Ancient global warming drove early primates' dispersal

The continent-hopping habits of early primates have long puzzled scientists, and several scenarios have been proposed to explain how the first true members of the group appeared virtually simultaneously on Asia, Europe and North America some 55 million years ago.

But new research using the latest evidence suggests a completely different migration path from those previously proposed and indicates that sudden, rapid global warming drove the dispersal.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences present their findings in the July 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ~snip~ In the new research, U-M paleontologist Philip Gingerich and coworkers re-evaluated the four hypotheses by comparing with unprecedented precision the times of first appearance of Teilhardina in Asia, Europe, and North America. To achieve such precision, they used a carbon isotope curve recently documented on all three continents. Carbon in the atmosphere, earth and living organisms differs in the proportion of carbon-12 and carbon-13 present. A flood of carbon-12 is associated with the onset of an event known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events recorded in geologic history. It was during the PETM that modern primates first appeared 55 million years ago. Teilhardina in Asia precedes the maximum flood of carbon-12, Teilhardina in Europe coincides with it, and Teilhardina in North America appears just after the maximum. Based on this evidence, the researchers concluded that none of previously proposed scenarios was likely. Instead, they propose that Teilhardina migrated from South Asia to Europe, crossing the Turgai Straits---an ancient seaway between Europe and Asia---and then spread to North America by way of Greenland.

Who said it ... The Unabomber or Algore?

10 excerpts below are taken either from Algore's book Earth in the Balance, or from the Unabomber's Manifesto.

Who said it?:

1. "In the speech in which I declared my candidacy, I focused on global warming, ozone depletion and the ailing global environment and declared that these issues - along with nuclear arms control - would be the principal focus of my campaign."

Unabomber
Algore

2. "No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environmental problems that cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third World leaders."

Unabomber
Algore

3. "Artificial needs have been created. ... Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. ... It seems for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms ... are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society."

Unabomber
Algore

4. "Whenever any technology is used to mediate our experience of the world, we gain power but we also lose something in the process. The increased productivity of assembly lines in factories, for examples, requires many employees to repeat the identical task over and over until they lose any feeling of connection to the creative process - and with it their sense of purpose."

Unabomber
Algore

5. "Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, who learned how to command inanimate objects to serve his whims, we too have set in motion forces more powerful than we anticipated and that are harder to stop than start."

Unabomber
Algore

6. "Technological progress marches in only one direction. It can never be reversed. Once a technological innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation."

Unabomber
Algore

7. "'Oh,' say the technophiles, 'Science is going to fix all that!' We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!"

Unabomber
Algore

8. "Some argue that a new ultimate technology, whether nuclear energy or genetic engineering, will solve the problem. ... We have also fallen victim to a kind of technological hubris, which tempts us to believe that our new powers may be unlimited. We dare to imagine that we will find technological solutions for every technologically induced problem. ... Technological hubris tempts us to lose sight of our place in the natural order and believe that we can achieve whatever we want."

Unabomber
Algore

9. "Very widespread in modern society is the search for 'fulfillment.' ... (Yet) for the majority of people whose main goal is fulfillment, (technology) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment."

Unabomber
Algore

10. "Industrial civilization's great engines of distraction still seduce us with a promise of fulfillment. Our new power to work our will upon the world can bring with it a sudden rush of exhilaration. ... But that exhilaration is fleeting. It is not true fulfillment."

Unabomber
Algore

ANSWERS: Gore said 1,4,5,8, and 10 http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/6315/gore.html

*

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/1996/cyb19960607.asp :
In the "On the Prowl" section, the June [1996] American Spectator reported:

"FBI agents on the scene are telling colleagues they were amused when, while tearing apart the shack of suspected Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, they came upon Al Gore's 1992 eco-tract, Earth in the Balance. Many sections were underlined in pencil, and there were copious notes in the margins. Why wasn't Gore among the handful of titles listed in press references to the 80 or so books found in the cabin? The FBI and Justice Department haven't commented publicly, but some agents assume the title was clearly suppressed to avoid embarrassing Gore." ~

*

Spot News the Web edition Vol. 5, No.4 May 2000 http://www.discoveret.org/etspj/may2kspot.htm

“The best days in politics are still ahead,” Tony Snow told the audience at the Golden Press Card awards program Friday night.
Snow, the keynote speaker ...called Gore a “practical liar, but not an accomplished liar” in discussing fundraising at the Buddhist temple. He questioned how Gore could have not known he was at the temple when the people were wearing robes, burning incense and ringing temple bells.
Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, is one of the most “vividly crazy books I’ve read in my life,” Snow said. He drew parallels between Gore’s book and the Unabomber’s Manifesto, saying that they contained similar arguments. ... ~ Sally Guthrie

"So much for Al Gore and his inconvenient toot" ~ jigsaw

Exactly.

1992 book: Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit by Al Gore
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452269350/103-8542906-2335850?v=glance&n=283155

An excellent example of alarmism, inappropriate interpretation and outright misrepresentation, July 10, 2006
Reviewer: Gerald T. Westbrook "GTW" (Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With all the fuss being made over - An Inconvenient Truth - the movie and book by Albert Gore Jr., it is appropriate to review his 1992 book: Earth in the Balance. This review will cover two key aspects of this book: his so-called couple between carbon dioxide and temperature; and his extremism.

