Hasn't the world has already survived the Ice Age once?

Question

There were no aerosols or gas emissions then so who was responsible for the ice melting? Has it ever been considered that what is happening to our planet with global warming & climate changes is natural. Mother nature is a force to be reckoned with and, ultimately, controls all, is it not possible that she is simply following her course and that these changes were meant to be? Does anybody really believe that recycling & reducing gas emissions is going to change her mind?

Answer 1

The answer is not really clear. However it is clear that we are polluting water and if we do so, we won't have anything to drink...Overall I think....it's better to be safe than sorry....(Look at China! )Look at how polluted the air is over there, people even get sick over the emissions...So perhaps it won't make a difference for earth, but it will for the people.

Answer 2

I did a study into this at university. (i was studying archaeology)

We are overdue for an iceage. Most of the iceages that the planet have had have always been preceded by a period of significant warmth (the science in the movie the day after tomorrow is fairly sound, also episode of bbc documentary Horizon (think it was called the big chill i have a transcript somewhere).

also bare in mind that britain is on roughly the same latitude as parts of Russia and just look at the different climate. The only thing that keeps Britain warm is the gulf current which relies on salt water, the ice caps are dumping a lot of fresh water into this current as they are melting, hence the risk that the current will stop until the salt levels increase. Gulf stream stops - britain freezes.

Global warming is a natural process - prior to the iceages britain was much warmer than it is now (hippos used to live in the wild here). However, the emissions that are being made are speeding the natural process up which is not a good thing.

Answer 3

It is quite possible that this all would occur without ur help however we are speeding the inevitable up. There have been mass extinctions in the history of the Earth where over 90% of species became extinct. This happened, then nature moved on. It is quite possible that this will happen again. It is such a big deal because humans are more intelligent than any other life form at realising they could become extinct and so are very worried about it. We might become extinct but the world will live on. It is still very important to stop what we are doing with the planet but it is also important to realise that nature will take its own course eventually.

Answer 4

inhabitants boost is something that Doomsday followers were speaking about for years. It became once believed that the Human inhabitants ought to not exceed 4 billion because there does not be sufficient room in the international for quite everyone to stay and nevertheless be able to devour or perhaps breath. presently the inhabitants is around the 6 billion mark and that i for you may nevertheless breath and there remains food. actually there is feilds that are being left fallow for the subsequent three hundred and sixty 5 days or 2 so a higher high quality of food may nicely be produced. We as a spiecis have the potential to imagine and plan for destiny activities. No different animal has that potential or a minimum of to the volume that we've. A squirle for example isn't storing nuts because it knows wintry climate is coming and has to verify it has sufficient for the entire wintry climate, like a nut an afternoon. It shops food because that's programed into that's DNA and instincts. i have those days examine comments, not by technique of a unmarried "scientist" yet ones that were revealed by technique of a huge crew that surely quite researched the area and got here up with the variety that if we do not strengthen our modern-day food, housing and straightforward medical awareness, that the Human inhabitants can attain about 12 billion earlier we attain severe complications. So it takes us about 10 years to advance by technique of 1000000000 and that is not counting the actual shown actuality that the international inhabitants is quite good heavy which signifies that there are alot extra old human beings than youthful ones. quite there'll be complications that pop up, no man or woman will see them coming and they'll be ultimately delt with. we are able to proceed to advance as a human beings and our inhabitants will advance as well.

Answer 5

I answered a question a few days ago that "briefly" outlines the the generally accepted "main" cause of past climate variations...I'll just copy it here to save me typing it out again

When people say the ice-age ended, what you are basically saying is the last glacial period...we are currently in the interglacial period that started around 10,000 years ago and it is expected to be replaced by a glacial period (according to past climate patterns and not including current co2 trends).

Also, a 90 percent probability in 2007 up from a 66 percent probability in 2001 largely points the finger at humans as being the DOMINANT cause of global warming in relatively recent years

There also seems to be a lack of understanding of the causes of past long-term variations in global temperatures by the naysayers, not taking into account the Earth's orbit around the sun and the tilt of its rotation axis. For example, when the tilt is at its largest, the polar regions receive no solar radiation during winter but during the summer, receive more solar radiation, leading to a all year round higher average than if there were no tilt at all, leading to a retreat in ice-caps.

