From: Damien Raphael (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 04 2002 - 13:01:30 MST
On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:25:32PM -0500, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> Astronomers and astrophysicists also contribute, with explainations like
> the Malenkovich Cycles, which have a far greater impact on climate
Milankovitch, for anyone who wanted to websearch for more information.
> change than any other single factor (somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of all
> influence, in fact) but you'll rarely see one of these chicken little
Note the cycles, being astrophysically constant, explain only why the
individual ice ages come and go. They don't do anything to explain why
we suddenly started having ice ages a few million years ago, or why the
overall trend for the last few tens of millions of years had been a
cooling trend.
The best explanation for _that_ which I've seen is the Himalaya
hypothesis: the continuous and large supply of uplifted fresh rock
has been scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere. (CO2 and rain react with
rock in the natural weathering process.)
Hmm, that gives me an idea... if the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps
melted from warming, there might be a countereffect of CO2 reacting with
all that fresh rock.
-xx- Damien X-)
planetary science major
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