soilguy wrote:
Dehammer: Do you have any references for all this?...
yes, i gave a couple of the sites i got the data off of. on another post. though, i was told that the geologist that gave that data are not real science, since they dont work for nasa.
... A few of your dates are off by an order of magnitude, but I think you just left out a zero here and there (e.g., the last time Yellowstone blew was around 640,000 years ago, not 64,000)...
yes, i do occasionally make mistakes. that was suppose to have one more zero. thanks for pointing out that typo. most of the data seems to be correct though.
...Your definition of "ice age" is a lot more long-term than the typical thinking. Not that you're incorrect (you're not), but after the first reading, I thought, "What the hell is this guy talking about??" This comes from my soils oriented training, as most soils are young, geologically speaking. You would probably call my definition of ice age a glaciation. I'll use those terms from here on...
they come from the geological terms. yes most of the soil we have now is young in terms of geological. as i understand it the full glacerial (sp?) period includes both the time the ice is created until its gone. glaceral periods are when the ice is increasing or basically stagnet. (my spelling was never much good, but after a ministroke is even worse, sorry). for the last 14000 years the ice has been retreating, with a few minor and one major blimp. all of which coincide with eruptions of super valcanos or very large normal volcano (the technical term are large and very large volcano, the term super is more of a lay term: lay scientist {read not fully trained} refer to caldera type volcanos by that term).
But regardless, what I've read is that the major ice ages (around four have occurred over the last billion years) are believed to be related to changes in Earth's orbit, while the glaciations and interglacial periods are from atmospheric causes...
they have never been able to fully explain them. also they have never proven how the the earth's orbit would change, esp that fast. on the other hand, there is a good coorlation between ice age and the larger super valcano eruptions. check it out for yourself. as far as atmospheric causes, sulpher dioxide ice clouds do fall under that catagory.
...So my big question is, how would we know if this is the end of the current ice age, or if it's a more minor change regarding glaciation?
simple. use the oscam (my memory for names is terrible) razor. the simplist explaination that fits all the data is most likely the correct one.
heres an example. the mini ice age that occured 10000 years ago. oceanogerphers (sp?) will tell you that it occured because the gulf stream stopped. there is no arguement that it did. but their explination of why it stop is a bit complicated and does not include the fact that there was a supervolcano that erupted at the same time.
heres a much simpler explination. its proven that the super volcano erupted then. its also proven that one of the emission of a valcano of any size is sulpher dioxide. its also proven that the sulpher dioxide will form clouds with the water vaper that will stay in the atmosphere for years. its also a proven fact that the clouds will block off a large portion of the suns light, depending on how thick the so2 ice is. its also proven that the gulf stream is sun driven. ice found in the ice shelf from that time shows an increase in sulpher dioxide for more than a decade with it gradually decreasing. its also been proven that the ice has been melting at simular rate for 4 thousand years about that time.
my hyphothisis is that the sun was blocked off from the gulf stream, causeing it to stop. this did not cause the mini ice age, but was an effect of it. the mammoth that was frozen in siberia was killed by the drop in tempatures from spring or early summer (it was eating spring flowers) and was likely buried by an avalance. this would account for its sudden death, the sudden ceacation of acid reaction (a wet coat transmits heat well, loss of heat stops the reaction.)
simple. straight forward. no unproven theories needed to explain it. all facts covered.
