Excerpt from International Decade of Ocean Exploration, Progress Report, April 1976 to April 1977, Vol. 6 On a much longer-term basis, scientists in the Climate, Long-range Investigation, Mapping, and Prediction (olimar) program have used fossils captured in deep-sea sediment cores to describe the main features of the global environment years ago. Drawing on this data, they found that changes in the distribution of solar radiation caused by changes in the path of the Earth's orbit, its tilt, and wobble are the fundamental causes of the waxing and waning of ice ages during the last years. Although these changes are relatively small, they produce major climatic changes. Ignoring the possible effect of man-made influences, the data indicate a coming, extensive glaciation period for the Northern Hemisphere over the next few thousand years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.