I’d like to see the last 100 000 years in better detail
General info:
Periodic Ice Ages —> Glacial-Interglacial Periods
Major Period: —> 100,000 years; 9 degree F decrease
Minor Period: —> 12,000 years; 5 degree F decrease
Smaller Periods??: —> 1,000 years; 3 degree F decrease
We currently are nearing the end end of a small, minor interglacial period
Major Ice Ages: Most of the Planet is Covered Minor Ice Ages: 40 Latitude and Above Little Ice Age: (1000-1850 AD; Irish Potato Famine; Nisqually Glacier)
So the tem. drops 3-5 cel. so instead of a balmy 80* F we now gota freezing 71* F. As to how the mammals could survive these bone chilling temps. i guess we’ll have to ask a passing polar bear or muskox. As for the light perhaps a few plants might be affected,marigolds replaced by oxalis maybe.How the poor mammals could stumble around in this Stigian environment perhaps a raccoon made a flashlight which he sold to the Tiger. If Al had one of those lights he woulda seen that tiger and wouldn’t a got et.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
Are you asking this because of Learning Channel (TLC) program(s) about early man? I wish I’d paid more attention but hope it will just run again in a couple of weeks. I’d like to hear more about volcano TUBA and what it did to early man.
Well, Toba is in some books about early man, but there’s no concensus I guess on the effects. I suppose the effect would have been great, because we were wimps compared to other mammals at the time.
Okay, it doesn’t sound like much put that way, but apparently it’s a lot more complicated. (And in regards the OP, the danger isn’t darkness (probably no noticeable difference) as much as starvation, I believe.)
It’s not only summer days that get cooler - and not only winter nights, for that matter. It apparently isn’t even a case of a given climate range getting evenly cooler; when the climate changes, the average temperature changes, but you can get a situation with, say, slightly warmer summers but MUCH colder winters, or little noticeable daily change but unseasonal cold snaps, etc. Also, precipitation patterns can change, in theory.
I think the real danger with prolonged warming or cooling involves changes in the schedule of the growing seasons. Plants sprout, or flower, or seed, at the “wrong” time (still too much rain, too little time left until the snows, etc.). Or there are “cold snaps” that kill off plant generations that thought they were starting life off properly. Or the plants wait until a certain temperature to flower, and maybe it’s the bees or butterflies that die off - with big consequences the next year. …Eventually, with enough dislocations, year after year, the whole ecosystem degrades or starts to fail.