Earth is "on the brink of entering another Ice Age," according to one report.

Pravda, Russia's online newspaper, claims evidence shows the warm, 12,000-year Holocene period will soon end, and the planet will experience a glacial age for the next 100,000 years.

"Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years," according to the report.

Pravda cites three astronomical "Milankovich cycles" as further proof of cooling:

The tilt of the Earth, which varies over a 41,000-year period.

The shape of the Earth's orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years, "separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years."

The Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth's "wobble," which gradually rotates the direction of the earth's axis over a period of 26,000 years.

The astronomical theory of Ice Age causation was first developed by French mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842. English prodigy Joseph Croll expounded on the theory in 1875, and Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovich developed it further in the 1920s and 30s. A trio of scientists, John Imbrie, James Hays and Nicholas Shackleton, published "Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages" in 1976 in which they linked climate data from ocean sediment cores and astronomical Milankovich cycle patterns.

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The report claims the popular global warming trends many scientists have accepted as truth are reversing.

"However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001," it states. "It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures."

As WND recently reported, world temperatures have dropped to levels not seen since 2000. The year 2008 has been documented as the coolest year of this century.

But as global warming critics might expect, Erik Brown, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune Pravda's Ice Age claims make for a "rather sensational story."

"Certainly much of what is discussed regarding Milankovich cycles is essentially correct," he said. "However, a critically important point is that the conditions of the Earth's orbit about the Sun do not return to the exact same settings every 100,000 years. This leads to natural variability in the length of the warm interglacial periods."

Steve Colman, a professor of biochemistry and geochemistry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, told the Star Tribune the report is "just plain silly."

While he said the report "contains a kernel of truth" about Earth probably being "at the end of peak interglacial warmth and heading into the beginning of another Ice Age," he added that "the amount of greenhouse gases we are contributing to the atmosphere, and the rate at which we are doing so, completely dwarfs the natural variations."

 

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