Have the current polar ice caps receded further than those that existed before the beginning of the last Ice Age?
score:10
Perhaps this is what you are looking for. In particular, look at the bottom graph in red, which is an estimate of global ice volume. The data was taken from oxygen measurements in Antarctic ice cores.
Assuming they have their data and estimates close to right, it looks like our current worldwide volume of ice is not a record low for the Pleistocene. However, its pretty close to it. The end of the Oxygen (green) graph looks a bit wierd too. Still, there's nothing on the end of that ice graph that draws the eye to say, "something different is going on here".
Yet.
Upvote:3
WHICH icecaps? If you mean glaciers, WHICH glaciers? Some no doubt extend further, some less far, some didn't exist before the last ice age, for example.
As to the polar icecaps, the northern one sits entirely on top of water, if floats, so there's no way to know if it was larger or smaller in the past beyond where we have photographic record
The southern one covers pretty much the entire Antarctic continent, so has the same issue. If it were larger in the past, it would have been over open water and no historical record is left. If it were smaller, the evidence is hidden under miles of ice and rather hard to reach.
Most likely it will be the same with the polar caps as it is with the glaciers: in some places they extend further, in others they extend less, than in the past. But no worry, with the predicted global cooling (announced last week by the British Met Office through the BBC) it'll sopon get a lot larger :) (of course that was in part sarcasm (they did indeed announce "global cooling", just as they did in the 1970s, right before they announced "global warming" and no are making an about face once again), I believe in global cooling as much as I do in global warming, such things are cyclical and nothing we can influence anyway so why worry about them?).
And no, it's not a history question so much as a geology one. Doesn't belong under physics indeed, but afaik there's no geology SE you could ask.
More post
- 📝 Why was Japan not worried about Soviet invasion during WWII?
- 📝 Who exactly were the Slovene White Guard?
- 📝 Looking for the source of a quote on Nazi ideology
- 📝 What was "Greek fire"?
- 📝 Was there ever a queen or female ruler who killed her child to preserve her power?
- 📝 How was Taiwan involved in the Thirty Years' War?
- 📝 Pre-Islamic cultural inheritance in contemporary Iran
- 📝 Why did the Monitor and Merrimac (aka Virginia) have such radically different designs?
- 📝 How do I interpret this 17th century English ledger?
- 📝 Were Tories "Catholics" and "Whigs" Anglican?
- 📝 Is there a historical basis for the "day of the false King" described in The Egyptian?
- 📝 Does anyone have an example of the Tamil elephant symbol?
- 📝 Rommel's letter to his wife from November 16, 1942
- 📝 When and why did smiling at strangers and in photos become customary in the United States?
- 📝 Why was Germany not broken up at the end of WW1
- 📝 Was Casablanca a "safe" place for the Allies to hold a global conference in January, 1943?
- 📝 Did any deputies in the USSR ever get recalled via provisions in the 1977 constitution?
- 📝 How was Lübeck involved in the Danish Civil War, 1534-1536?
- 📝 How did the baking soda recipe for crack cocaine catch on?
- 📝 Kurds and their relation to the start of civilization?
- 📝 Were any French aristocrats guillotined facing up?
- 📝 What was Wilhelm II's "book about the causes of the war"?
- 📝 Why did Cleon say this in the Mytilenian Debate?
- 📝 What salary did Hitler draw as Führer?
- 📝 When did the Roman Empire fall according to contemporaries?
- 📝 Resources on the History of African Civilization
- 📝 Prior to 1790, before dentist chairs, did dentists put the patient's head between their knees?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of the capital of a colonising country being temporarily or permanently shifted to one of its colonies?
- 📝 Why and how were east Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia taken away from Germany after WW2?
- 📝 What is the best way to describe the form of Japanese government during the years before and during world war 2?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Have the current polar ice caps receded further than those that existed before the beginning of the last Ice Age?
- 📝 Why did the Royal Society in 1771 believe that a continent further south than Australia should exist?
- 📝 How did people have access to ice in warm areas before the industrial revolution?
- 📝 Has anyone (other than Churchill) indicated that the Germans might have won a negotiated peace in World War II?
- 📝 Have there been any notable people that have claimed that classism and not racism is the current cause of racial inequality?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 What are the factors that caused the new world civilizations to be less technologically advanced than the old world?
- 📝 If the Union Jack joins the flag of England and Scotland, why does it have a different shade of blue than the Scottish flag?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 Which countries (or comparable geographical units) have a lower population now than they used to at some point in history before 1950?
- 📝 Is it true that there are more slaves in the world now than ever at one point in history?
- 📝 Did any British working class men have the vote before 1918?
- 📝 Did the Finns have aluminum screw caps in 1939?
- 📝 Who discovered first that the Moon does not have its own light?
- 📝 Does the Catholic church have a long history of child abuse, or is it something that started in our time?
- 📝 Could the Russians Have Done Better at the Battle of Tsushima Straits Than They Actually Did?
- 📝 Is there a possibility that the Islamic civilization visited America before Columbus?
- 📝 Why did Stephen Ambrose believe that the election of Aaron Burr would have led to the end of the USA?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?
- 📝 Is it true that slavery was banned from discussion on the Senate and/or House floor before the American Civil War?
- 📝 What laws of war existed before the modern international treaties and conventions?
- 📝 Could the Confederates have done better at Gettysburg if they had put cavalry in front of, rather than behind, Pickett's charge?
- 📝 Why were the cities of the Eastern European Plain founded much later than those elsewhere in Europe?
- 📝 Were B-17s (rather than B-29s) ever used to bomb mainland Japanese territory during WW2 (at least before the capture of Okinawa)?
- 📝 Could the anti-Napoleonic forces have done better by uniting earlier before Waterloo?
- 📝 Did Germany have treaties imposed upon it after WWII that mirrored the weight of the Treaty of Versailles?
- 📝 What were factors that led to a decline in bond yields during World War II given that the opposite should have happened?
- 📝 What impact does colonial legacy have on current US presence in the South China Sea dispute?
- 📝 Why was the Records of the Three Kingdoms composed before that of the Later Han?