Gore discussed the carbon dioxide (CO2) - temperature relationship on page 94. He showed a graph of temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration plotted versus time over a span of 160,000 years. With the exception of one point, his graph comes from chemical analysis of two mile deep ice core samples from Antarctica and Greenland, which is valid and exciting scientific data. Gore has called the data behind this chart as the most compelling evidence of a correlation between CO2 and temperature change.

Both variables exhibit a saw-tooth profile. The graph for each variable is of a similar shape, and appear to move somewhat in parallel. Based on such a chart Gore made the claim that CO2 concentration and temperature have moved in lockstep over this period. The word lockstep is far too strong for a simple visual correlation. The implication is also made that the change in CO2 concentration precedes the change in temperature, and hence is the cause for the change in temperature. However, it is impossible to tell this from such a graph. Indeed one could just as easily claim the reverse.
The behavior of these two variables represent the change in each variable due to the changes in other major variables, particularly the orbital parameters of planet Earth as it travels around the sun. Yet Gore is basing all of his conclusions on his eye-balled correlation.

Further, this data is highly compressed and displayed over a space little more than two inches in width in his book. The basic time unit is estimated at 2,500 years per point. A single tic on this graph--say 1/32nd of an inch in width--would represent 2,500 years of history. Thus a mere 1/32nd of an inch would represent the huge number of weather events over 2,500 years, averaged to a single point.

The second problem with this graph is the last point shown. This is not part of the scientific record. Rather it is one scenario projection, out of dozens of scenarios, of the future CO2 level. This step is particularly egregious as this point brings the graph height to seven inches, on a graph that would only be two inches tall otherwise. This is pure distortion and misrepresentation.

This critique is a perfect example of Gore gaining some validity by "cherry picking" valid scientific data, but simplifying it, extrapolating it and misrepresenting the situation until it literally has no meaning.

On a second subject, some of the writings by Gore are quite disturbing. Several quotes are examined.

* In the first quote he equates the dangers to the environment to the dangers of nuclear war. "Nuclear war is an apocalyptic subject, and so is global environmental destruction."
Can this be a truly sound judgement of the state of the environment after years of the EPA, after years of automobile fuel and exhaust improvements and after billions of dollars of environmental control investments in all our utility and manufacturing industries?
* The next quote broadens the doomsday view to the ecology. "Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin."
Again can this be viewed as a precise, sound and fair diagnosis of the ecological situation? In this quote he equates Americans' use of natural resources with Nazism. He goes on "...the environmental crisis is so serious that I believe our civilization must be considered in some basic way dysfunctional. "... In this terrible century... we have witnessed some especially malignant examples of dysfunctional civilization: the totalitarian societies of Nazi Germany under Hitler, fascist Italy under Mussolini ... in psychological terms, our rapid and aggressive expansion into what remains of the wildness of the earth represents an effort to plunder from outside civilization what we cannot find inside."
Yes, in Gore's mind, our society's embrace of what he calls consumptionism, resembles Nazi Germany society's embrace of totalitarianism.
* Next he contrasts the richness of nature to the emptiness of industrial civilization. According to Gore we live in an "inauthentic world of our own making. "Life can be easy, we assure ourselves. "We need not suffer the heat or the cold; we need not sow or reap or hunt and gather. "We can heal the sick, fly through the air, light up the darkness, and be entertained in our living room by orchestras and clowns whenever we like." Further into this quote he observes this false world was created by people to distract people from their psychic pain. He asserts that the world of leisure, air conditioning, industrial agriculture, modern medicine, and home entertainment is not good in itself. "It is but a fleeting sideshow." Finally he claims that only by somehow awakening from such in-authenticity will the cycle of psychic pain and environmental plunder be broken. It is not quite clear how Gore, who grew upo in a hotel, earned credentials to decide what is authentic in life and what is not.
Gore seems to have come up with the following modus operandi. First he will proclaim an unprecedented environmental catastrophe is at hand. Next he will indicate only a handful of ignorant and unqualified dissenters oppose this assessment. Finally he would indicate that such dissenters are preventing him from moving ahead to solve this problem.
As noted above Gore has a strange streak of extremism in his makeup. He clearly is not happy with our society. He equates environmental activists to resistance fighters. But does not this group of activists include eco-saboteurs? Clearly Gore does not limit his concern to just the environment, but declares that we are in a midst of political, informational, inner-spiritual and deep philosophical crisis. He, I believe,claims to be the sole author of his book and to have put his heart and soul into it. He seems to believe in his book and all its comparisons of our society with Nazi Germany's or to the former USSR's. All of the above quotes and comments have earned him the extremist tag.

No where has this been better exposed than in a 1995 column by Tony Snow. In this essay Snow contrasts statements by Gore to those of the Unabomber. Snow noted that the vision advocated by the Unabomber sounds much like that stated in Gore's 1992 manifesto. The difference between the Unabomber and Gore is that Gore wants to achieve this via massive government bureaucracies, while the Unabomber would achieve this through mail bombs.
Al Gore's penchant for alarmism, inappropriate interpretation and outright misrepresentation in 1992, is surely food for thought as one reads his latest book or sees his movie. ~

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