Panelists discuss climate change worries - The Daily Collegian Online
Climate experts -- including professor Michael Mann of the recent "Climategate" controversy -- expressed concerns about recent environmental change in a press conference Wednesday at Schlow Centre Region Library.Flashback: Antarctica: A Keystone in a Changing World
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"We want to alert the public that we are heading for a future they're not going to be comfortable with," said Ed Perry, the outreach coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation's Global Warming Campaign.
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Mann, a meteorology professor, said there is a connection between global warming and recent climate change.
"The heat waves that have broken out are taking place within a globe that's warmer than it has ever been," he said. "There is a connection."
The evolution of Antarctic climate from a Cretaceous greenhouse into the Neogene icehouse is captured within a rich record of fossil leaves, wood, pollen, and flowers from the Antarctic Peninsula and the Transantarctic Mountains. About 85 million years ago, during the mid-Late Cretaceous, flowering plants thrived in subtropical climates in Antarctica. Analysis of their leaves and flowers, many of which were ancestors of plants that live in the tropics today, indicates that summer temperatures averaged 20°C during this global thermal maximum.Flashback: High Arctic was once warm, year-round, new study shows - Sikunews
During the Eocene, Ellesmere Island -- which is adjacent to Greenland -- probably was similar to swampy cypress forests in the southeastern United States today, said Eberle.
Eocene fossil evidence collected there in recent decades by various teams indicate the lush landscape hosted giant tortoises, aquatic turtles, large snakes, alligators, flying lemurs, tapirs, and hippo-like and rhino-like mammals.
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5 comments:
As someone who was there, the Mann quotation is out of context. Mann had already discussed "recorded history." He is not arguing about Cretaceous temperatures. This is not Mann's problem but a problem with the reporter. You should probably retract this blogpost because it is arguing against a straw man.
Have you contacted the reporter?
I agree with your conclusion re Mann but the examples are flawed--due to continental drift parts of Antarctica and Greenland extended well into the tropics in earlier geologic eras. But no question the planet was much warmer overall. A better example from the modern era, is that the Romans grew grapes and olives north of Hadrian's Wall. There are plenty of others.
Looking at the paper listed below, it looks like the temps were higher than now in the period from about 5000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago (i.e. hotter for about 5000 years quite recently). Shame on Mann. Let's have no more talk that the earth is hotter than it has ever been or that the science is settled.
http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/~shaopeng/2008GL034187.pdf
From the paper listed above:
"These reconstructions show the
warming from the last glacial maximum, the occurrence
of a mid-Holocene warm episode, a Medieval Warm Period
(MWP), a Little Ice Age (LIA), and the rapid warming of
the 20th century.
The reconstructions show the temperatures
of the mid-Holocene warm episode some 1–2 K above the
reference level, the maximum of the MWP at or slightly
below the reference level, the minimum of the LIA about
1 K below the reference level, and end-of-20th century
temperatures about 0.5 K above the reference level.
Huang, S. P., H. N. Pollack, and P.-Y. Shen (2008),
A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat
flux data, borehole temperature data, and the instrumental record,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L13703, doi:10.1029/2008GL034187.
I have contacted the reporter and I have the whole thing on a audio.
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