Posted on 03/11/2015 1:13:57 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
A new study out of Denmark found that fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, called Milankovitch cycles, have been causing periods of dramatic, short-term global warming for at least 1.4 billion years.
Fluctuations in Earth’s orbit are even behind the long-term warming of today’s climate, conclude researchers.
While they acknowledged that greenhouse gases are the immediate dominating force changing Earth’s climate today, they noted that on a larger scale the way our planet revolves around the sun is the ultimate control knob over the climate.
“This study helps us understand how past climate changes have affected Earth geologically and biologically,” Donald Canfield, the study’s main author and a professor at Nordic Center for Earth Evolution, University of Southern Denmark, said in a statement.
Canfield and his colleagues form the University of Southern Denmark and the China National Petroleum Corporation examined 1.4 billion-year-old marine sediment from northern China. What they found was evidence of “repeated climate fluctuations, reflecting apparent changes in wind patterns and ocean circulation that indicates orbital forcing of climate change.” But more importantly, the same orbital forcing that caused the climate to change 1.4 billion years ago is the underlying force behind global warming today, according to Canfield.
“Earth’s climate history is complex. With this research we can show that cycles like the Milankovich [sic] cycles were at play 1.4 billion years ago – a period, we know only very little about,” said Canfield. “This research will also help us understand how Milankovitch cyclicity ultimately controls climate change on Earth.”
Milankovitch cycles occur every 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years. In the last one million years, these cycles have caused an ice age to occur every 100,000 years or so. According to Canfield, the Earth is currently in a period of warming that has lasted for about 11,000 years.
While this study does not call into question the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for rapid warming in the past century, it does shine a light on the Earth’s long climate history. In particular, the role Earth’s position relative to the sun plays in warming and cooling the planet.
Most scientists, however, say the sun currently plays little to no role in the 0.85 degrees Celsius of global warming that has occurred since the mid-1800s — that warming has been blamed largely on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.
“While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Earth has been gradually warming since the end of the last ice age about 11,000 or 12,000 years ago — sea levels have been rising since then as well. But within this gradual warming trend, the climate has shown lots of instability.
A recent study from Aarhus University found that the climate has varied over long time periods since the end of the last ice age. The climate has been generally cooler in the last 4,000 years, according to researchers, ocean currents in the North Atlantic have been weaker.
But Aarhus University researchers also found that solar activity — the amount of solar radiation hitting Earth — has a big impact on the climate during cool periods, like the one the planet has been going through for the last four millennia.
“We know that the Sun is very important for our climate, but the impact is not clear,” Professor Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz of Aarhus University said in a statement.
“Climate change appears to be either strengthened or weakened by solar activity,” Seidenkrantz said. “The extent of the Sun’s influence over time is thus not constant, but we can now conclude that the climate system is more receptive to the impact of the Sun during cold periods – at least in the North Atlantic region.”
This is horrible. Man-made pollution was so bad 10,000 years ago that it caused the Earth to shift its orbit!!!!!
Horse hockey puck!
Let’s see if the Climate Change Cult can change the orbit of the earth by passing another ton of EPA regulations. Fools.
“Although our research suggests that GCC is a bunch of hooey, we still wish to receive money from the government and be invited to conferences in vacation destinations so...”
Shifts in the Earth’s orbit cannot be taxed, they cannot give the Left more power and they cannot be used to control the masses.
Therefore, this science is flawed.
Now wait a minute...
I’m betting these “Fluctuations in Earth’s orbit” are
CAUSED BY
man-made global warming!
Fluctuations in Earth’s orbit
Yeah, exactly. Gotta maintain proper obeisance to AGW theory or the money spigot and any ability to publish will vanish in an instant.
With the earth wobbling as much as it does, I thought the puck would make a more grounded response.
Reminds me of the classic (er crassic?)...
What do you call a woman with one leg shorter than the other?
Ilene
What do you call a woman with one leg shorter than the other in Japan?
Irene
Darn Man-caused Milankovitch Cycle.
We MUST put more power in the hands of the politicians to regulate our every day lives and stop the horrible Earth Wobble! Please, Help us oh Mighty Obama!
Did you know that many Asian men have cataracts?
Yeah, the rest drive rincuns and shevlo rays.
There may come to be so many fluctuations in the earth’s orbit, that we would one day plunge too deep into the Sun’s gravitational well, and the end arrives anyway.
I go more along with sunspots, than with orbital variations large enough to measurably affect the earth’s climate. Inertia and Newton’s First Law would seem to apply - an object at rest remains at rest, and an object once set into motion continues in motion, until acted upon by an outside force. A stable orbit, once achieved, remains stable.
If in some four billion years, the earth has not fallen into the Sun, it ain’t gonna happen.
HERESY!
BURN THEM IN CAGES!
THIS MUST BE DESTROYED!.................
Answer me this, if the sun were to go dark tomorrow, how long would we still be complaining about global warming?
The SUN is 13 million times larger than Earth. Think about that and tell me what controls our climate.
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