What is Digg?77 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -30/+76That's impossible! Don't they know that the world used to be covered in snow and that human-caused global warming has turned the world into a moderately-temperatured hellhole? How dare you suggest that the planet goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling!!!
- warrenfalk, on 10/12/2007, -9/+40Both wrong, everyone knows the the tropical climate was 4,000 years ago, and then Noah's flood caused the ice caps. Of course.
- jofer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29You guys are misunderstanding both the timescale of tectonics and the location where the core was taken.
First off, it's the arctic, not the antarctic. Antarctica has moved relatively quickly, compared to the arctic region.
55 Ma (Mega annum: Million years ago) is not really that long ago at all compared to what most of you are talking about (breakup of Pangea). The core they drilled was near the North pole at 55 Ma. It's still near there now. Plates don't all move at the same rates. We know what's been going on tectonically for the last 55 million years reasonably well. Furthermore, we can roughly tell the latitude of a sample based on the orientation that magnetic sediment grains took as they were being depositited. Admittedly, this can be very imprecise, but in some cases (not this one) it's all there is. So, the sediments in question were near the North Pole at 55 Ma. These things are considered. I haven't had a chance to read the actual article (in Nature) yet, but I'm sure they tested the paleolatitude of the sample independent of the paleoclimate data.
We've known that the Cretaceous was much much warmer than it was today, and the Tertiary (the age of this core) as well, but we don't have that much data from the Arctic, so just how warm it was comes as a bit of a suprise.
This article doesn't really have much to do with global warming, but it's what people are discussing now. So... Next up, climatology isn't the sham some folks seem to think it is. Yes, the Earth has been both warmer and cooler in the past. If you want to see the extremes, look up snowball earth (on the cold end) and the climate during the Cretaceous (on the hot end). No, climatology isn't based on 35 years of data. We may only have a couple hundred years of instrumental data, but that's not all there is. There are a number of proxies for local temperature and rainfall, even a few for average global temperature. No, they're not incredibly precise, but they are still accurate.
Like it or not, there is both a strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature and a reason for this to occur. CO2 seems to be a primary climate driver on several (but not all) time scales. We know humanity is changing the global carbon cycle in a number of ways. We also know that the climate is a highly nonlinear system, and a small change in some factors at the wrong time can yield major changes in climate. So why play with fire? Our current lifestyle is unstainable on a number of levels, what's so wrong with changing it?
Anyway, enough ranting... - RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -10/+33This goes along with the theory of plate tectonics. The area of the arctic that was once 74 degrees... etc - wasn't located where it currently is. There have been five or six super landmasses where all of the continents bunch up into one pile, and then split up.
I wouldn't exactly call this discovery news. It's printed in my four-year-old Geology 101 textbook... - jofer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Even if you take away the water, the ocean basins are fundementally different than the continents. Besides, why are they so low, and the continents so high? Also, plate tectonics doesn't depend on the shape of the continents. Look a a global map sometime. The pattern of ocean trenches, mid-ocean ridges, and mountain ranges is rather striking. Look at a global map of earthquakes. They really do occur along distinct boundaries. That all supports it (well, seafloor spreading and subduction--what drives tectonics), but when you finally start looking at the actual geology, it becomes overwhelming. I won't ramble on too long here, but if you're honestly interested, look it up online. The evidence speaks for itself.
- twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17The Mammoth died while eating, in the winter, and froze overnight.
Or, Sara Lee developed a method of quick-freezing Mammoth for microwave entrees, more than 10,000 years before the fishstick. - wademan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16how do they explain an 800,000 year climate change with evidence of a quick freeze like the mammoths in Siberia.
"The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found in its mouth and undigested food in its stomach. This was no gradual event--it had to be sudden! And the event was worldwide. The mammoths of Siberia became extinct about the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska and the bison of Siberia ended simultaneously. The same is true of the Asian elephants and the American camels. The cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres. If the coming of glacial conditions was gradual, it would not have cause the extinctions, because the various animals could have simply migrated to where conditions were better. What is seen here is total surprise, and uncontrolled violence (Leonard, 1979). " - tyho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"...and shows the scienctist dont even accept other scienctist when they discover something that everyone expects to be there."
