Quatrenary Period

The Quaternary Period is classified by the series of glaciations there have been and also the increase and development of what are anatomically modern day humans. The first is basic, but to explain it a bit I would say that this period has had periods of increased and decreased coolness and glaciation. The period we are in now expanded from approximately 2.5 million years ago to today, and only today are we seeing things that were not the norms of previous years. For example, there have, as it seems, always been shifts between glaciers forming in northern Arctic and the southern Antarctic, but in periods of more cooling we see the expansion of these glaciers. Then when the period comes to an end we see the rise in temperature, which lasts roughly 10,000 to 15,000 years, known as interglacial periods. Not all areas though were getting more glacial or less, some areas were characterized by more precipitation or less, and same for snow. The one blip, if you wanna call it that, which we see in the temperature is more recently, where there is a notice of pretty drastic rising in temperature and Carbon Dioxide levels. This period otherwise has been fairly consistent in glacial expanding and retracting, but the fear that many have is that humans affect the environment in such a way that alters climate drastically.

Sources: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/quaternary/
http://qra.org.uk/about/quaternary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary

Figure 1: This is a graph depicting the current Quaternary Period that we are in, spanning over the last 2.5 million years. Notice how the trends of glacial and interglacial periods are distinct with the rising and decreasing temperatures, but with more recent years staying warmer.

http://qra.org.uk/images/quaternary_graph.png

Ice cores and predicting past Climates

Ice cores to me seem to big a common data collection tool for how climate was in the past, especially for the Antarctic and Arctic. Theses cores are collected with a tool to extend down farther into ice structures to get a longer period of climates. These cores leave in them stored gases and other concentrations of sediments that can be used to explain the climate of that region a certain number of years ago. For example, if there is dust and sediment from volcanoes, then they can make a prediction that a volcano erupted a certain number of years in that region where the ice core was collected. Not only do they help tell the temperature, but they also can give us estimates of rainfall and snowfall during certain periods. All of these is good if we ever want to make a real change, because of any finding that shows we are causing the changes in climate that are far off from the norms of the past.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_%28climate%29
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/ice-core

Questions to Raymond Bradely

If i were to ask him two questions they would go as the following:
1. With how much confidence can you tell me that ice cores and other artifacts can be used to accurately measure climate change?
         - I would want to know this, simply because everyone says they can predict the past using ice cores and other cores, but how can anyone be sure if they were never actually there.
and 2. In your personal opinion are human factors truly harming the environment and how much do they deviate from norms?
         - This is important to me, because if he cannot answer the above question then this would at least give me and understanding that they have some facts to say so. Without facts most scientists would not give an opinion or even speak on an issue.

Reponses to short videos

First video - The take home message from this short video is that we can use ice cores to measure tends of temperature and Carbon Dioxide levels before our data collection,and looking at today our Carbon dioxide levels are higher than ever and needs to be noticed if humans are negatively affecting the environment.
SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHzADl-XID8&feature=youtu.be

Second video - For this video i think the biggest point they made was that using chemical make up of cores can help get a fairly good idea of climate before our data collection, and even with the possible error of using cores we still see a rise in temperature now that may be out of the normal range that has been experienced over time.
SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfjkeE-ABGI&feature=youtu.be

Third video - In this video it talks about diatoms, which is basically collected from the soil at the bottom of lakes and water sources. These are used to see changes in theses diatoms over time and how they change when the climate and temperature change, but are focused on seeing over time how the changes are related to climates over time and the big picture.
SOURCE: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-diatom-algae-populations-story-climate.html