This is really a sort of poll, but it's easier for folk to write what they think rather than ticking a box

I'm just interested to find out what people know about the ice age. Do you even believe there was an ice age? What do you think caused it? Why did it end?

Feel free to throw in biblical floods, earth crust displacement and flash frozen mammoths full of tropical plants.......but be warned: I may be forced to debunk a few 'popular' myths

This is a big part of my course and i will be interested on your views and how you can back them up with scientific prove.

My opinon is that of course they happened, tree rings show increases and and rapid decreases in temperature. I dont know how any one can disprove that they happened espically with large valley formations. speciation and rocks in the middle of no where.

As ice ages occur so do the opposite quick warming periods whicg i was i think is happening now, and global warming is playing just a very small part in it.

As for the floods again last year i did an essay basically disproving the story behind Noahs Ark. The red sea did drastically rise and people fled the areas around it into main land Europe and so stories started to spread.

according to current theory, there were several ice ages. In fact, currently we are in a warm period between colder arctic conditions.

were already overdue for our next ice age, and if one does happen just watch the movie 'The Day After Tomorow' it bassically shows whats gonna happen when the ice age comes.

ahahahahahaha

great. and my sno-cat is in the shop........

lol stop laughing at me!

Really off-topic... but I need to tell this to the curious around the world.

LOL... as far as I know stands for 'Laughing Out Loud'.
The alert reader will have noticed that I live in the Netherlands (not Holland ). Over here lol is a normal word for 'fun'.

I just like the coincidence in this

The Day after Tommorow sped up global warming 30x as fast as it should have gone. The process is much slower.

A nuclear holocaust could initiate an ice age; or a major meteorite collision. Or maybe even the passage of Nibiru/Planet X???? Or how about a super volcano.?????

Why are you making a poll about something which is already a fact? Ice ages DID happen. They didn't theorise....they know.

As for a new ice age perhaps it will happen but it is indeed a gradual process that involves a contigency of changes to come to full effect. If "The day after tomorrow" gave you that idea...please stay away from Marvel movies or you risk thinking that you have spontaneously mutated into homo-superior and try to save us with your super powers

Hmmm, a few interesting responses, but come on: what caused them? Why did the last ice age end? Just saying they happened ain't good enough

Last week I read an article about an expedition to some place in Asia in search of some unknown fish and serpents.
This expedition was I think to a lake or a island group.

The article mentions that the lake/island group was caused by a volcanic explosion 27.000 years ago. This was the biggest volcanic eruption/explosion in the past 100.000 years they said. It was many times the equivalent of the Krakatoa. Also, the lake/island group created was huge and the made estimates of the size of the volcano's crater (forgot the exact measurements).
According to some geologists and other scientists this eruption/explosion caused the last ice age. It threw so much debris in the air that global temperatures dropped drastically (about 5 degrees they said).
I'll do a search for the article in a few magazines and on the internet. As soon as I get it I will give you the accurate text.

I don't know whether to believe that this was the cause for the last ice age or not. 5 degrees (celsius) doesn't seem so drastically to me, but I'm not an expert in climatology... They are worrying nowadays about a 1,5 degrees rise, so perhaps a 5 degree drop is dramatic.

I must admit that this is the only reasonable explanation for the ice age I heard/read so far. It makes kind of sense to me. So until a better comes along, I'll stick with this volcano.

Sounds like you're talking about Lake Toba - which erupted about 72,000 years ago.

Evidence from the Greenland ice cores show that temperatures dropped to their lowest levels of the past 100,000 years after the eruption. But they soon rose again (after maybe a few decades). The longest cold spell of the last ice age occurred some 50,000 years later.



The Toba eruption did almost manage to make humans extinct though!

Looking at that graph of Greenland temperatures derived from the ice cores, we can see that rather than one continuous 'ice age' what actually happens is the arctic climate swings quickly back and forth between cold and mild spells. Eventually a more prolonged cold spell occurs - the Last Glacial Maximum (LKG) after which there's a sudden, dramatic rise in temperatures and we enter a far more stable warm period - the current Interglacial.

Question ?
whats the narrowest point in homo sapiens sapiens evolution and when didi it occour ?

About 75,000 years ago - coinciding with the Toba eruption. Which, incidently, isn't the coldest dip in that temp chart, it's the one before it

Supposedly, homo sapiens sapiens dropped to just a few thousand - and we're all descended from those few survivors.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/...80908074159.htm

NB the actual date given for the Toba eruption varies from 71 to 75 thousand years ago.

Still waiting for a thermodynamic model which would even allow for the build up of massive glaciation in temperate parts of the earth as the "ice ages" call for. When someone can explain the thermodynamics, I will listen eagerly. Until then, still waiting.