Scientists: North Pole was hot hot hot

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/31/hot.arctic.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit (23-degree Celsius) average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic.

Core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.

The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.

Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies, appearing in Thursday's issue of Nature, also offer a peek at just how bad conditions can get.

"It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head," said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author.

And what a watery, swampy world it must have been.

"Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean," said Pagani, a member of the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition that conducted the research
more...
See north Pole could be a vacation spot

in Alaska. :)

I once was eating on the outdoor deck of a restaurant in Fairbanks by the river and one nearly picked me up and carried me away.

but I can tell ya that, in Texas, we used to swerve our cars to avoid hitting cockroaches crossing the road!! Them's big suckers there in Texas!! I'm in Pennsylvania now, ain't seen a cockroach in quite some time, and don't miss 'em any, either.

Thinking about the roaches in Texas I'm always forcefully reminded of the Kip Adotta routine about the big cockroach...the one that married Bugzilla!

They're afraid of the mosquitoes.

Yep that is what I think of when I think of Texas..Huge cockroaches...

I slept in the truck, ten miles down the road.

luckily, they die in warm climates. Oh dear, the maine state bird will be endangered....

a bounty of ancient and prehistoric artifacts and fossils as the glaciers continue their retreat, not that this is any consolation to the overall devastating effects of global warming.

These articles imply that at some point, the land located in the arctic was tropical IN the Arctic. This is wrong! The land migrated to the North Pole due to the shifting and movement of the earths plates. Land previously near the equator ended up in the frozen North. Why do you thing there's oil in Alaska? It's old equatorial tropical flora and fauna decomposed to basic carbon and through techtonic shifts now in the for now, frozen North.

These articles imply that at some point in the past, the North Pole was tropical. Now THAT is wrong! It allows the Bushies to minimize global warming and cite the finding of fossils and oil in the Arctic as proof!

From the article "Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect.

Scientists already knew this "thermal event" happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.

Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees Fahrenheit (11 Celsius).

But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23 Celsius)."

From research....



No land migrated from the equator to the pole from 65 mya to 55 mya.. These scientists are obviously talking about a phenomenon that is much more nuanced than your view of events.

ol' Earth.

There is no link between geomagnetic reversal and CO2 levels.

As several others have already pointed out plate tectonics moves at a much slower pace that could account for the findings noted in this article.

I don't know about what this does or does not allow the Bushies to do regarding global warming but anyone who has done a little study and is willing to think a Little will realize that the global climate has undergone natural variation much in excess of any change predicted by those citing man-made global warming as a danger. As recently as the time of the Norsemen the temperature in the higher latitudes was significantly warmer than today.

Does this mean that global warming does not happen? No, but it does mean that there is not a lot we can do about it one way or the other. Should we cease efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? No, but we should drop the overheated, doomsday rhetoric. Running around like Chicken Little serves only to turn off those who might be persuaded by clear evidence, careful logic and a reasonable tone. Making shrill claims that don't pass the smell test casts doubt not just on the questionable claims but also on the whole premise of the need to do anything.

So lets just do what Al says and everything will be fine.

This was an interesting topic , so just did some quick research. Of course, it came from the internet, so who knows if it's true.
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_2.htm


"In fact, geophysicists have known for over half a century that the solid, elastic part of a planet can move rapidly with respect to its spin axis through a process known as "true polar wander." True polar wander, Kirschvink explains, is not the same as the more familiar plate motion that is responsible for earthquakes and volcanism. While the latter is driven by heat convection in Earth's mantle, true polar wander is caused by an imbalance in the mass distribution of the planet itself, which the laws of physics force to equalize in comparatively rapid time scales.

During this redistribution, the entire solid part of the planet moves together, avoiding the internal shearing effects which impose the speed limit on conventional plate motions. (While his happens, of course, the entire Earth maintains the original spin axis in relation to plane of the solar system.) Thus, true polar wander can result in land masses moving at rates hundreds of times faster than tectonic motion caused by convection."

before the period this article addresses. As for the quoted geologist, Dr. Joseph Kirschvink, he appears to be legit.

Come ON. The idea of True Polar Wander is highly questionable at best, and citing Cayce as an authority is just nuts.

