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PostscriptWe are presently in an Ice Age that began 1.8 to 2 million years ago and will likely continue for another 800,000 years. In geologic time, ice ages are extremely rare. Compared against the 4.6 billion year history of the Earth the current Ice Age period of 2 million years in duration is but a tiny blink, called the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era, of which the Pleistocene is the Epoch of the Ice Age. Almost the entire 2.5-million-year history of mankind unfolded during this final big Ice Age Epoch. In this sense we are literally children of the Ice Age. We have became a highly intelligent species with an intellect second to none that may have developed out of necessity under the challenge of surviving in the harsh world of the Pleistocene Epoch, which thereby became the epoch of humanity. Physically the phenomenon of an Ice Age Epoch requires the existence of large landmasses in the non-tropical regions, grouped around the pole. It is believed that this specific condition occurred once before, 250 million years ago, during Permian Period, late in the Paleozoic Era. It is believed that an Ice Age epoch had resulted at this time in the Southern Hemisphere. Large land areas had been grouped around the South Pole in this particular period. Over long periods afterwards, continental drift shifted some of the large landmasses into the Northern Hemisphere where conditions became favorable during the last 50 million years for another Ice Age to begin. But it was only in the last 5 million years of this timeframe that a renewed major glaciation started, and it started once again in Antarctica where the continental ice sheets began to expand. The big Ice Age, however, the Pleistocene Epoch, happened much later, during only the last 2 million years of this timeframe, the timeframe of the age of man. Since the beginning of the Ice Age occurred quite late in the 50-million-year period when the conditions were 'right' for an ice age to occur indicates that additional factors are involved. The most recent theory has it that the Pleistocene Epoch began when the expansion of our galaxy and the rotation of its spiral arms brought our solar system into a region of the galaxy where the Galactic Cosmic Radiation is more intense. It began to be recognized that cosmic radiation has an enormous effect on cloud formation as it ionized the atmosphere. Ionized particles are 100 times more attractive to water vapor, which is responsible for 97% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. The more intense the radiation becomes that reaches the Earth, thereby increasing ionization and cloud formation, the lower the global temperatures will become. The resulting lower temperatures will then become reflected in the increased glaciation of the planet. According to the Polish ice core researcher Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski it is also known that cycles of solar activity in the form of solar winds and magnetic storms deflect some the cosmic radiation away from the Earth, thereby causing warmer periods.*2 An earlier theory at to why ice ages occur is centered on long-term astrophysical cycles that the Yugoslav climatologist Milutin Milankovitch became synonymous with for his mathematical theories of heat phenomena produced by solar radiation. The phenomena are affected by four long-term cycles of variances in the orbital relationship of the Earth to the sun. The four cycles are known to be 22, 26, 43, and 100 thousand years in duration. Deep-sea core samples provide evidence of the Milankovitch periodicity going back in time as far as 1.7 million years. According to the overlapping pattern of these cycles we are due for another major cooling transition just about now in respect to these long-term cycles. It is reasonable to assume that the observed phenomena that the two theories reflect, are additive and are themselves caused by larger astrophysical phenomena that affect both the solar cycles and the cyclical variances of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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