The Ice Age Trigger, the Carbon Dioxide Bullet, and the Great Serb

Milutin Milankovitch is another great name in science. He was born in Croatia and was a successful engineer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire just prior to WWI. He enjoyed financial success as an engineer. But, that was not where his heart took him. He turned his passion to the pure sciences. He had studied astronomy and was a mathematical genius. Previous discoveries by other scientists proved there had been ice ages but they did not know what triggered them.

Today, we know that there were at least five great ice ages and we know that carbon dioxide is the most powerful controller of earth’s climate. We also know that, thanks to Milankovitch, variations in the orbit around the sun, combined with the changes in the earth’s axial tilt, are what trigger an ice age. 

Milutin wanted to prove these theories, true or false, by mathematical computation. He believed these slight orbital and tilt variations over very long periods of time were the secrets to our slow climate changes.  In fact, the cycle he discovered is 90,000 to 100,000 years long. The earth cools or warms slightly as we move closer to or farther from the sun, and as the earth tilts the north pole towards or away from the sun. While we think of earth’s annual path around the sun as circular, this is not true. Saturn, Jupiter, and our Moon pull the path of our earth out of a round orbit.

We know, thanks to the work of today’s scientists who have drilled cores in the oceans seabed and into the great ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica, that Milankovitch’s calculations are correct. By analyzing these core layers, scientists can look back 800,000 years. These annual layers confirm his projections. The cycles, the temperatures, and the CO2 concentrations eerily match up. 

When we are coming out of an ice age our orbit and our tilt exposes the North Pole to more sunlight. The oceans are warmed.  Warm water releases carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide in our air traps more heat. Then, century after century, spring comes just a few minutes earlier and fall arrives a few minutes later. The reflective white snow and ice that cover the earth in winter lasts a wee bit less. When the winter season slowly shortens, this uncovers the dark heat absorbing ocean and earth. The reinforcing heat caused by loss of reflective snow and the added carbon dioxide are not the trigger, but they are the larger reinforcing feedback bullet.

Through the centuries these changes have been nearly imperceptible by mankind.  Weather, as we know well here, is extremely variable and very perceptible. It is the topic of daily conversation. But climate change through history has happened so slowly that any advanced society would not have been  able to comprehend it until recently. The clues were first picked up by geologists, but it took a very smart and determined Serb to nail it down. That’s why scientists refer to these cycles, not as the ice ages, but as the Milankovitch Cycles.

Unlike today’s communication that allow us to connect by the click of a mouse, information in the early 1900s spread slowly. Milankovitch had some other impediments too. During WWI the Austrians locked him up for a short time. Thirty years later, in 1941, he finished the compilation of his work the “Canon of Insolation and the Ice Age Problem”. In 1941 his problem was WWII. WWII was in full destruction mode. He was in Nazi occupied territory. This nearly cost him 30 years of work, not to mention his life, in an allied bombing raid. Another handicap slowing the dissemination of his work was that he published in Serbian. It wasn’t until 1958 that the Israeli Program for Scientific Translations made his work widely readable. 

Most recognition of his work came after his death. Today there are craters on the Moon and Mars named after him by the International Astronomical Union. The top award given to earth scientists by the European Geophysical Union is the Milankovitch Medal.  NASA has a publication called, “On the Shoulders of Giants” in which he and 14 other giants of science are recognized. 

Thanks to these giants we know what natural climate change is. It is slow. Even a tortoise moves at the speed of light compared to the coming and going of the massive ice age sheets.  We also know that today’s rapid climate change is not because of natural orbital variations.  It is the result of the breakneck burning of fossil fuels world-wide.

Some people say, “Ah, climate change has always happened!” How true, but how misleading. It is the rate of change that is deadly, and today this change is at least ten times faster than any other time scientists have identified in all of history. 

Curious? If you are having a hard time wrapping your head around this, do not feel like the Lone Ranger. If I took a trip around the sun for every time I have had to read and re-read these explanations, I would be 101 years old. 

Here are better explanations by NASA and Skeptical Science:

1. Our Michigan Tech Professor, Sarah Green explains the details in this YouTube video.
2. Go to the website at “Skeptical Science” and search “co2 lags temperature”. 
3. NASA - This article in remembrance of Helen Sailer,( Vidakovitch).  100% Serb and one of the best people I have ever had the good fortune of knowing. 

Greyson Morrow