What caused the global warming that ended the last ice age 10,000 years ago.?

Question

If everything related to global warming is man's fault and must be corrected, just what exactly did man do 10,000 years ago that caused the last ice age to end?

Answer 1

primates were driving cars

Answer 2

If what is proposed we do doesn't work will we get our money back?

Answer 3

That is the key question, isn't it?

No one understands why we are currently in an ice age (glaciers covering greenland and antarctica), or why the glaciers advance and recede every 20,000 years or so.

Let me repeat, there is no theory that adequately explains these glaciation cycles.  There are theories galore, but nothing solid.

This is not a controversial statement, everyone in the field acknowledges they can't explain the ice ages.  Whoever did would get a Nobel prize.

Since the previous cycles cannot be explained, there is no need to invoke another variable (CO2 from mankind) to "explain" the current cycle.

Whatever caused the previous cycles (that we don't know) is causing the current cycle.  That is the simpliest explanation.

By the principle in science called "Occam's Razor", more complicated theories are discarded in favor of simplier theories that explain the same data.

Answer 4

Maybe the SUV's cavemen were driving? Or maybe just a natural process similar to today's natural process.

Answer 5

Cave men driving snow mobiles, snow SUVs and Dino Farts duh do you know anything?

Answer 6

It was a natural warming cycle.  As it became a little warmer, decay process increased and produced more CO2 which increased the warming.  This is greatly oversimplified, but the basic gist.

The difference is now were are actively pumping giatons of CO2 into our atmosphere that was buried deep in the earth as fossil fuels.  It was taken out of the atmosphere and no longer influenced the climate.   The climatologist do consider the natural cycles of warming and cooling.  They consider the physics involved with the earth's weather system that produce theses natural cycles and have re-created these natural cycles using the laws of physics.  The consider the amount of incoming solar radiation, the effects of clouds and oceans,, the composition of atmospheric gases, changes in land cover  and lots of stuff like that.  They are able for predict what the climate in the past has been fairly well and calibrate their equations to match well.  Then they predict what the climate in the future looks like.  They look at our rates of emission of green house gases, land changes, increase solar radiation and such after the model is calibrated to account for natural cycles.  The evidence is over-whelming - the speed with which the climate is changing is increasing. In recent years, there have been signals emerge - greening of the high latitudes and polar ares earlier, melting ice and glaciers, accelerated rate of rising sea-level (water expands when heated - not just ice melting).  There is no dispute this is occurring.  It is fact.  

The dispute among non-scientist is "what's the cause?"  Many are still at "is it occurring?"  Natural variation and solar activity are considered and human activity appears to explain most of the problem.   The majority of scientist feel this way.

Answer 7

What most everyone ignores is the heat within the Earth's core (9000 degrees) and the very thin crust under the oceans (3-5 miles = thin compared to our 8000 mile diameter planet).

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/...

The 'convection currents' of magma flow:

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/...

A simple small burp from the core (known as a volcano) could destroy large areas or heat the oceans.

I believe these convections - which also exist in the Sun - are correlated via Interplanetary Magnetic Forces.

This is why some have related the Sun's emissions or lack of emissions with Ice Ages and small Ice Ages (minimums).

http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.h...

Answer 8

Al Gore caused it.

Answer 9

150,000 y.a. - cold, dry full glacial world

around 130,000 y.a. - rapid warming initiates the Eemian interglacial (Stage 5e)

130,000-110,000 y.a. - global climates generally warmer and moister than present, but with progressive cooling to temperatures more similar to present.

(except for possible global cold, dry event at 121,000 y.a.)

?110,000 y.a. - a strong cooling marks the end of the Eemian interglacial (Stage 5e).

105,000-95,000 y.a. - climate warms slightly but still cooler and drier than present; strong fluctuations.

95,000 - 93,000 y.a. - another cooler phase similar to that at 110,000 y.a.

93,000 - 75,000 y.a. - a milder phase, resembling that at 105,000-95,000 y.a.

75,000 - 60,000 y.a. - full glacial world, cold and dry (the 'Lower Pleniglacial' or Stage 4)

60,000 - 25,000 y.a. - 'middling phase' of highly unstable but generally cooler and drier-than-present conditions (Stage 3)

25,000 - 15,000 y.a. - full glacial world, cold and dry; Stage 2 (includes the 'Last Glacial Maximum')

(This period includes two 'coldest phases' - Heinrich Events - at around 23,000-21,000 y.a. and at 17,000-14,500 y.a.)