Pretty sure Charles Hapgood came up with the pole shift theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hapgood

and this is all a ruse to divert people away from praying for the rapture...


:sarcasm: :evilgrin:

when it's fits what they believe.

because when we last in Michigan we went to this place where they had models of the great lakes and there was information about the formation of the lakes. My father-in-law, a liberal, well educated, trickster, started making a fuss about how all of it was tripe and that the earth was only 6000 years old...it was really funny. We were in Grand Rapids which is very religious and conservative so he was trying to see if anyone would take the bait...it was rather entertaining...

... on Axel Heiberg Island, a couple of decades ago. Actually I think they were Metasequoias ("dawn redwoods", one species of which is still alive today). He said the wood was remarkably well preserved. I don't know yet if they've found how those forests could have survived the long dark winters, so far north (the species was probably deciduous and simply dropped its leaflets, shutting down when it couldn't perform photosynthesis ... but still!). As earlier posters have noted, the continents would have been at similar latitudes to today (not enough time for continental drift). Even in warm temperate (or as this study suggests, subtropical) temperatures, the lack of sunlight in the winter would have posed some challenges to the ecosystem. Would have been a pretty cool place to visit ("Florida" under the midnight sun!).



Tree stump and preserved leaf litter (darker band) from that era.

http://www.brandonu.ca/academic/environmental/northern.htm


By the way -- an earlier poster was concerned that the Bushies would spin this as "global warming is no big deal". They would try to do that no matter what paleoclimatologists discover about past conditions.

The response from the scientists I've talked to is that a) any past climate forcings appear to have happened more slowly than our convulsive spewing of CO2 over the past century; b) ice cores reveal that CO2 has not been as high as it is now in more than half a million years, so if the Bushies feel they know absolutely everything about what conditions on Earth were like prior to that, why don't they lay out a detailed adaptation strategy for the rest of us (of course they don't have enough information on past environments to do that, thanks in part to underfunding of scientific research); and c) now try it with a projected 9 billion people and already-degraded environments, which is what we'd be looking at even without global warming. The last time we had a global-scale climate warming was at the end of the last ice age, when there were a lot fewer of us (and hardly any agriculture or industry, let alone a globalized economy, to have to consider).

What was it like at the equator?
Or at all the places where there is a population?

Remember this was only about 5-10 million years after a giant asteroid slammed into the planet and killed about 90% of all species.

It is likely the earth and the ecosystem was still in recovery.

The only things that could have survived was marine wildlife, reptiles, insects, and maybe some rodents.

From "Nature":

>>>
Drilling in the Arctic Ocean poses enormous technical difficulties, so relatively
little has been discovered about the region's climate history.
Now, the spoils of the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX),
extend our knowledge from about half a million years to 80 million years ago.

The results are unexpected. Not only did the Arctic heat up to an extent that
is inexplicable by current climate models, say the researchers,
it also seems that the North Pole began to cool at about the same time as the Antarctic.
This timing suggests that climate was being driven by a global factor,
such as atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, rather than something more local,
such as geological upheaval.

The isotopic composition of organic carbon from shells and algae in the sediment
reveals information about past temperatures. During a period of pronounced warming
55 million years ago, known as the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum,
average summertime temperatures in the Arctic Ocean rose to almost 24°C.
This is ten degrees higher than what climate models for the period have come up with.
<<<

The German magazine 'Der Spiegel' cites from the ACEX-report that 'todays climate conditions
(and CO2-buildup) may resemble the so called Palaeocene Super-Greenhouse with a slight difference:
The melting of arctic ice & snow cover may speed up the warming significantly in the far north.

The subsequent cooling of the earth's atmosphere may have been induced by the rapid growth
of a certain type of fern, using up large quantities of carbon dioxide.
The cooling process itself lasted for about 800000 years.'
Spiegel-excerpt translated by me

link to nature-article:
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060529/full/060529-5.html

link to Spiegel-article (german):
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/erde/0,1518,419058,00.html

under water. Anyone see the simulations in Gore's movie yet???
Mind you, this latest so-called discovery will be used as an attack on his movie

I could buy some, sit on it for 100 years as it becomes a tropical paradies and VIOLA my family becomes wealthy. hmmm, I think I like this global warming thing.