Study: Humans Have Been Messing with Mother Nature for 11,000 Years

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Yesterday Science Daily divulged that Global Warming can self perpetuate even more than it has by thawing frozen soil in East Siberia that contains vast amounts of Carbon Dioxide. The release of trillions of pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere would help the supply of greenhouse gasses which are attributed to sustaining temperatures on Earth. Siberia also seems to be a culprit in other natural releases of greenhouse gasses such as Methane which is 20x more potent than CO2. Again this is a case of global warming causing the release of methane and self perpetuating the entire cycle. Perhaps Siberia has something against the rest of the world.

This development is causing Global Warming Alarmists to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth, but some scientists who have been studying the atmospheric changes of earth have approached the subject for a more neutral point of view. The study suggests that the role of Humans in global warming was significant, but also made it possible for places like Europe to be settled, and it may have helped avoid an Ice Age.

In 2005 William F. Ruddiman, a paleoclimantologist, put forth a theory he claimed was "provocative and controversial." His claim was that humans kicked off global warming 11,000 years ago before cars, coal, and oil burning. The 2005 article in Scientific American has been ignored by pundits on both sides of the Global Warming battle, but the information contained within explains many of the arguments both sides use and helps laymen come to understanding of the complexities of Earth's climate.

Mr. Ruddiman sets up his hypothesis with some information that is contested by Global Warming Alarmists, that the sun, natural cycles of the earth around the sun, and other non-human events caused cycles of global warming and cooling.

Pre-Human Global Climate Change

If it is not common knowledge by now, it soon will be that Earth has gone through climate cycles such as Ice Ages, the effects of the atmosphere on climate have been trapped in time in the Ice of Antarctica. In the 1990's scientists extracted a three-kilometer-long ice core from Vostock Station. Within that ice atmospheric bubbles were trapped, and information as to the concentration of elements in the atmosphere was made available to scientists.

In elementary school it is taught to all little children that the earth's axis wobbles. The shift in earth's axis has attributed to climate changes. The "wobble" is called Precession. Envision the Earth's axis tracing circles in space much like a top about to fall. This process brings the Norther Hemisphere closer and further from the sun, this is similar but not the same as the rotation of the earth around the sun causing seasons. These "wobbles" make one rotation Approximately every 22,000 years. Precession is just one of three orbital cycles that contributes to climate and atmospheric changes.



The other two cycles are called axil tilt or Obliquity and the shape of earth's orbit or Orbital Eccentricity. The Axil tilt is moves between 22.1° and 24.5° and then back again every 41,000 years.





The Orbital Eccentricity of earth shifts the length of its ellipse around the sun roughly every 100,000 years. All of these cycles together coupled with the effects of the sun in relation to climate are called the Milankovitch cycles.

Wikipedia Chart showing how the cycles of earth's orbit and the sun contribute to global ice ages. image:40923:0::0

Using these cycles as a basis, scientists who studied the atmospheric conditions of times past have surmised that the cycles contribute to climate change by regulating the amount of greenhouse gasses in the air. Precession seems to regulate the amount of methane concentrations every 22,000 years by exposing the earth to higher and lower concentrations of solar radiation. The Solar radiation lends to the heat of summertime which causes the natural vegetation of wetlands to decompose and to release methane. As the Precession process moves the Northern Hemisphere further from the sun less radiation is flooded into earth, which cause global temperatures to drop and thus there is less methane being released from the much slower decomposing vegetation. CO2 concentration was contributed to Precession and Axial Tilt with the fluctuations rising and falling dramatically.

The dips in global climate caused Ice Ages about every 100,000 years. In the 1970's scientist said we were due for another Ice Age according to the climate cycle, so what happened?

Humans Evolve

Around 11,000 years ago Human Beings began becoming an agricultural society. The Fertile Crescent and beyond began clearing, planting, irrigating, and farming with animals. Farming activities can generate large amounts of methane gas and added to the natural cycle of methane boosts this contributed to a greater amount of global warming. This warming raised temperatures in Europe, Northern North America, and other northern territories by 4 degrees Celsius. This allowed for human civilization to expand and become agricultural in places where nomads roamed. A greater food supply raised the standard of living and helped he human species to grow and spread further, causing more farming and more innovation. The normal amount of methane and CO2 were on their predicted decline, until about 5,000 years ago when farming techniques became more invasive. The methane and CO2 levels then began to rise. Today we now burn fossil fuels, tear down forests and irrigate vast amounts of land. It took us 11,000 years to get here, and contrary to popular belief the past 200 years were not the only factor in current global warming.

William Ruddiman says that early agriculture had far more to do with the current state of affairs than industrialization has currently done to Earth. Keep in mind we are still farming and with the onset of increasing production of bio fuel plants we as a species will be only contributing more. If Humans had never started farming, based on current trends the world would be well within another Ice Age that could kill more than just the polar bears. However if the world follows the example of the Permian era, the unrivaled release of methane could kill 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land species.



Opinion: Honestly I wish I would have read this study first before any other study I have ever read on Global Warming because it is the absolute most sane one I have read yet. It shows what humans have done to hurt and to help the earth.

So it comes down to this, Humans seem to have had an vast effect on the current state of Global warming, that being said it is not something people should feel overly guilty about. Unless of course you are a self loathing simpering fool who hates every step you take because you may break a blade of grass. If there is anything I have learned from studying science is that everything happens for a reason. While it is only responsible for us to attempt to commune more with nature, and try to respect it, let's be realistic. Whether you eat meat or vegetables you are destroying the earth just by living, breathing, eating, burping ,and farting. So for everyone one panicking to the point of foaming at the mouth about your "carbon footprint" take a cork and plug your behind, quit eating and for heavens sake do not exhale. No matter what we do at this point we are contributing to the destruction of something. The funny thing about it all is that is the process of nature.