This also means that if the tilt is smaller, then there would be an increase in the size of the polar ice-caps and a decrease in global mean temperatures. The more the Earth is covered in ice, the more we see a positive feedback loop, meaning, the planetry albedo increases, reflecting more radiation back into space and thus causing a further decrease in global mean temperatures(long-term)

Conversely, if a smaller area of the Earth is covered in ice, the planetry albedo decreases, less radiation is reflected back into space and thus inevitably leads to a warming in the global mean temperatures.

I'm not going to go on and on because people don't like to read lengthy accounts...what I will add though is that there are generally accepted theories that stick as to cause of mass extinctions such as the Late Cretaceous (K-T) that wiped out the dinosaurs and I don't think I need to elaborate any further.

We also have to bear in mind that continental drift, plate tectonics, ocean currents play a part in accounting for past climatic variations....

so, it makes sense then, that in the past 200 years(a very relatively short period), more importantly since the dawn of industry, we have been noticing a year on year increase in the amount of co2 in the atmosphere...taking into account that the natural carbon cycle cannot explain these rises, we then have to look at just how humans have influenced this carbon cycle...and the answer is staring us in the face

Answer 6

Each time there has been a dramatic climatic change, it was because of a dramatic event.
We, human beings, cause destruction and pollution and you want to believe we have nothing to do with global warming?
The earth is a system and our action has put a strain on the system and in order to put get things back on track we will go through global warming. Ultimately the earth will be OK but most of the humans (if not all, if we don't destroy ourselves completely with wars) will die!

Answer 7

The causes of ice ages remain controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial/interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are important: atmospheric composition (the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide,[citation needed] and various other gases and particulates in the atmosphere); changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy); the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the Earth's surface; variations in solar output; the orbital dynamics of the Earth-Moon system; and the impact of relatively large meteorites, and eruptions of supervolcanoes.

Some of these factors are causally related to 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).

The most relevant change is in the quantity of greenhouse gases in the 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 vulcanism.

In most glacial periods the ice and snow prevent weathering of rocks and therefore slow down the part of the geological carbon cycle which removes CO2 from the atmosphere. With higher CO2 concentrations the greenhouse effect becomes stronger and provides a warming influence. As a result the growth of ice and snow fields slows down and (in all cases so far) eventually stops. The increase in the greenhouse effect is progressively braked and eventually stopped by the increase in weathering as the retreat of ice and snow expose more rock to weathering.

The combined effects of the changing distance to the Sun, the precession of the Earth's axis, and the changing tilt of the Earth's axis redistribute the sunlight received by the Earth. Of particular importance are changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, which affect the intensity of seasons. For example, the amount of solar influx in July at 65 degrees north latitude varies by as much as 25% (from 400 W/m2 to 500 W/m2, see graph at [1]). It is widely believed that ice sheets advance when summers become too cool to melt all of the accumulated snowfall from the previous winter. Some workers believe that the strength of the orbital forcing is too small to trigger glaciations, but feedback mechanisms like CO2 may explain this mismatch.

I seriously doubt that we can prevent an ice age from occuring, but I do believe that humanity has hastened the process immensley and that any way that we can reduce the damage we inflict would be beneficial.

Answer 8

Have a look at the following - these 4 links cover everything you'll eve need to know about the issue of ice ages and global warming.

Answer 9

The world got colder, during the ice age.
And yes, then it got hotter, again, with no help from us.
Apparently this has happened a few times.
I agree, Mother Nature's gonna do what Mother Nature's gonna do. With or without us. All the same, it can't hurt for us to cut back a bit on the polluting like there's going to be no tomorrow, can it?

Answer 10

the world has survived, but we wont now. Global warming is natural, but the gasses and oils and stuff are speeding it up. without the pollution, the global warming wouldnt happen now, it would happen later, but that isn't a reason to not try to help.