The Global Warming Dispute and The Effects of Interglacial Periods

Twenty thousand years ago the continental ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland were twice the size they are now. For the last 20000 years the Earth’s temperature has been steadily increasing, with only small deviations known as lesser-glacial periods.

This is by no means the first time this has happened.In the continental sheets there is a layering effect in the ice.This is caused when ice melts during interglacial[1] periods and freeze during glacial periods.By drilling into the ice sheets,scientists have discovered that ice ages occur as cycles.While the earth undergoes a colder period the ice sheets grow in size and the temperature falls.This causes sea-levels to fall and opens up new terrestrial habitats.After a few thousand years the cycle is reversed and as the temperature increases the ice sheets begin to melt .

The questions we must ask ourselves are: Is the human race interfering with this natural cycle? Or are the changes in the Earth’s environment perfectly natural?

These are difficult questions to answer  seeing that written records of the Earth’s history only dates back a few thousand years, this making it impossible to compare today’s interglacial period with an earlier one in the sense of how they affected humanity at the time.

There are several  questionable un-scientific  sources that speaks of great natural events.The Bible speaks of a great flood that devastated the middle-east region of the world.Plato, Homer, and several other Greek and Persian philosophers speak of titanic natural events.Great Storms that wreaked havoc on coastal settlements, freezing winters and scorching summers.These observations of people past, may give us a clue as to how the fluctuations in global temperature affected humanity.

It may also be that these were isolated events, and that the only reason the human race is affected by global warming today, is because human population levels have soared in the past ten thousand years. At the time there were only a few million humans on earth where as today the population has reached an estimated 6.8 billion.

The other reason why humankind is so affected by the effects of the changing climate,is our ability to monitor and observe our environment.By using communication and observation devices(satellites etc.) we have expanded our view and perspective of our world.When there is an devastating natural occurrence in our home regions,we realise that this is an isolated event and not worldwide. Some events like tropical cyclones and typhoons causes widespread damage, but we still know that it is not the whole world that is ending.