Posted on 02/18/2006 7:38:53 AM PST by worldclass
Sometimes we make that first dash into the ocean on summer vacation and happily announce, "It's warm as bathwater."
But a new study based on ancient sediments collected off South America indicates that the tropical Atlantic Ocean really did hit temperatures as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit back when dinosaurs ruled.
The finding, reported Friday by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also estimates that carbon dioxide made up as much as six times more of the atmosphere at that time than it does today.
(Excerpt) Read more at knoxstudio.com ...
and lawyers.
"Thanks a hell of a lot worldclass!!! "
ooops...sorry...next time I'll issue a warning.
How about: THIS LINK CONTAINS MATERIAL OF AN EXTREME GRAPHICAL AND HYPOCRITAL NATURE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS NOT ONLY ADVISED BUT DEMANDED.
Had it been too warm, would fish have survived? ""
The "fish" of that era were there. Everything adapts or dies.
They admit that something may be wrong with their model (a model in which CO2 concentration drives warming) but the error is in underestimating the effect of CO2 concentrations on temperature. What if warming causes CO2 concentrations to spike we may need a model for that.
It seems that these scientists don't know what they don't know. But they are willing to base (our) economic policy on the most pessimistic guess they can come up with.
"I wonder what the press release by the Evangelical Environmental Network on this will say."
I'm hoping Pat Roberson will pronouce a curse on them. Perhaps the Evangelical Assoc. can move their HQ to Dover, PA and kill two left-winged birds with one stone.
Thanks, that would avoid stomach distress in the morning.
I've often wondered about that.
Whatever their degree of industrialization they had, it wasn't enough to stop that big rock from smacking into what is now the Yucatan, and killing almost all of them off.
A reason why they left the water for the land?
By the age of dinosaurs, the land was already full of predators who would snap up any fish that tried to crawl up without a good ability to run
"Whatever their degree of industrialization they had, it wasn't enough to stop that big rock from smacking into what is now the Yucatan, and killing almost all of them off."
Shot from a giant dino catapult...their version of a nuclear weapon...also happened to coincide with nuclear rock winter...see Flintstones chapt 4 subheading catastrophe
Actually, I was thinking of earlier than the age of dinosaurs...
Siamese Fighting Fish (alias Betta Fish) have evolved to survive in warm, murky South Asian ponds. Bettas have a special respiratory organ that allows them to breath air directly from the surface. In fact they inherently must do so. In experiments where the labyrinth organ was removed, the fish died from suffocation even though the water was saturated with oxygen. For this reason, Bettas must have access to the water surface to breath air directly from the atmosphere.
And yet they tout "The samples contained an unusually rich, well-preserved accumulation of carbon-rich organic matter and fossilized shells of microscopic marine animals".
I guess the marine animals did not need Oxygen. Maybe the marine animals were the ultimate solution to the Carbon problem.
The period described is the middle Cretaceous where there does not seem to be any mass extinctions and the record is rich with Oxygen dependent sea life.
One other question comes to mind; what happened to all that extra atmospheric Carbon?
Desert Pupfish can exist in waters three times as salty as the ocean and water temperatures exceeding 95F. And without the snorkel gear.
I was trying for a profession that may be headed for extinction like the dinosaurs. Lawyers probably aren't. :-)
I recall seeing a nature special that featured a minnow-sized fish called a Pupfish which live in hot springs in some desert or other. It looked very similar to a brackish/salt water minnow common in our area, called a Killie. Killies get landlocked in fresh water around here and thrive there too.
Bush's fault.
It got incorporated into plants, and animals that ate the plants, or animals that ate the animals that ate the plants. Many of the marine animals (corals) were eventually transformed into carbonate rocks, i.e. limestone.
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