'ow bleedin' many times do I have to say it? We are not screwing up "the planet," we're screwing up the delicate membrane of the planet that allows for human life to exist! As George Carlin said, "The planet isn't going anywhere, we are! Pack up your sh!t folks, we're goin' away!"
As for this persistent denial of human activity-influenced global warming, the scientific  consensus is in, we're making a mess. I'm trying to remember where I heard the quote, "there are more scientists named Steve who believe in man-made global warming than all the scientists who deny it put together!" If I can find that quote again, I'll definitely post it.
:D


Scientists say Arctic once was tropical

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

First-of-its-kind 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.

"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.

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.

But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees. So instead of Boston-like weather year-round, the Arctic was more like Miami North. Way north.

"It's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us," said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. "It's a new look to how the Earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide."

It's enough to make Santa Claus break into a sweat.

The 74-degree temperature, based on core samples which act as a climatic time capsule, was probably the year-round average, but because data is so limited it might also be just the summertime average, researchers said.

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."

And the new research also gave scientists the idea that a simple fern may have helped pull Earth from a hothouse to an icehouse by sucking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, this natural solution to global warming was not exactly quick: It took about a million years.

With all that heat and massive freshwater lakes forming in the Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla, still found in warm regions today, grew so deep, so wide that eventually it started sucking up carbon dioxide, Brinkhuis theorized. And that helped put the cool back in the Arctic.

Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.

"This could actually contribute to push the world to a cooling mode," Brinkhuis said, but only after it got hotter first and then it would take at least 800,000 years to cool back down. It's not something to look forward to, he said.



Did anybody else read that the other day?  The "Global Warming" we experience now is actually right along the pattern that has been happening for the last several million years.  The polar ice caps melt (which has been happening for over 10,000 years), this causes less reflection of sunlight in the polar regions, meaning it gets warmer.  This makes the caps melt even faster.  This causes even less reflected sunlight, and it causes faster melting, etc etc etc.

This goes right back to what I said many times before.  "Modern Science" is only around 300 years old.  At the beginning of that is when some of the largest advances were made, such as tracking of temperature and weather.  That time also just happens to have been during the "Little Ice Age".  The time in the last 3-5,000 years where the temperatures were at record lows.  In fact, we have yet to even reach the temperature of the "Medieval Climate Optimum", a period from 1100-1300 where temperatures were even warmer then they are today.  Global temperatures then were an average of 2-5c higher then they are now.

Oh, and that rise in global temperatures is more then likely what lead to the "Little Ice Age".  You see, the temperature of the Earth moves in cycles.  Periods of hot, then cold, then hot again.  Since we just left a period of several hundred years of cold, it is only logical that we now enter a period of several hundred years of warmth.  And geologist, vulcanologist, or palentologist can tell you that.

Of course, if you look at things with the small-minded idea that humans are the center of the universe, then I guess the sky is falling.

And I doubt that any of you have thrown your cars away.  And you had all better stop breathing also, because every day you are releasing huge amounts of CO2.