 | Ancient changes in Earth’s climate system are ‘written in stone’.
The nature and properties of dust and ice accumulations, lake and
ocean sediments, the size, shape and position of dune fields and
river terraces, sequences of fossil plant and animal assemblages,
ancient shorelines, growth lines in corals, tree rings and carbonate
cave formations, and in the archaeological and the written records
of ancient societies all contain elements of the story. |
The fascinating Snowball Earth theory has been the subject of great controversy in the geoscientific community for some 15 years. Professor Paul Hoffman, a specialist in Proterozoic Earth history and an early proponent of the theory, gives his state of the art account.
While the public gets the impression that there is a simple relationship between global warming and sea level rise, often underwritten by geoscientists with inadequate knowledge, it can be argued that sea level changes are a result of many factors. This makes the prediction of future trends difficult and unreliable.
Long, undisturbed sedimentary sequences from African lakes are necessary to
understand
the Earth’s climate history. From the same sediments we may also get
a clue to human migration out of Africa.
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