Geologists at Rice University have uncovered evidence that suggests Earth’s spin axis was in a different spot millions of years ago, a phenomenon called “true polar wander.” The change, which occurred sometime in the past 12 million years, would have shifted Greenland further up into the Arctic Circle – which may have contributed to the onset of the last major Ice Age, 3.2 million years ago.
This polar shift occurred 12 million years ago and [could have] caused the onset of the most recent ice age 3.2 million years ago which has important implications for climate change? This is where I joke about Rice University being located just outside of Beijing.
True, but the closing of the Panamanian gap approximately 5 million years ago stopped the equatorial current from flowing, meaning that the heat engine (powered by the sun) lost a lot of its effectiveness.
The most recent ice age ended 11,700 years ago, not millions of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
It actually didn’t end at all.
We are still in an ice age Frank. Search inter-glacial.
HAHAHAHAHA so Graham Hancock and all the other “kooks” just doubled their power levels! Settled science indeed and why don’t we speculate on who REALLY built the pyramids in Egypt and Central America
How dare you?!
Help stop true polar wander: pay more carbon tax!
Dark energy did it.
You can’t see it, but it can see you.
What a quarky thing to say.
{mic drop}
Charming but strange.
Double (mic. drop)
That definitely put a different spin on it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Which doesn’t mean that the current crystalline spheres project of dark matter/ dark energy is right. It just means that it is an ugly, ungainly, undignified way to meld current theory with observations.
Which means a better theory is needed. Unless you think God does play dice with the universe. And cheats.
As an old Canadian and a long-time blogger, I agree totally with your answer to “Why this Blog?” Am also in sync with the science of “global warming” not being at all settled! Have you ever watched the videos of Dr. Willie Soon? He’s a laugh riot and very serious and informative at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=willie+soon
See also: Sun – not C02 – Driving Climate Change
Very informative treatise thanks to Dr. Roger Higgs, Geologist.
https://www.yayacanada.ca/home/sun-not-c02-driving-climate-change
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Soon at Dr. Susan Crockford’s book launch in Calgary. Much of what we discussed was pedestrian (I cringe as I say this, I learned a lot), but I was intrigued by his thoughts on when we’d have a good working model of the solar climate/plasma flows. In 20 to 30 years was the soonest, by his estimation.
By my thoughts, we’re modelling the wrong fluid on earth to model long range climate – the oceans rule it, but oceanic heat flow models are sadly lacking. If we can’t model heat flows on earth properly then any estimate of what the sun will do is sheer guesswork.
This is new?
Apart from using the “hot spots” to map plate movement,what is new?
I have been reading speculation of this sort since the 70s.
I thought the Geologists had mapped this out pretty well just using the magnetic orientation of rock layers.
As I keep telling the Cultists,if you feel Climate Change is bad,I agree,I want my 3 miles of glacial ice back.
Save the Laurentian Ice fields!
Better yet, let’s send the Laurentian elite to their glacial namesakes and keep them there.
The magnetic pole has been wandering, yes. These guys claim the geographic spin axis shifted 12 million years ago. Huge difference. But if it did, it would probably change world climate – maybe not 7.5 million years later … just saying.
OMG!! Fracking is going to cause the earth’s crust to shift on the molten mantle! Which wil shift the earth’s poles … again. Fossil fuel exploration is driving us into another ice age … now. Peak Oil just struck! We are all destined for a Mad Max future … racing ice boats, in our search for disappearing petrol.
The earth is flat!
Edgest.
Orb Denier
the mars polar icecaps are in the same cycle as earths
also pole progression is a well known phenomenon as is wobble.
geographic pole progression? Never heard of it. A link would be awesome.
“Polar wandering”.
If you take a look at a REAL, “mil-spec” topographical map, on the lower margin you will find a little information block detailing “Magnetic Deviation”. This information tells you the deviation of MAGNETIC NORTH, from “True North” and Grid North” (the grid of lines (usually 1000m x 1000m that are used for navigation and location data.
Included in the “North” table are two important bits of information: Firstly, the status of the deviation between the three “Norths’ at the time the map was compiled. Secondly, and VERY importantly, by how much AND in what direction, Magnetic North varies ANNUALLY from “True” North.
