Ancient Sea Ice Suggests Climate Change Could Occur Even Without Human Intervention

A new study revealed that global warming caused by climate change has been occurring long before man started bombarding the atmosphere with carbon emissions, suggesting that it can naturally happen even without human intervention.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed that a naturally occurring warm-spell during the last interglacial about 130,000 to 115,000 have reduced the Antarctic ice by 65 percent.

"We know that the Earth's climate is changing and that climate models predict a warmer world," said Max Holloway, a researcher at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and lead author of the study, in a statement. What we are not yet sure about is the precise magnitude of future change or the timeline. This is where looking into the past can help."

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from ice cores drilled on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet using computer modeling. Advanced statistical tools were applied to combine the ice core data and climate model simulations to determine the state of the Antarctic sea ice 128,000 years ago.

Their analysis showed that a major retreat in West Antarctic Sea Ice occurred during later during the last interglacial.

According to the report from Express, climate change skeptics is fast to use the study on their accord, saying that the findings only proves that climate change will occur even without man and that man-made climate change is just a fraud.

However, researchers noted that human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, worsen naturally occurring climate change by increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the retreat of ice sheet in the Antarctic hundreds of thousands years ago also proves that the melting ice sheets currently happening in the Arctic will also occur in the Antarctic. United Nations' climate experts forecasts about 60 percent retreat in the Antarctic sea ice by around the year 2200.