By Richard (Rick) Mills
Ahead of the Herd

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

The Earth's climate has been continuously changing throughout its history. From ice covering large amounts of the globe to interglacial periods where there was ice only at the poles - our climate and biosphere has been in flux for millennia.

This temporary reprieve from the ice we are now experiencing is called an interglacial period ? the respite from the cold locker began 18,000 years ago as the earth started heating up and warming its way out of the Pleistocene Ice Age.

Approximately every 100,000 years or so our climate warms up temporarily.

These interglacial periods usually last somewhere between 15,000 to 20,000 years before another ice age starts. Presently we're at year 18,000 of the current warm spell.

Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch is best known for developing one of the most significant theories relating to Earths motions and long term climate change.

Milankovitch developed a mathematical theory of climate change based on the seasonal and latitudinal variations in the solar radiation received by the Earth from our Sun - it was the first truly plausible theory for how minor shifts of sunlight could make the entire planet's temperature swing back and forth from cold to warm.

Milankovitch's Theory states that as the Earth travels through space around the sun, cyclical variations in three elements of Earth/sun/geometry combine to produce variations in the amount of solar energy that reaches us. These three elements are: