Thank you for your replies. I like your links, about volcanoes and the one about ice cores. If you look at the ice core data, there has not been a period like the past 10,000 years. What are the chances that it will get warmer and melt the top layers of ice. If we then got cooler, then ice cores that will be taken 100,000 years from now may only see our 10,000 as a gradual rise instead. Then again, due to the frigid temps of Antarctica, that is unlikely. How long has Antarctica been there? Why do ice cores only go back 420,000 years? Was there a time before that where there was no ice on Antarctica?
According to the June 10, 1999 AP article found on the
http://www.climateark.org/articles/1999/icecore2.htm site, "They stopped drilling about 120 yards (109 meters) short of a subterranean lake the size of Lake Ontario that's been trapped for perhaps millions of years beneath the ice sheet. Scientists want to send sterilized robots to explore the pristine lake and are protecting it from contamination until then." They drilled 3,623 m (over 2 miles) and stopped. If that lake has been trapped for millions of years, then that last 109 meters would go back those same millions of years.
That was 7 years ago. Have sterilized robots been sent yet? Is there new data going back millions of years yet? Apparently, Lake Vostok is not frozen. The
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/oldissues2000-2001/2000_1126/vostok.html page talks about using Lake Vostok as a training ground for technology that can check out Europa - A Jupiter moon that may have a liquid lake beneath a layer of ice. Of course, that does not help us. I want to know the data. Why don't they test the technology on one of the other 80 lakes?
According to the
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/vostok_pr.html page, "If it ever had a direct link with the air above it, that connection ended some 30 million years ago." Thirty million years is a lot of data to give up for only 109 meters of drilling. Would 30 million years be enough for Antarctica to slowly move over the southern pole?
According to the
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/lessons/Pangea/Pangea3.html page, "250 millions years ago the Earth's seven continents were all grouped together into a supercontinent called Pangea."
Is Antarctia still moving? Is this planet indeed under a cold spell like the http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html page suggests? Will this planet ever see the end to this cold spell? That 30 million years of data (even if it only ends up being 10 million years) may be able to tell us some of this.
In 2004, the access hole technology development was still in the draft phase. This is according to the
http://salegos-scar.montana.edu/docs/Workshops.htm page's last link. That is the newest information I found.
Where else can we get more historical data that relates to temperature? Do you have a link to geology ocean floor records?
John M Reynolds
