Milankovic Cycle And Climate Change

Over and over again, the scenes of ice melting at the poles never go unnoticed. In fact, day by day, campaigns on how to save the melting ice sheets are gaining grounds day by day. That is an excellent effort for those involved, thanks to their worries.

But all along, there is one thing that has been a bother to my understanding of human-induced climate change. Yes, we have sped up the process, but all efforts we are doing now is just postponding the inevitable- finally we shall reach that point where nature takes its course and ultimate warming of our planet Earth takes place.

Milankovic cycle is the cyclic variation of the Earth's orbit distance from the sun, also called astronomical theory of climate change.

The last ice age, which occured approximately 10,000 years ago has been well documented. The potential effects are well known. But what we have failed to gather enough documentation how the situation was prior to the last ice age. According to the Milankovic cycle, the Earth undergoes periodic cooling and warming depending on its orbit's distance from the sun. What this means that just over 10,000 years ago, the Earth's orbit was very far away from the sun, leading to the great ice age ever documented by humans. Now we are moving away from that period, meaning that the Earth's orbit is getting closer to the sun. In the next 40,000 years or so the Earth will be closest to the sun. Logically, the Earth is warming up, or is heading towards that period when it is supposed to be warming up. It is unfortunate that this period coincides with the time when we humans have made rapid industrial advances and are spewing enormous chunks of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

If we look at the issues of climate change critically, slowing down the rate of climate change is just postponding the inevitable. We shall finally get to that moment when the Earth's orbit is closest to the sun. What shall we do then? Some may argue that instead of spending too much time trying to come up with cleaner fuels, it would be of importance to come up with long term strategies on how the future generations shall cope with extreme weather conditions, especially the unprecedented warming of the planet Earth. And I think, too, that is what we should be paying attention to. I am not saying that we abandon the cleaner fuel policy. No. It is just that we need to understand that, in fact, what we call climate change is not actually change but variability. The only difference is that this variability spans over a long period of time that no particular generation can notice it. All we say is that climate has changed.

However, the responsibility lies with each and every person, to understand that even though the planet is finally heading to a warm phase we ought not to speed it up. The future, even though not entirely, is partly determined by what we do and the decisions we make today.