I have approached this question from a very simple deductive process of elimination. What is clear is that an enormous amount of energy was needed to reduce the amount of ice that had accumulated at the old polar regions and beyond, and that the speed of the thaw must have indicated some considerable source.
That leaves two serious options. Heat energy from within the Earth's core, or some external source. The extent of the potential from within the core is virtually unlimited, as far as we know, but a mechanism by which such a massive efflux of such heat could be initiated isn't really known to us, is it ? A massive bout of vulcanism, perhaps triggered by earthquakes is obviously possible, but is there sufficient evidence of this on the surface of the planet ? It would have to be pretty obvious I would have thought.
The external possible sources are cosmic body collisions with the planet, asteroid, meteor, comet, and so on. There is some evidence of these, and this option cannot, in my view, be discounted. The Carolina Bays are one such example that many have tried to use as evidence of a cometary strike, albeit one which broke up into several particles and hit at various points around the surface. Another possible source is the actual displacement of the entire earth's crust leading to a re-positioning of the poles. I think that such a phenomenom is possible, but for some reason I have the sneaking feeling that this, if true, might have been consequential rather than causal. Some other factor or factors may have triggered a series of events, one of which may have been an ECD.
The last possibility is the mis-application of some mega-potent technology. This has been mooted in many different ways by many different people. Again, I have read a great deal of different people's opinions on this and I have to resort to my 'gut-feeling', and that is that I have had this 'intuitive' sense that we humans have been on a different track than that described by orthodox historians ever since I was a schoolboy, several decades ago. The classic graph is a long slow upward linear ascent from the caves to where we are now. My feeling is that we have a graph line more like a V-shape, or possibly even an extended W-shape.
When I first read of the Vedas, and the idea that humankind had been cycling through civilisation and primitive conditions for a vastness of 'time' that we can barely imagine, it just struck some 'chord' within me. The more I have read, and the more that I have experienced the more firm I become in this belief. I think that we have had great, and highly technological societies in our ancient past, and that we may well have destroyed them all by a foolish misuse of those technologies.
For what it is worth I think that we came pretty close to doing the same again in the last few decades, but that this time we managed to 'pull back' at the very brink, and not go into the 'Abyss' yet again. But there again, I've always been a great optimist ! ;-)
Well, those are just some opening thoughts. I hope that your site attracts some more attention, Peter, and that your work continues to bear fruit.
All the very best,
David
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Re: Reasons to end ice age
Posted by vic
Reflectivity (called albedo) of the Earth is high when it is icy. This means that the colder Earth gets, the less sunlight it absorbs (an unending cycle, since colder means shinier and shinier means colder). This is why there was an ice age.
The ice age ended when vocanos spewed black carbon dust onto the ice. That dark dust absorbed sunlight and heated the earth.
We are in a natural Global Warming trend now, highly accelerated by mankind's burning of fossil fuels (carbon dioxide produced by the burning is a greenhouse gas that allows high frequency light from the sun to enter the atmosphere, but does not allow the low frequency reflected light to exit).
Ice ages don't seem to create pole shifts, historically--we can compare charts of ice ages and pole shifts and verify that.
The physical poles of the earth (about which the earth spins) can move. In fact, it has a wobble.
The orientation of the magnetic field of the earth (indicated by a compass needle) can independently move (and it is in constant motion). Movement of the magnetic field is not well understood, but it appears to have something to do with large mass movements and currents in the liquid portion of the core and at the core/mantle boundary. The center of the core, though more than hot enough to melt iron, is solid due to extreme pressures. It is not a smooth solid object, it has grooves. These grooves direct the flow of molton metal.
The flow of molten metal creates the magnetic field. Planets and moons without a molten core don't have magnetic fields. The moon is not now molten, and it does not have a magnetic field
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Re: Reasons to end ice age
Posted by
i think that the ice age ended was that there was a gaint metorite hit and that when it did the volcanos went off and caused the ice age to end and thats my reason
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Re: Reasons to end ice age
Posted by
Vic, your post didn't address any of the theories Peter presented on this site. Proving that you may be right, doesn't prove your opponets wrong. If you come here again, since you disagree, could you provide your opinions on the following:
1. The (im)possibility of the Earth's crust shifting as a whole.
2. Why what is now Russia was warmer.
3. The possible accuracy of the vedas
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