ANTHROPOCENE ERA OF GLOBAL WARMING
THE DRIVING FORCE OF CIVILIZATION
The genetic split between Neandertals and Homo Sapiens occurred
some 200,000 years ago, and high levels of creative intelligence have
since existed in every population on Earth. These creative entrepreneurs
have been the intermittent agents of change who now have generated
a sustainable astonishingly-advanced technology-based civilization on
Planet Earth. However, a unique set of conditions were essential for this
remarkable phenomenon to occur. It has only taken 5,000 years
An essential factor has been the intermittent onset of periods of global warming, which
have been thoroughly documented by redundant data from Antarctic and Greenland ice
cores, (1) from Sargasso Sea sediment cores, (2) from, from stalagmites found in Chinese
caves, (3) from tree rings and from radio carbon dating of artifacts . Two patterns have
emerged. One involves intermittent ice-age ending cycles every 100,000 years for the last
800,000 years (Figure I). A second involves a 500 year cycle of warming and cooling ,
which began 5,000 years ago (Figure II.) In each warming stage of the 100,000 year
pattern, rudimentary civilizations redundantly re-invented similar tools, dikes and
charcoal drawings in caves, but these were lost when the next ice age set in.
FIGURE I
There were few people alive in those periods (none burning fossil fuels). Instead, these
100,000 year cycles are solar-driven and are coincident with the elliptical orbit of the
Earth around the Sun. The Earth cycles about 3 million miles closer to the Sun every
100,000 years and the increased intensity of radiation of about 1.3 watts per square meter
on earth, also warms the oceans, which then in a secondary effect, releases dissolved
carbon dioxide and methane (over ten times more than currently being generated). (4)
However, as the Earth cycles away from the Sun, another ice age results. The most recent
of these 100, 000 year cycles ended about 6,000 years ago and we should now be in
another Ice Age.
-2The same Antarctic ice core, Sargasso Sea and other data have also identified a second
pattern of warming and cooling which began about 5,500 years ago. During each of the
250 year rainy-warming stages in this 500 year pattern, increased solar radiation warmed
the oceans releasing great surges of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, (a secondary
effect). Remarkably, in each warming stage, a major civilization also emerged, but then
declined in the follow-on cooling stage. Each cooling stage has always been accompanied
by serious droughts and starvation. (Figure II)
FIGURE II
500 YEAR PATTERN OF GLOBAL WARMING AND COOLING
1,000
500
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
B.C
B.C.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
A.D.
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Most remarkably, for the first time in the history of the planet, the
cooling stages have been short enough in this pattern, that the
cultural advances made in each warming stage were not lost, but were
able to be recaptured and further advanced in the next. The result has
been a cumulative but intermittent rise of our current astonishinglyadvanced technology-based civilization.
Starting 5,500, ago, there have been 9 of these warming and cooling patterns including
the current one which started about 250 years ago in the mid 1700’s. This stage now may
have peaked and the cooling phase may have begun. NASA and other data show that
there has been no statistical evidence of warming since about 1996. (5) Unfortunately, all
previous cooling stages over the last 5,000 years have been accompanied by serious
droughts and starvation. The 1,000 A.D. Medieval period of warming ended in a 100 year
drought starting in the late 1100’s Five hundred years later, the 1500 A.D. Renaissance
-3warming period also ended in a “Little Ice Age” when the Venetian Canals and the
Thames froze over, Swiss villages were crushed by descending glaciers and it was
possible to walk across the ice from Staten Island to Manhattan.
Gallileo reported that the sunspots had abruptly disappeared, but did not live
to see the follow-on cooling period and the concurrent measured declines in both
the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar wind and reduced solar radiation “This exact
pattern is now repeating today” (6)
.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUNND
In the first great warming period 5,400 years ago, three major world civilizations began
to incubate, one on the Yellow River in China, one on the Nile River in Egypt and one
on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what now is Iraq. Many others have come and gone
in subsequent periods of warming, (Easter Island the Mayan civilization, the Ottoman
Empire), but only those three civilizations managed to survive the following 3000 years,
through six 500 year periods of global warming and cooling, to the beginning of the Dark
Ages.
In both Egypt and China great dynasties rose and fell, synchronous with these successive
periods of warming and cooling. Each succeeding dynasty made remarkable advances
over a preceding dynasty. In Iraq, the Sumerians built some 31 city states, which then
were conquered 3000 years ago (1000 B.C.), by the Babylonians to create the first
Western Empire. In each subsequent 500 year period of warming since then, another
major western civilization has risen and then collapsed accompanied by droughts and
starvation. The Greek civilization followed the Babylonian Empire (in 500 B.C.) and then
declined as the climate cooled. The Roman Empire followed in the following period 500
year period of warming and cooling, only to slowly disintegrate into the Dark Ages.