Good advice for you all. Doctors and scientists are not gods, they are fallible humans. Science is not a religion. Science changes from day to day. What is found to make you healthy today will cause cancer in another study.
People that get all worked up about every new theory make me chuckle. - poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -18/+274000 years ago? That's wrong, the Bible says the world was created shortly after Reagan left office.
- haxx4, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Yes, ever heard of Pangea? This is not new.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12if scienctist ignored the vast and extreme changes the earth has undergone in its history before humans, everyone including me would laugh them out of the building as that is NOT science. Sciecntist dont conviently leave ***** out.
Most of the time you have to sumbit to a peer reviewed journel, most sciectist fear this step, you know the dupe natzis and grammer natzis are nothing when people have real intelligence. As soon as you publish to a pear reviewed journel you have thousands of egotistic pompus geniouses doing nothing but trying to prove you wrong. YOu cant leave out something so simpe that some lay man comes by and says hey did you think the sun was heating up? You have to come up with something much more vague to catch them unaware.
Back when the neutrino was discovered... theory said we should discover a particle at 1.6-1.9 million electron volts. SO we built a huge particle accelerator that had that power. And a guy found a particle at 1.7 million volts (mind you they come at specific energys and not found at all energies)> you think the world would celebrate, he proved theory. But no, they told him to experiment again. So here did it several times and kept finding the particle. YOu think it would end there. ut now he has to publish to the peer reviewed journel and other people try to mimic your experiment and much much more people take the path of trying to disprove him. Several years later it was finally accepted that he had found the neutrino and he won the nobel prize. I forget names but the stroy is correct and shows the scienctist dont even accept other scienctist when they discover something that everyone expects to be there. - dhakbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Bingo.
It is important to note that tectonic movement takes a _long_ time. Even 55 million years is a relatively short period of time in terms of plate tectonics. This wasn't a piece of pangea near the equator; it was in the arctic. - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Ok, let's try R'ing TFA next time:
"What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
...Also it shows that what happened 55 million years ago was proof that too much carbon dioxide -- more than four times current levels -- can cause global warming, said another co-author Henk Brinkhuis at Utrecht University.
Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen, who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed that "there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can throw us to these conditions.""
No one's ever claimed that there aren't natural cycles of warming and cooling, so there goes your straw man. The present claim is that we are greatly accelerating and altering those cycles by our own activities, which causes much more severe and sudden disruption for more species, including ourselves. - gregmo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Why don't these articles include graphics? I mean a map would be nice. Even just a scene from the Donkey Kong N64 game would nice or something simple.
- mpancha, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12I've always said this in global warming debates, glad someone else finally shares the same view.
- Optimus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Off the top of my head: The spread of disease, more powerful storms, increased droughts, changes in weather patterns our infrastructure relies on. Read more.
- twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7There you have it, kmoore has proved why you should stay AWAKE in highschool science class!
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7You know what man, you're right. I have no idea why I let myself get worked up when I read these same comments over and over again.
An issue like this is never going to be resolved on a place like Digg, where people leave drive-by comments shouting their opinion (or more likely, some cliche they read on a bumper sticker). This is a great site for finding interesting news, but pretty much the worst place for finding intelligent debate.
I've got to learn to stop reading the comments on any story about climate change, iPods, or Nintendo. - jofer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Late edit: Ignore what I said about antarctica moving quickly as compared to the arctic... I wasn't thinking! Rest of it still applies, though.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The ideal tropical paridise, complete with man-eating 30x normal size alligator ancestors.
- FuManchu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6In addition to any tectonic plate movement, there is also the possibility that the entire crust has shifted several times in the past.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleomagnetism
http://www.poleshift.org/Charles_Hapgood.html
http://members.tripod.com/~Glove_r/Hapgood.html - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12I dont think Antarctica got cold and dry until about 45 million years ago when it broke apart from Australia right?
- Rayonic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@danielwsmithee:
Or the Brazillian government can just pocket the aid money and the cutting of the Amazon rain forest will continue unabated. This is what happens with 99% of aid money that goes to third-world countries. - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -16/+21Which makes the entire global warming issue a big question mark. How can you base your science on only the last 35 years of data? How do you take into account that the core sample you are taking today may have been thousands of miles away in longitude and latitude from where it is today!
- VorpalK, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Beware, though: if you google "frozen mammoths," you get a very boring list of pro- and con- Creationist web pages."
