Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes: Data, Spectral Analysis and Mechanisms (Springer-Praxis Books in Environmental Sciences) [Hardcover]

Unfortunately this book is very expensive, which will limit its circulation. It is essentially a textbook for graduate students. and contains many graphs and significant mathematical equations. Very fortunately, the first chapter, "Brief Introductions to ... ", is available on the author's website. It contains facts about the past climate on the earth which are essential in order to put the proper perspective on the current global warming controversy.

As an example, how many articles on global warming have you read that point out that in the past 2500 years, it has been warmer than it is today -- not once, but six times! Our present warming is actually a rebound from the Little Ice Age that gripped the earth starting in 1200 and lasting to 1900. Today we still have not reached the warm temperatures during the days when the Greeks and Romans flourished. (See Fig. 1.2 of Chapter 1 in this book)

Even more jolting is the graph (Fig. 1.3) that shows the length of the current warm period the earth is experiencing -- called an interglacial. We have been warm for 10,000 years. But if you go back another 2000 years, the temperature was 10 to 15 F degrees colder than it is today. To find a period comparable to the present day, you must go back 100,000 years. Or, 200,000 years, or 300,000 years, or 400,000 years, or half a million years! And all but one (500,000 years ago) of these warm periods were significantly shorter than the 10,000 years of warmth the earth is currently experiencing.

Muller's main goal is to try to establish whether astronomical causes are the basis for the variation in the earth's temperature, and specifically, what features of the earth's orbit through space are involved. Most pronounced in the past million years is the 100,000 year cycle described above, which in the past has been attributed to "insolation" -- the varying amount of heat the earth receives due to eccentricies in its orbit around the sun.

The major part of the book is devoted to spectral analysis of temperature data over the ages. It is very technical, as you would expect of a graduate text. Chapter 4 is on "Climate Proxies" like oxygen isotopes, Deuterium, Carbon-13, and sea floor records. "Mechanisms, Models and Theories" to describe the variation of the Earth's temperature are discussed in Chapter 6. In the crucial Chapter 8, problems with our present understanding are reviewed, especially in regard to the specific reason for the 100,000 year cycle, Muller presents a plausible alternate explanation to the usual insolation explanation. That the cycle is astronomically driven, there is no doubt. But as Muller points out, the details are not correctly explained simply by insolation.

This book definitely brings up more questions than answers. This is in contrast to much of the current "climate change" literature, which reminds me of the old saying: "You can find plenty of people who know all the answers. It's the questions that confuse them." This book addresses the basic questions of climate change honestly, perceptively, and diligently. It is from work such as this that true progress will be made in the field of climate change and -- hopefully, before the next Ice Age comes (any century now!) -- control.

I very much enjoyed reading this book. There were several reasons for that:

1. The book was free of jargon - for the most part - and what was there was necessary for understanding the argument

2. The mathematical preliminaries had been kept to a minimum (Calculus, Elementary Differential Equations, Fourier analysis, and Elementary statistics).

3. The main threads of the arguments were very clearly stated and careful attention was paid to the methodological issues of data analysis of pale-climate data.

4. The book carefully stipulated its data sources (and types) for the paleo-climate, the locations at which they were gathered, their reliability as proxies for various features of the paleo-climate, , their time span and their overall validity.

5. I especially enjoyed learning about these records and how they had been used to analyze the paeo-climate. That is because, over the years, I had watched multiple documentaries that showed how they had been collected but had never seen the how they had been used and analyzed before.

6. Lastly, the book is very well written and quite accessible to people with technical maturity in Physics, Astronomy, Atmospheric Sciences, and Engineering.

The main thesis of the book is that the occurrence of the ice ages is a feature of climate of Earth that is forced (driven) by astronomical causes.

Once this paradigm is established & motivated (Astronomy - Chapter 2), the authors proceed to discuss the mathematical methodology (Spectral Analysis - Chapter 3), the data (Climate Proxies - Chapter 4), the analysis of that data (Time, Scale, Tuning - Chapter5) ;which, in my opinion, is the heart of the book, the various mechanisms and theories (Mechanisms, Models, and Theories - Chapter 6), their own theory (Accretion Climate Models - Chapter 7), and the evidence for the theories discussed in the book (Evidence - Chapter 8).

Chapter 9 - Status of Our Understanding - is a summary of our understanding circa 2001.
The data clearly indicates periodic episodes of glaciation followed by relatively brief inter-glacial warming periods. Regardless of the mechanism of the ice ages (authors make a convincing case for the major contribution to glaciation coming from orbital inclination) it is clear that the current warming of the Earth is taking place during another one such interglacial period.

This book does not discuss contemporary global warming controversy but makes it clear periodic periods of global warming have been a natural occurrence that have preceded human civilization.

Regrettably, this is an unfinished story as a complete theory of ice ages - with small number of adjustable parameters - remains to be developed. There is a lot of work to be done by researchers to elucidate the contribution (magnitude) of various possible astronomical factors (eccentricity, precessions, insolation, obliquity, and orbital inclination) to the Earth's climate and the precise mechanisms of those factors (such as reduction of stratospheric conductivity due to accreting cosmic dust unto Earth; causing an increase in the albedo of clouds).

I do highly recommend this books as a beautiful - but unfinished - scientist detective story to all students of hard-sciences who wish to acquaint themselves with ice-ages and gain a leg up on the today's burning topic of Global Warming.

It is not possible to understand the present or future climate unless scientists can account for the enormous and rapid cycles of glaciation that have taken place over the last million years, and which are expected to continue into the future. A great deal has happened in the theory of ice ages over the last decade, and now widely accepted that ice ages are driven by changes in the Earths orbit. The study of Ice Ages of ice ages is very inter-disciplinary.

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