic, with woody shrubs as far north as the Canadian coast of the Arctic Ocean.
I assume that the Arctic refers to land above the Arctic Circle.
Well, duh!
Back in the 1970’s a driller on an oil rig at Prudhoe Bay showed me an 18” tree branch about 3” thick with the impression of a vine wound around it that came up in the drilling mud cuttings from 2000 feet down. I knew right then that it hadn’t ALWAYS been cold on the Arctic coast.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV -
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Did they find any “ring bolts”?
Your observations are incorrect and/or misleading for several reasons.
NOTE: The article is about the Arctic (i.e., everything above latitude 66.5° N.), which is not entirely without land. (Another poster mistakenly lamented that the Arctic was nothing but open sea.)
The article is about the Arctic climate as it may have been 125,000 years ago - continental drift plays no role over such short periods of time.
The Earth was not at a different angle. 125,000 years ago, it was tilted at 23.5°, just like today. The precession of the axis (which completes one cycle in 26,000 years) does not alter the value of this tilt - only the direction, as a consequence of which the equinox shifts, i.e., seasons (summer/winter/etc.) are shifted in time. No effect on the Earth's climate per se.
Your remarks about Earth's orbit not being constant are not incorrect.
Regards,
Try googling the “Arctic Circle” and see if it tells you how much land is inside it.
Hopefully helpful hint: one of my sister’s college friends came from a town in Finland above the Arctic Circle.
Perhaps the Bible account of the flood of Noah’s day should be considered in the mix. There was water above and below the expanse. In other words the earth was in an envelope of water making the temperature essentially uniform earth wide. It’s when this water was released that helped provide the volume necessary to cover the earth. Also, that’s why seeing a rainbow afterwards was such a big deal. They had not seen one before because the sun had not shone through directly.
Plate tectonics ("continental drift") combines with a host of other astronomical and geological phenomena to create ever-changing climate/temperature patterns on Earth. The Earth wobbles on its rotational axis over time; the Sun's energy output varies; Earth's orbit varies; and many other factors like volcanism come into play.
Current alarmism over "climate change" is a dishonest and cynical political ploy to scare the hell out of unsophisticated voters in order to push a totalitarian agenda. It combines with other Marxist-style scare tactics (the Covid "pandemic" and "systemic racism" via Critical Race Theory to name a couple) to mold public opinion -- and votes -- to allow the powerful to crush the Bill of Rights and "restore" a near-Feudal system of aristocrats ruling peasants.
Macchiavelli would be proud of modern Democrat leaders. They have obviously immersed themselves in his methods of seizing and holding political hegemony. George Soros and Nancy Pelosi are star students.
>>>Obliquity is the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which is 23.5 degrees but varies between about 22 and 24.5 degrees on a 40,000-year cycle.<<<
Several reliable sources. This has been well know for a long time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.