The Inconvenient Skeptic: The Comprehensive Guide to the Earth's Climate

by John Kehr

One of the factors that drive the climate changes over periods of millions of years is the changing geography of the Earth. 50 million years ago there was no Mediterranean Sea. There was a vast ocean from the continent of India to the continental shelf north of the African continent. The portion of the Earth that is now Spain to the Himalayas, were a series of tropical islands surrounded by warm oceans. All of that land has now merged together and the warm oceans and seas that separated them are gone. Only the small Mediterranean remains. Oceans do not have big temperature changes, land does. As the lands merged together to form a large and more continuous land mass, the NH started to experience more significant swings in temperature. A true tipping point was reached 2.6 million YBP when the balance between the landmasses and ocean currents changed enough to initiate the modern ice age. Eventually what is now Siberia will straddle the North Pole in a similar way that Antarctica covers the South Pole. When that happens it is also extremely probable that it will be covered in ice sheets that dwarf those of Antarctica. The current ice ages will be much warmer than what will happen in the future. This will not happen for tens of millions of years, but that is the direction the climate of the Earth is going. Nothing humanity can currently do will change that in the slightest. The changing geography of the Earth is one of those very long-term changes that people cannot see. Thos...