Cosmology: timing a probable glacial period: (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 28, 2025, 20:36 (6 days ago) @ David Turell

"Earth's obliquity is currently in the process of declining towards a minimum, which it will reach in 11,000 years or so; according to the team's calculations, the next ice age will kick off before then. (my bold)

"'This is vitally important information to understanding the long-term, future effects of current human activity, Barker said.

"'According to the latest IPCC reports, humans have already started to alter the course of climate away from its natural trajectory by the emission of greenhouse gases," he explained.

"'This means that the decisions we make now will have consequences into the far future. At present, projected future climate change is gauged relative to modern (or pre-industrial) conditions."

Comment: an amazing correlation. Which means if an ice age is coming lets keep the Earth very warm. This is an interesting factor to throw into the climate debate.

Another article with this viewpoint:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2470262-we-now-know-how-much-emissions-have-delaye...

"
“The amount we’ve already put into the atmosphere is so great that it will take hundreds to thousands of years to pull that out via natural processes,” says Barker. However, he says more research is needed to define Earth’s future natural climate in more detail.

"This is in line with earlier modelling that suggests rising CO2 levels due to anthropogenic emissions will prevent the onset of the next glacial period for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, says Andrey Ganopolski at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

"However, he says even pre-industrial levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may have been high enough to delay the advance of the ice sheets by 50,000 years. That is due to the unusually minor orbital variations expected in coming millennia and the unpredictable way Earth responds to those changes."

Comment: we need global warming it seems.