Not to mention more than a couple Eskimo pr0n sites. - fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4An article on a prehistoric climate and all the global warming misinformation and layman scepticism gets posted again. Interesting as this may be, all these comments are dupes.
- lahuard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6http://www.flem-ath.com/del1.htm
This has been debated for a while. This person explains how Atlantis is located in Antartica. I spent an hour reading it and it was definatly worth it. - fredrated, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"That's the funny thing about the religion of science. Its always right today and wrong tomorrow, then right,..."
Science is the process of making better and better models that in turn make better and better approximations to observation. The answers are never perfect, unlike the claims of religion, just better and better over time. The people that need exact, perfect answers need religion, science is for the rest of us. - danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This is an interesting conversation. I kind of see both sides to the debate on global warming. The jury is definitely still out though as the main studies of global warming have just commenced. Read about the A-train (a constellation of satellites) that NASA and NOAA has just launched and completed this year. While many scientists believe global warming. The core government scientists have withheld judgment until we get data back from these satellites.
While I do think that the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to global warming and desertification, a much larger influence is the loss of the rain-forests. I am afraid the only true way to stop the path we are on is send lots of aid, and alternative energy to Brazil to keep the rain forests. - Edmundo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5So with all of this global warming, the North Pole will be new hot spot. I better buy some land up in Alaska and Greenland now why it's still cheap. I guess that'll be the place to be for Memorial Day and Labor Day. Newport, RI is out!!! Point Barrow, Alaska is in!!!
- sokz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Sure, but most people don't think simple survival is fine and dandy.. imagine you and your family living on the coast or in Venice where water levels are rising and you had to displace, etc.. would you be so keen?
- Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Each 1 degree increase in nighttime temperatures causes up to a 10% reduction in grain yields, which is not something we need when we have no other means to feed the planet. Desertification promises to be a big problem, take for example China. There are also concerns that large quantities of fresh water flowing from the polar ice caps could disrupt the Atlantic conveyor belt which keeps Europe warm and moist (I know, "***** Europe," right?).
And of course there have been natural warming and cooling trends in the history of our planet. However, humans, and human civilization in particular, have arisen in an extremely stable climate period, of which we have taken full advantage. The rapidity of the warming with which we are now confronted threatens to upset delicate balances in our ecosystem....but naw, you're right, ***** it, who gives a *****? - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4349133.stm
Some arguments over "hockey stick" graph - FuManchu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4In addition, this theory accounts for the dozens of flash-frozen mammoths that have been thus far discovered. Different time frame than this Arctic Ocean core sample study, natch.
Beware, tho: if you google "frozen mammoths," you get a very boring list of pro- and con- Creationist web pages. - drog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6That isn't the worst case scenario. What you describe is probably a best case scenario. The problem is that climate is such a complex system that we don't know what would happen. If the gulf stream stopped it would send northern Europe into an ice age. Tropical diseases could spread to new parts of the globe, and who knows what species would become extinct. Also, the coasts usually have large population centers, since they can easily trade. NYC and LA, the two biggest cities in the country, are on the coasts. I live in Seattle, the biggest city in Washington, which is on the coast. Imagine how hard it was to evacuate New Orleans and then remember that this is the richest country in the world. How the hell would India evacuate Calcutta. Where would the Dutch evacuate to?
Not to mention all the traditional problems with mass migrations, disease, starvation, etc. - elpayo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Not to mention that the 'bid deal' with global warming is that at a certain point it may become runaway and turn the whole Earth into another Mars. Basically, there's a bunch of methane gas trapped in frozen slush and tundra, and if that melts you have a greenhouse gas that's 20x stronger than CO2. But we'll all be dead by then so ***** it, buy another SUV.
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/02/01/global_warming_methane_could_be_far_worse_than_carbon_dioxide.htm - OutcastJiob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Look, I don't usually cry "old news," but. . . .this was in my elementary school science textbooks. They were talking about palm fronds being found in Arctic ice. I was under the impression this was fairly well-known.
- chamel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Don't tell Al Gore, you will crush his purpose in life..
- AllanH, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"Global warming is no big deal."
Stating something to this effect is kind of like me stating that the Boston Bruins are going to win the Stanley Cup this year. I don't watch hockey and have only an elementary grasp of it's rules and statistical methods.
