David Grinspoon Quote
We’ve been lulled into an illusion of stasis by unusual climate stability during our short time here. If you include the rest of our history as a species (most of it), before we started keeping continuous track of ourselves, you’ll find the story is different. Over longer timescales, Earth’s climate has gone through large swings and, left to its own devices, will continue to do so. Blame it on Jupiter. Climate cycles on Earth are, in large part, a consequence of its existence as one planet in a solar system of many. Graphed over large stretches of Earth time, the complex warming and cooling oscillation of climate reveals polyrhythmic patterns. The major beats occur at intervals of 23,000, 41,000, and 100,000 years. We call these the Milanković cycles, after Milutin Milanković, the Serbian astronomer and mathematician who is considered one of the founders of planetary climatology.
We’ve been lulled into an illusion of stasis by unusual climate stability during our short time here. If you include the rest of our history as a species (most of it), before we started keeping continuous track of ourselves, you’ll find the story is different. Over longer timescales, Earth’s climate has gone through large swings and, left to its own devices, will continue to do so. Blame it on Jupiter. Climate cycles on Earth are, in large part, a consequence of its existence as one planet in a solar system of many. Graphed over large stretches of Earth time, the complex warming and cooling oscillation of climate reveals polyrhythmic patterns. The major beats occur at intervals of 23,000, 41,000, and 100,000 years. We call these the Milanković cycles, after Milutin Milanković, the Serbian astronomer and mathematician who is considered one of the founders of planetary climatology.