[EnragedParrot]

Quote by: Pale RIder Oddly enough, however, the same cycles keep repeating no matter where the land masses are to be found.

Look at your graph again. Carefully. Tell me if you see any regular cyclic activity.

Actually that is not correct. Computer simulations predict .7 degrees per century. Computer simulations, however, do not match observed data which should, to thinking people, make their predictions suspect.

Two points.

First, climate models have nothing to do with it. That figure is the temperature change we have all ready experienced. It is not projected future change.

Second, models have actually matched observed data exceptionally well. As you can see from the below graph (Taken from the IPCC WG1 AR4, Chapter 9, section 9.4.1.2 Simulations of the 20th Century, figure 9.5), predicted changes are in very good agreement with actual temperature data.



(Observed data is the black line, model projections are the yellow lines, and the red line is a multi-model composite.)

My point is that there isn't even the smallest shred of evidence to support the idea that the exit from the present ice age is in any way different than exits from previous ice ages.

Glacials occur over periods of tens of thousands of years (the major ice ages shown on your graph are, as I said earlier, completely irrelevant to the human race since they occur over periods of hundreds of millions of years). We are currently experiencing the same magnitude of change over a few decades. As I said before, the current change is quite obviously different from past changes.

Interesting that you stop at 6000 years and then bring up 2000 years. Tell me, exactly what caused greater changes during periods in which man was having a minimal impact on anything?

The most important cause of glacial periods are changes in Earth's orbit called the "Milankovitch cycles." These changes in Earth's precession, axial tilt, and eccentricity affect the seasonality of the radiation reaching Earth's surface.

A more thorough discussion of these cycles can be found here and here.

Actually, I was arguing that we are coming out of an ice age because the earth was warming. The serious warming began some 14,000 years ago and continues. Once again I ask; exactly what is surprising about the fact that the warming trend continues?

Same difference. Why is the Earth warming? That's the question here.

Also, Earth is not currently exiting an ice age. As you can clearly see in the below graph (from the Vostok ice core data), Earth has been in an interglacial period for the past few thousand years.