Here is the link to the published paper in Science. (H/T Watts Up With That via ECM)

Excerpt from the press release:

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of researchers says it has largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth’s rotation and axis.

In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth’s rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.

The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years.

“Solar radiation was the trigger that started the ice melting, that’s now pretty certain,” said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU. “There were also changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean circulation, but those happened later and amplified a process that had already begun.”

That should be the end of global warming alarmism, but it won’t be, because this whole brouhaha isn’t about science. It’s about money and power. The power to control other people. The power to control the free market. So it doesn’t matter if solar radiation cycles cause global warming as a matter of fact, because facts don’t decide here.

Here’s a helpful quote from the neo-Darwinian George Gaylor Simpson that ECM sent me from Uncommon Descent:

The verdict of paleontologists is practically unanimous: almost all agree in opposing [Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis that the continents used to be one land mass and have since drifted apart]… The fact that almost all paleontologists say that the paleontological data oppose the various theories of continental drift should, perhaps, obviate further discussion of this point … It must be almost unique in scientific history for a group of students admittedly without special competence in a given field thus to reject the all but unanimous verdict of those who do have such competence.

George Gaylord Simpson, “Mammals and the Nature of Continents”, American Journal of Science 241 (1943): 1-31, p. 2.

Yes, there was a time when the consensus of scientists was against the theory of continental drift. Something to keep in mind.