On top of all that, way back in the late 1950s, the US Navy were running a global programme of mapping the magnetic anomalies of the ocean floors. The resultant plot of, for example, the Pacific, showed regions that looked like a wonky checkerboard. With alternating POLARITY of the Geo-magnetism in the (mainly) basaltic rock. The rock-doctors concluded that, as the basalt “freezes”, its magnetic properties align with the Earth’s polarity AT THAT MOMENT in time.
The presence of opposite polarities in adjacent regions means that the ENTIRE planetary polarity reverses, with monotonous regularity, on a geological time scale.
There is, as always, a catch. The planet’s magnetic field is a major reason there is life on this rock. Without it,the surface would be constantly blasted by a lethal stream of radiation from the Sun. BUT, what happens during the times when the magnetic polarity “flips”? It doesn’t happen like flicking a switch. it might take anything from ten to a thousand years to happen. During that reversal phase, the “shields are down”, as they say in all the best SF movies. The result will be MASS extermination of any organism living on “dry land”, marginally less lethal to critters in the deeper oceans.
Bruce, you got a catch up. There is a magnetic field (geomagnetic pole) and a geographic field (geographic spin axis). But your last paragraph was especially awesome.
The poles flip often (geological time-wise) and yet there is life on earth.
Not that I trust the USGS but:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/do-any-mass-extinctions-correlate-magnetic-reversals?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products
So don’t panic.
Rapid ice age onset freaked me out the most when I studied things like heat transfer in the climatology of high latitudes years ago. It did seem as though an ‘ice age’ could develop in as little as a decade if I remember correctly.
As with all sciences, there were more questions than answers the deeper you looked into it, it seemed like we would need to discover a higher level of physics in order to answer some of the questions that came up, and that would probably lead to more questions…
Climate “science” has been contaminated by the same nonsense as conservation “biology” (theology), that being the hysteria inspired sense of urgency along with the inherently luddite precautionary principle. This is where the theories (hypotheses) are reinforced rather than tested and then directly made into political imperatives (CAGW, endangered species, etc) for “solving”.
Milankovitch cycles and Ice Ages. The suns magnetic fields. Are the long known causes of ice ages. We are at the end of an Interglacial right now. CO2 is a scam. CO2 makes up .003% of the atmosphere. And of the .003% CO2. 95% of that CO2 is generated by nature itself through natural processes. That is like some Greta thing walked into a freezer, (let a fart a gas) but she pinched it off so only 5% of the .003% escaped then she claimed that the Freezer was over heating and needs trillions of dollars to cool it off again. Get a Fucking grip on your brains. Start rounding up these EcoSocialists Lunatics and get them into treatment. FFS. Club them like a Newfy clubs a seal
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/milankovitch-cycles
Looks like the axis doesn’t run smack dab in the middle of Antarctica. Piri Reis map of Antarctica without the ice covering?
Shit. Looks like its turtles all the way down.
Blame the Hydro dams,the wobble is growing,Dam C is going to topple the planet.
We are all doomed ,destroy these death traps..Set those rivers free.
Actually as the Laurentian ice sheet retreated the northern flow was blocked by an ice dam,most of the NWT and Yukon were one lake.
I wonder what the wobble was then?
And if these guys are wrong and it’s all just bologna, …what a great gig they’ve got and who exactly is gonna call them on it?
Yeah, they’re never hearing the words, “You got it wrong, so you’re fired, now clean out your desk.”
Just one more thing, just like the climate, that we cannot control. We have to get over this god complex we seem to have because until we do we will never ever be free.
Yeah, not very sold on this lag of 9 million years from pole being in Greenland to first glacial period (the article poorly written does not seem to mention or comprehend that we have had four glacial episodes in past 3.2 million years, the last one which many call “the ice age” that we are still emerging from started about 115,000 years ago).
So on the face of it the “finding” is that the pole was there until 12 million years ago, which yes would have made Greenland a bit colder, but no ice age began until nine million years after the pole moved to its current position.
A rework is perhaps needed on this one.
Which makes the Eemian findings on temperature in Greenland 120,000 years ago all the more damning for human caused climate changes.
Last I read it was 9 degrees C warmer, +/- 5 degrees?
Kate.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you.
What a wonderful discussion. I don’t know how much you participate in minutia like this, but thank you again for hosting this disparate group of wrong-thinkers. Of which I proudly include myself.