A New Greenland Ice Core in the offing

At www.physorg.com/print199550264.html we learn that a drilling team has reached bedrock in Greenland after 5 years of boring through 2.5km of solid ice. What they want are sample from the core dating between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago during what is known as the Eemian warming (the last inter-glacial period). It is thought temperatures were a few degrees warmer than they are now so they want to know to what extent the Greenland ice cap shrank. They know that sea levels were 5m higher in the Eemian and it is assumed this was because glaciers and ice sheets had shrunk by a considerable margin. Therefore, this research is interesting on tow fronts, i) what parallels can be ddrawn with moder global warming and how it might develop, and ii) how might it impinge on Ice Age theory. Is the 100,000 year cycle really a record of the growth and retraction of ice sheets or is it a reflection of something much more basic, a pulse within the solar system (see earlier post on Rhodes Fairbridge on the role of Jupiter and Saturn as the Sun orbits around its barycentre). A lot of unknowns might emerge from this ice core – but there will be a strong AGW commitment as a result of funding demands).