Remarkably, the Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman cultural
advances had been spread by the Phoenecians and other sea-faring
people throughout the Mediterranean, independent (for the first time
ever) of rivers that periodically dry up. As a result, the Western-based
Judeo-Christian culture (alone) survived the Dark Ages to continue
to evolve and to dominate global civilization
During the long period of the Dark Ages, there were no sustained periods of global
warming. The 500 A.D period apparently was aborted by volcanic eruptions which
“darkened the sky.” But the pattern resumed in 1000 A.D with the emergence of the great
Medieval-period, when many great cathedrals were built. It was a period much warmer
than now. About two thirds of the ice and snow melted on Greenland at this time with no
records of rising ocean waters. The Danes farmed Greenland for two hundred years, until
the next cooling period set in. (Greenland is now massively covered with ice and snow).
-4Since the Medieval Period, two additional warming periods have occurred at 500 year
intervals. In 1500 A.D, the Renaissance period generated a historically-unprecedented
explosion of advanced learning in the arts and sciences, enabled by invention of the
printing press. The current period of warming 500 years later, has seen an exponential
explosion of advanced technology. This phenomenon has been enabled by the Internet
and some 6 billion cell phones in developing countries. Capital and information now flow
with the speed of light anywhere in the world, by-passing bureaucratic, regulatory,
language and cultural barriers, progressively-undermining despotic control of many lives
for over thousands of years.
SUMMARY
The evolution of civilization has been long, tedious and uncertain of success in its
intermittent but exponential rise. Fortunately, the remarkable advancements made in each
warm-rainy stage were not lost because the follow-on cooling stages were sufficiently
short that advances made in one were re-captured and further advanced in the next. The
latent entrepreneurial talent needed is always present in every population.
U.S. help in recent decades has become essential to the further advance of developing
countries. Protected by two great oceans over the most recent 250 years of warming, The
North American continent has been allowed to morph from an agrarian to an industrial
society, just in time to twice save civilization (at the 11th hour) from the barbarians.
The attack on Pearl Harbor forced historically-unprecedented advances in almost
every scientific discipline to win that war. It inadvertently thrust the U.S. into an
un-sought global position of military, economic and technological dominance also
unique in history..
“Rescue is robbery” but America must now again carry an unsolicited additional burden
of assistance to a world on fire. American leadership will be essential in helping
developing nations, now in turmoil, to accelerate their own economic development,
leading eventually to development of a middle class, which alone can sustain forms of
democratic governance. Global droughts, if they now continue to expand, will multiply
the difficulties. The world has seven billion people to feed.
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References
1. D. R. MacAyeal, private research correspondence, Professor of Physics,
Department of Physics, University of Chicago; A.V. Federov, P.S. Denkins et al,
The Ploocene Paradox, Science, Vol. 312, June 9, 1996, pp1485-9; Science,
-5-\
June 6, 2006 pp1454; J. Vouzel eta al, “Orbital and Millennial Antarctic
Variability Over the Last 800,000 Years,: Science, Vol. 317, August 10, 2007,
pp 793-6.
2. Lloyd Keigwin, “The little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period in the
Sargasso Sea,” Science, Vol. 274, No. 5292, Nov. 1996, pp1503-8; “Moern
Global Cooling”, C3 Headlines@gmail.com; “Feedback FromVariations in
Earth’s Radiant Energy, Balancing Remote Sensing,” Science, Vol 3, No. 20115,
pp1603-13.
3. Peruvian Stalagmites Hold Clues to Climate Change.” Science May 6, 2009.
4. “The Missing Sunspots; Is This the Big Chill,“ David Whutehead, The Sun: A
Biography, (John Wiley); http:/www.independent.co.uk.news/science/themissing-sunspotsis-this-the-big-chill.html Changes in Earth’s Orbit Connected to
Climate Change, Nature, Geoscience, DOI.10, 1638/n, Geo 825; Lottaine
Lisieaki, Science News, April 6, 2010
5. Gregory F. Feget, “Eartb on the Brink of an Ice Age” Pradva.ru/science.earth/1101-2009/106922-earth_ice_ag
6. IBID #4
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D. Bruce Merrifield, PhD
Former V.P. Technology Occidental Petroleum Co. Former
Undersecretary U.S. Department of Commerce,Technology
and Economic Affairs, Reagan Administration; Chaired
Professor of Management, Emeritus, Wharton School of
Business, University of Pennsylvania, Entrepreneurship.
Web Page Pridco.net