IF Cow farts and SUV's are causing Global warming, what caused the ice age to melt???

Answer 1

I am cursed by being a scientist. Therefore I will answer this question with facts, instead of following the "consensus".

The earth is a dynamic system. Global climate is never static. Even on a month by month scale you can see how the seasons change in relation to our planets location in relation to the sun.

There are many different cycles that have been identified in relation to temperature change over the longterm and none of them have anything to do with what is actually happening here on the planets surface.

The Milankovitch cycle functions on an approximately 100,000 year cycle has to do with the earths position in the galactic plain of the milky way, the tilt of the earth to the sun, the ellipse of our orbit, and the amount of wobble in our orbit. This is viewed to be the cause of the last glacial maximum (which only ended about 10,000 years ago).

Since this last glacial maximum we see the a 1,500 year cycle that has given us many slightly warmer, and slightly cooler, periods. The earths climate was warmer and the CO2 levels where higher during the Roman Warming Period (height of the Roman Empire) and the Medieval warming period. The little ice age (the last cool period) ended in 1850, so it's not surprising that temps have been warming int he last 150 years.

Almost all warming during the 20th century took place before 1940 (before the big industrial boom) and it actually cooled enough from 1940 to 1970 that some people feared another ice age.

Almost everything you hear about global warming in the media has no basis in scientific fact. Be sure to read multiple sources and take nothing at face value.

Answer 2

The predominant theory argues that the ice ages are related to changes in Earth's orbit around the sun, and changes in the tilt of the Earth.

With the detailed data that we get from satellites and some physics knowledge, we know that Earth's orbit is not constant, sometimes being more circular, other times more elliptical. We can relate these orbital perturbations to the observed cycles of the sun's brightness, the wobbling tilt of the Earth, and connect these to the onset and retreat of glacial periods.

One of the problems with predicting ice ages, and climate changes in general, is the number of feed backs that result from small changes. For example, when it gets cold and snows, the snow acts to reflect sunlight and thus keeps the temperatures low. Conversely, when carbon dioxide is put into the atmosphere, more water evaporates, and since water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, the temperature continues to increase.

The worry with the current climate change is that it is not connected to any natural phenomenon, rather it is a result of gases emitted by humans into the atmosphere. The general proof of this idea is that carbon dioxide levels are now higher than at any point in the last 450 thousand years.

The "scare" behind this is that we can not predict with much certainty what the long term effects of the current situation will be, and this makes it difficult to prepare for such changes. (That and the changes will cost lots of money)

Answer 3

There wasn't just one ice age. There were several episodes of glaciation.

Ice ages and global warming are two very different things.
Sarcastic oversimplifications are not clever. Non sequiturs are not insightful.

Global warming is caused by human land use and releasing CO2 that has been locked away in the ground for millions of years as coal, natural gas and oil.

Cow farts and materialistic ego driven automotive design have little to do with it.

If you are going to criticize something do it in a legitimate way, don't waste time constructing a caricature and expecting proponents of the actual idea to try and defend your silly misrepresentations.

Answer 4

an ice age is a completely natural earth process when the earth moves slightly farther from the sun. When the earth moved back to its normal position it became warm enough to melt the ice.also ,some scientist think that we are actually coming out of a mini ice age that took place in the 1700's and thats why the earth is warming.

Answer 5

The famous uranium bought in Nigeria by Al Qaeda for Iraq the governement told you about...

Answer 6

you're talking about billions of years man..

Climate changes.. Usually slowly.. But we have caused it to heat at a very fast rate..