We Should Be in an Ice Age Right Now. Global Warming Prevented It.
Researchers in the US and Germany found evidence of a glaciation period that began about 2,000 years ago, heralding an oncoming global winter in which temperatures would adjust by a few degrees on average and the planet's ice caps could expand in all directions.
Instead, we ended up with the climate we have. In a new paper for Science, researchers focus on historical trends at the Barnes Ice Cap on Baffin Island, Canada, which is the last remaining piece of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This huge, formerly North America-spanning ice sheet spent much of our current geological epoch shrinking, but began growing around two millennia ago.
The researchers show that this trend would likely have continued, if left to progress on its own. Glaciation comes in cycles, and it seemed to be the time for glaciers to begin retaking some of their lost land. For most of the last...
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