Thematic Essay On Climate Change

Introduction

When looking at the Earth, it becomes readily apparent that cycles are an important theme. Earth is a closed system. Meaning only energy can pass into and out of its atmosphere with the exception with few meteorites that enter and the manmade objects we eject. Earth has the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the rock cycles and Earth itself cycles around the sun. It is easily understandable then that Earth climate also undergone many cyclic changes from one extreme to another within its vast history. In this paper, the focus in on the climate events that occurred from 65 Ma to present day Earth (Cenozoic era), some ways in which this information about climate can be collected and possible implications for the future

(2001) gave a comprehensive outline of the major climate events that have occurred during the last 65 Ma of Earth’s history as well as describing the forces which propel said changes in climate. They show how many of the changes that occur to Earth climate can be attribute to Earth’s tectonic plates as well as Earth’s orbit, both of which are continually moving and changing. Some of these change are predictable which allows for a prediction into future climate events, but some events are random and cannot be predicted, though insight can be gained by finding similar conditions in the past and relating them to present times The paper also describes how the advancement in deep-sea core and isotope technology has allowed for the studying of event further in the past, events that were once considered too far into the past to ever

Analysis of these soils allowed for inference on earths past temperature, precipitation and CO2 concentrations. The paper described the features of soil, soil structure, soil classification, soil horizons and soil minerology and how all these features helped in giving insight into past climates. The paper also emphasized that interest in paleopedology is relativity new and therefore, while there is a lot of information available, there is much more that needs to be discovered and