NationStates Jolt Archive

From the time Earth stabilized after creation (however one believes that occurred) to the present, how much has Earth's climate changed?

By "not all that much" I mean the difference between a hot or cool summer.

By “significant change” I mean there have been times when there was significant glaciation and other times when Earth had no icecaps at all.

I seem to recall the area I grew up in was mainly formed by the last ice age (10 000 BP).
If you want recent changes, we don't know for sure why these changes are occuring, but reducing pollutants is always a good idea.

Most climatic change in history has been caused by natural occurences, the biggest being the introduction of water/evolution of plants, which added water and oxygen to the atomsphere.

However, the most recent change has been caused by human activity, and it could also be the largest since the atmosphere evolved.

Unfortunately, most people think that it will be technology that will save us at some undefined point in the future. The technology's already here. Governments and people won't cough up the money to do it.

The temperature jumped 10 degrees globally between 1000 and 1500, after which we had a mini-ice age.

Climate changes all the time, it's a natural byproduct of nature.

Didn't the earth used to be a 1,000 degree ball of molten rock? Now the earth's temp. ranges from about -30 to 50 degrees.

If thats not climate change I do not know what is.

Here's an interesting theory regarding the temperature of earth in it's very early years, while we're on the subject. Link (http://www.jyi.org/news/nb.php?id=218)

And yes, the earth's climate has constantly swung from cold to hot and back to cold again since its formation. We're in the middle of a warm period, so it's only going to get warmer before it cools off again.

I'd like to smack the person that voted 'only as a result of human activity'.

And yes, the earth's climate has constantly swung from cold to hot and back to cold again since its formation. We're in the middle of a warm period, so it's only going to get warmer before it cools off again.

I'd like to smack the person that voted 'only as a result of human activity'.

lol :) . true, and with various patterns and such like. it's fairly well established that climate change is natural and has happened significantly, with major things like losing the Ne of our atmosphere, and the change from CO2 and CH4 rich to N2 rich, the O2 revolution, to the usual ce ages and sunnny spells etc.

the issue now is that humans are changing the atmosphere fasdter than nature would and we are speeding up global warming, and making it more extreme.

"Yes, but not all that much." also got one vote: I wonder if things haven't changed all that much, where's all the ice and where are the Mammoths? I've seen Ice Age. Can't fool me there :D

I'd like to smack the person that voted 'only as a result of human activity'.

Agreed! :)

We might have the power to speed things up a bit but on the whole Earth has been around for a lot longer than us and has changed drastically over that time.

What really annoys me are people who think that a short term weather pattern can be described as normal. For example, I live in Australia and everyone is complaining about the current drought. We've literally only had the ability to measure and record rainfall here for a little over 200 years, and we haven't even recorded it for that long. Who's to say that the current 'drought' isn't normal rainfall for Australia and that the previous 150 years weren't exceptionally wet??

Don't think I use that as an excuse to shirk environmental responsibilities though. We have to be aware that we live in on an extremely complex planet that is going to change whether we like it or not, and thus we should be doing our best to protect and maintain what we have.

Didn't the earth used to be a 1,000 degree ball of molten rock? Now the earth's temp. ranges from about -30 to 50 degrees.

If thats not climate change I do not know what is.

lol

Well, there were these little things called ice ages. They were rather cold.
Seeing as how we aren't frozen solid right now, I'd take a flying guess and say "Yes, the climate has changed a tad!"

It only bothers me in how bad it gets. Even slight global temperature changes result in the loss of crops, increased dehydration risk near the equatorial regions, but much of it so far is purely superficial. But, regardless of whether or not human industrial activities have played a major role in this temperature cycle, we certainly haven't made things better. I only hope it doesn't get worse.