Does anyone really know how big the polar caps should be??

If Al Gore lived 50,000 years ago, would he would be going around saying that the polar caps are melting? That we should all stop the melting process. They were melting and then 1642 some Dutch settlers decided that where the melting happened was a nice place to live and today we have New York City. I mean, ironically, if it wasn't for the Polar caps melting....Hillary wouldn't be a Senator.

For ice to move from the poles to New York City and back to where it is now, caused a lot of "damage" to eco system. How do we know if what is happening now is not part of Mother Nature's plan??

The size of it isn't the issue. It's the rate of change that worries scientists. Most living things don't do too well with abrupt changes.

Do scientist really know the speed of past changes? This could be ignorance on my part(as i am sure someone will not so tactfully point out) What is going on with tree rings. Anytime I ever hear someone talking about finding old trees or whatnot they always say that you can tell about the environment from the tree rings. If the year was wetter/dryer...good growth/bad growth... Is "global warming" causing longer growing periods or is "global warming" having a negative effect on tree rings, or are the trees still showing a fluctuation of growth?

Is their a patten of linear growth/removal or has the environment always marched to her own tune?

Point is, we don't.
Vikings setteled greenland and iceland in recorded history, and only recently has enough ice pack melted to reveal settlements.
The "little ice age" also occured in recorded history and caused a major die-off of european plants, animals and humans during the middle ages.

8 to 10 thousand years ago, the area I reside in was covered by a huge inland lake, temperatures were more moderate, and several native peoples thrived. Their petroglyphs are everywhere, some well known above the still visible high water mark.

Currently, a large number of wolly mamoths are being discovered in siberia. Some have been found before, but the melting of the tundra is revealing more-----found to have died suddenly with mouths and stomaches still containing the plants they were grazing on.

Note that point "the plants they were grazing on". Those plants currently no longer exist in the area.


Several climate cycles are known, and some errata like the little ice age are still a mystery. What is fact is that the interglacials---warm periods like we are in now, are fleetingly short, in geological history.

We reside on a mostly cold planet with brief periods (geologically) of warmth.
It would be exceedingly foolish, in my opinion, to attempt to hasten the return of the ice.

As to your question, they are as big as they are supposed to be. I would guess that those frozen mamoths saw a much more rapid climate change than we ever will, no matter how much plant food-----read CO2---we manage to pump out.