People who are uninformed about _any_ issue should refrain from making statements about it. The only thing that you accomplish is to spread mis-information; and that is more dangerous than your obvious ignorance is to begin with.
If you don't study climate change, if you haven't read the basic literature that is available, then please, for all of our sakes, keep your fingers off the keyboard, except to type "anthropogenic global warming" into google and then just _do some reading_. Click around. There is _a lot_ of information available to you. Look for the science sites; the authoritative stuff. If, after you've read the data and have thought objectively about the situation, you still feel the need to state that "global warming won't be a bad thing", then by all means, submit serious, rational and qualified statements that attempt to engage people in a meaningful discussion. In the meantime, please control yourselves and stop commenting on things you don't understand. Go back to baseball and watch the Bruins win the series. - cyclotron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I guess the notion that the poles are supposed to be artic is really just another "scientific" guess...
- tofufever, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Remember the article did quote the scientists saying high CO2 levels have a correlation with global warming and the most important, we probably don't want that to happen.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The moons of Saturn have also been shown to be heating up and the rings of Saturn have begun to dissapear in the last 30 years alone.
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Actually, blahblah, I'm not too bothered. I think it's more likely I got modded down for saying "read the ***** article" rather than just RTFA. I might have been making valid points, but I was too frustrated at the other commenter's idiocy, and came off sounding shrill instead of reasonable.
You're still right, though. Meh. - rebrad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4We need to halt this global cooling and bring the earith back to it's natural state and warm things up.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I've got one for you:
There are massive deposits of methane gas trapped in ice and under water. Methane is an extreme green house gas and as the planet warms, more of it will be released. This is what you call a "cascade effect". The initial, man made, warming is only the start. The natural methane deposits unleashed into the atmosphere due to C02 emissions are the real concern. That's when things get scary.
When the methane gasses get into the atmosphere they will cause exponentially global warming. Right now our C02 emissions are causing an incremental temperature increase and yea, it doesn't seem so bad. It's a slow process. Plenty of time right? But what if the temps went up 5F a year, then 10F a year? Then 20F a year? Then 30F a year? See how it gets out of hand? More heat = more methane = greater green house effect. It's simple science. That's why global warming is such a big issue. It may get out of hand much faster than anyone can predict. - icetigaurus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Basically the article said that the climate got so hot because of excesss carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses due to natural causes unknown. Of course the Earth goes through heating and cooling cycles but carbon dioxide getting into the air at an excessive rate looks to be what caused this huge warm up as the article states. Humans adding excessive amounts of carbon dioxide (which is what caused this warm up) certainly can't help...
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell can't imagine how hot it would be (and definetly don't want to be around) here if it is 74 F in the Arctic, so helping that happen isn't a good idea... - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
This is known as the Hockey Stick curve because it sort of resembles a hockey stick on its side. This image is good because it shows many (10) different sources of temperature reconstruction. BTW these temperatures are based off of samples from a time when we knew the arctic wasn't tropical - this goes back to after the bible years.
What is not really debated much is that the world is warming at a faster rate than at any other point in the last 2000 years. This is pretty agreed upon based on the best data and methods that we have, and anyone who disagrees with this is either uneducated or employing psuedo-science. The legit debate is whether or not this increase is a result of humans or natural processes and cycles.
No one really knows the answer to this, but my philosophy is to stay on the safe side of things. Changing our habits would cost a lot of money and be inconvinient. At the same time, it would reduce the gamble we are taking with our most precious resource - the Earth. Some scientists, who I honestly don't think are biased, believe that the potential consequences are really scary - most big cities are near rivers and could be flooded, mass extinctions, etc. I don't know if they are right, but I don't think we should disregard what they say because it is convinient to do so. - cyclotron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Only - this article says these cores prove the old text wrong and that the temperature was much hotter. Thats the funny thing about the religion of science. Its always right today and wrong tomorrow, then right, then wrong, then right....
- warrenfalk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7You are right about that, but keep in mind that there are other independent sources of measurement (not to mention theory) to support global warming theories.
- LoneE4gle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Spin Spin Spin. You can interpet the article anyway you want, and you're both right. Everyone reading this will be dead and buried LONG LONG before the climate changes. The machines will be in control by then, and they'll know what to do.
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