Study Links Extinction Cycles to Changes in Earth’s Orbit and Tilt

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bmulligan

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It so happens, the paleontologists say, that variations in the course Earth travels around the Sun and in the tilt of its axis are associated with episodes of global cooling. Their new research on the fossil record shows that the cyclical pattern of these phenomena corresponds to species turnover in rodents and probably other mammal groups as well.

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Dr. van Dam and his colleagues studied the fossil record of rats, mice and other rodents over the last 22 million years in central Spain. The fossils are numerous and show a largely uninterrupted record of the rise and fall of individual species. Other scientists say rodents, thanks to their large numbers, are commonly used in studies of such evolutionary transitions.

As the scientists pored over some 80,000 isolated molars, the most distinct markers of different species, the patterns of turnovers emerged. They seemed often to occur in clusters, which seemed unrelated to biology. And they occurred in cycles of about 2.5 million and 1 million years.

The longer-term cycle, the scientists determined, peaks when Earth’s orbit is closer to being a perfect circle. The short cycle corresponds to shifts in the tilt of Earth’s axis. The “pulses of turnover,” the scientists determined, occurred mainly at times when the different cycles left Earth a colder world.

Previous studies have invoked climate change to explain mammalian species turnover, but they have been challenged or only partly supported by other research.

Uh, oh.....a whole new batch of scientists that David Roberts put on trial and execute for global warming heresy in Nuremburg.
 
As I recall, we're supposed to be heading into another Ice Age according to the cycles, but that's far from the case.
 
http://www.sciencemag.org/

I'm feeling lazy tonight. Somewhere in that magazine archive is a metaanalytic study comparing 980+ previous research articles on global warming (and I thought I had it bad in reviewing the literature!), finding that roughly 4 found anything close to resembling a refutation of man's impact on climate change.

In sports, ladies and gents, that's what we call a 'blowout.' But, I'll leave the article hunting to someone else. Reading Herbert Blumer awaits!
 
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