14,500 y.a. - rapid warming and moistening of climates in some areas. Rapid deglaciation begins.

13,500 y.a. - nearly all areas with climates at least as warm and moist as today's

12,800 y.a. (+/- 200 years)- rapid onset of cool, dry Younger Dryas in many areas

11,500 y.a. (+/- 200 years) - Younger Dryas ends suddenly, back to warmth and moist climates (Holocene, or Stage 1)

9,000 y.a. - 8,200 y.a. - climates warmer and often moister than today's

about 8,200 y.a. - sudden cool and dry phase in many areas

8,000-4,500 y.a. - climates somewhat warmer and moister than today's

Since 4,500 y.a. - climates fairly similar to the present

Warmth. Around 130,000-110,000 years ago (the Eemian interglacial), the Earth's climates were generally much like those of today, though somewhat warmer and moister in many regions. The climate record derived from long ice cores taken through the Greenland ice cap suggested that the warm climate of the Eemian might have been punctuated by many sudden and fairly short-lived cold phases, but these results are now thought of as inaccurate because the lower layers of the ice sheet have become buckled and jumbled up. However, at least one major cold and dry event during the Eemian seems to be corroborated by the terrestrial pollen record from Europe and China (Zhisheng & Porter 1997). The issue remains controversial, as this review article explains.

Cooling. Though the time at which the Eemian interglacial ended is subject to some uncertainty (it was probably around 110,000 years ago), what does seem evident from the sediment records that cross this boundary is that it was a relatively sudden event and not a gradual slide into colder conditions taking many thousands of years. The recent high-resolution Atlantic sediment record of Adkins et al (1997) suggests that the move from interglacial to much colder-than-present glacial conditions occurred over a period of less than 400 years (with the limitations on the resolution of the sediment record leaving open the possibility that the change was in fact very much more rapid than this).

Answer 10

"If everything related to global warming is man's fault and must be corrected"

no one is actually claiming that, don't be absurd. there are contributions from many sources. man-made emissions are a _significant_ source this time around... we are between ice ages now, if it is a natural cycle why is it unlike anything that's happened for the last 5 or 6 ice age cycles? this is the actual claim that you need to address... can you do it? if you can't you're just blowing smoke.

Answer 11

before it was earth's natural cycle

this time

we're suposed to be going into an ice age

but because of man

the earth is heating

Answer 12

Orbital (Milankovitch cycles), amplified by CO2 feedbacks.  That's not the source of the current warming though:

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitc...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

So the current warming is not due to the Milankovitch cycles.  Or the Sun.

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

No scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

On top of that, there are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 13

He read Al Gore.

Answer 14

amen to oracle for pointing out that this is all theory.  We're humans, and believe it or not, we're not as smart as we make ourselves out to be.  Lets just chalk this up as "we don't know why global warming is happening".  And lets also admit that all the c**p we're pumping in the air can't be good for anything.  And for god sakes, it everyone thinks they're so intelligent, why hasn't someone mass produced clean burning cheap transportation?

Answer 15

Changes in solar radiation due to "Milankovic cycles".

How do we KNOW it's not that now?  Pretty simple.  The cycles aren't magic, they cause a  change in solar radiation that is easily measurable.   Lots of people have carefully measured solar radiation for years.  It's been going down, while temperatures are going up.  Proof:

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

Answer 16

A natural cycle that's been going on for millions of years.  Unrelated to Global Warming, your mother, or the price of tea in China.

Are you reading these posts at all?

Answer 17

All those neanderthal cave men driving around in SUV's....

Answer 18

It was man's fault that caused the global warming 10,000 years ago that ended the last ice age. The cave men started riding much bigger dinosaurs than they needed. The bigger dinosaurs put out more methane gas which added to the ozone, thus raising the temperature and melting the ice. If they would have either rode the smaller but less methane producing dinosaurs or bought methane credits we would still have the ice that was on the earth back then.

I wonder if all the melting ice back then raised the seas 20 feet and killed off most of the cavemen? Maybe the high methane producing dinosaurs were wiped out and then the earth was able to start producing ice again. Hmmmmm. I wonder.......