Has anybody seen my Holocene?

Here is where I disagree with the pundits: I believe that any warming trend is just part of the normal warm interval that separates one Ice Age from the next. It is not a man-made phenomenon.

Global warming is nothing new. Long before the industrial revolution and other causes of air pollution our planet had gone through numerous ice ages. One Ice Age was separated from the next by an era of global warming. Mother nature did this all by herself, without any help from modern man and his greenhouse gasses.

Mankind cannot control the global Climate, either intentionally or accidentally. We cannot stop a Hurricane, or make all the weekends sunny, or warm up the planet to any significant degree with our gaseous waste products. While the planet may have warmed a small fraction of a degree during my lifetime(42 years), there is no hard evidence that mankind caused this warming. The catastrophic global warming predicted by the "experts" in the 1970’s never happened. Other scientists, using Satellite data, have claimed that the planet has actually cooled by a fraction of a degree during this same period. Maybe both groups are equally correct as all of the minuscule temperature changes seem to fall within an acceptable margin of error.

What is sadly missing from the whole global warming debate is a long-term view. When I say long-term I mean that we must look at recurring temperature cycles that repeat every 100,000 years or so. The geological record tells us that our planet has experienced about 20 ice ages over the past 2 million years. A typical ice age lasts about 100,000 years. One ice age is separated from the next by a warm interval that lasts from 5,000 to 15,000 years. The present warm interval, which scientists call the Holocene Period, started about 12,500 years ago. In geological terms the warm spell is almost over. Exactly when the Holocene will end is anybody’s guess, but sooner or later global cooling is inevitable.

The Holocene corresponds nicely with the dawn of civilization. In fact, all human civilizations have occurred since the last Ice Age ended. When things warmed up and the glaciers melted mankind flourished. When the Holocene ends civilization as we know it will also end.

The exact cause of long-term warming and cooling cycles is poorly understood and no single factor can adequately explain them. The mechanism of long term Climate change is best explained by astronomers, who cite complicated irregularities in the earth’s orbit and variability in the suns brightness as the most likely causes. Perhaps a combination of these factors is the answer.

Even without knowing the exact causes of long term Climate change we can still reach one important conclusion: At some point the Holocene Period - like all of the other long warm periods before it - will come to an end, and another Ice Age will be upon us. North America as we know it will cease to exist. During the last Ice Age most of Canada and the northern United States was covered with a massive ice sheet, over a mile thick in many places. The weight of the ice was so tremendous that the earth’s surface was compressed almost 1,000 feet. City-sized boulders were pushed forward by the ice, and mountain ranges were pulverized into sand and rock by the unstoppable glaciers.

Any cities which are located in a glaciers path will be totally destroyed during the next Ice Age. Until then, lets enjoy the global warming while it lasts.

Previous Article
Return to Topic Menu

Here is a list of responses that have been posted to this Study...

Respond to this Topic Here! Fill out this form completely...