What caused the last Ice Age?

Question

We keep being told we have to change the way we live. Otherwise we will have Global Warming which is a prelude to an Ice Age. What did the people who lived on this planet then do to cause such a catastrophe? Or will it happen anyway?

Answer 1

It is all part of a natural cycle, people cannot influence nature.

Answer 2

”The ice in the Barents Sea began to float and break up in response to the rising sea level 60 000 years ago. It became thinner and rapidly melted completely. Enormous volumes of meltwater poured into the sea, and large glacial lakes were drained. The huge quantities of freshwater had a great influence on the circulation in the oceans and on the climate,”

Enormous ice sheets melted in the middle of the last Ice Age. Land areas that had been depressed by the ice were inundated. The sea level rose very rapidly. In some large river valleys in north-western Russia, the sea reached 200-300 kilometres further into the country than it does today.
“We now live in a period with a limited extent of ice. The exceptions are Greenland and the Antarctic, where there is almost as much ice as during the glacial period. Glaciers are, nevertheless, retreating now in response to the warmer climate. Global warming brought about by man may continue for many centuries, until all the fossil fuels have been used up. Norwegian glaciers are obviously at risk in this perspective,”

Answer 3

You might read a book written by Bill Bryson with the title:
A short story about everything. In ch 27 it is told that a scientist named James Croll at the univerisity og Glasgow discovered the effect of change in the earths path around the sun is changing in periods. This therry was established by a
Agassy from Zwitserland an some other scientists during 1840-1870.
A serbian scientist named Milankovitcs diskovered in addition that the angel of rotastion axis of the earth is changing . This two effects gives Ise Ages according to this theory.

Answer 4

It isn't colder winters that cause an ice age it is colder summers. Otherwise no matter how much ice built up over the winter it would melt in summer. If you have colder summers then less ice melts than was formed so ice sheets build up. Over hundreds of years they can spread down over the continents.

Remember it is only an ice age in northern latitudes. Towards the equator it gets much hotter and dryer, as all the water is locked up at the poles, so there is less rain.

Answer 5

The Earth has gone through many periods of global warming and global cooling. Some of the climate variance may have been due to solar output or orbital pertubations, but the main factor seems to be the composition of atmospheric gasses. Earth's atmosphere has varied greatly over the aeons, due to evolutionary events (rise of gymnosperms, rise of phytoplankton, etc.) , as well as geological events (venting of gasses by volcanoes, etc.). Supervolcanic events, which put massive amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas, into the air has brought about many warming periods. Right now human caused production of CO2 mimics a supervolcanic event.

Before dismissing global warming and global cooling as mere natural phenomena, it is important to consider that in the past, periods of rapid climate change have always been accompanied by mass extinction events.

Answer 6

we're only helping global warming along, nature is doing a lot of the work.
btw, since there is ice at the poles all year round, technically we're still in an ice age

Answer 7

ice caused the last ice age.
and really really cold air.

trust me, if people had 'caused' the last ice age, we'd be working with that to prevent global warming.

Answer 8

Lots and Lots of Ice