Posted on 07/05/2007 7:05:39 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Scientists who probed two kilometers (1.2 miles) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said Thursday the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest.
That contrasts sharply with the prevailing view that a lush forest of this kind could only have existed in Greenland as recently as 2.4 million years ago, according to a summary of the study, which is published Thursday in the journal Science.
The samples suggest the temperature probably reached 10 degrees C (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer and -17 C (1 F) in the winter.
They also indicated that during the last period between ice ages, 116,000-130,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 C (9 F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.
"These findings allow us to make a more accurate environmental reconstruction of the time period from which these samples were taken," said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the paper.
"What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought."
In a separate paper, also published in Science, European experts said they had analysed the world's deepest ice core, enabling them to reconstruct patterns of warming and glaciation over the past 800,000 years.
The 3,260-metre (10,595-feet) core was drilled into the East Antarctica icesheet at the Franco-Italian base, Dome C. The drillers, gathered in a venture called the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) stopped just 15 metres (48.75 feet) short of the bedrock.
Using traces of the hydrogen isotope deuterium in air bubbles trapped in the ice layers, the scientists built a record of greenhouse-gas concentrations over the aeons, which in turn provides a record of temperature.
They found the temperature varied widely, by as much as 15 C (27 F) over the 800,000 years. In the last Ice Age, which ended around 11,000 years ago, the temperature was 10 C (18 F) lower than today.
The EPICA team had previously analysed the Dome C core to a depth equivalent to 650,000 years ago.
Subjects: Science, Hypocrisy, Global Warming, Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth, Live Earth
Have you checked out the local Rehab facilities available to you? Be sure to make the Government pay for it...../s
I’m shocked...the climate constantly changes. /s
Gore will find a way to discredit this though I’m sure.
You lost me..
From what I have read, the Garden of Eden was warm, tropical, and comfortable to its inhabitants.
Yeah, and what happened to those trees, plants, butterflies, and spiders? They are all dead now, killed off by global climate change. The planet was far warmer then, and they died. We're doomed.
I did have an /s tag on there.
It's called you get old and die. ;)
Life forms adapt making biological changes necessary to survive and carry on as that same identified species but in a variation of.
Flintstones, Meet the Flintstones
They're the modern stone-age family
From the town of Bedrock
They're a page right out of history
Let's ride with the family down the street
Through the courtesy of Fred's SUV
When you're with the Flinstones
Have a yabba dabba doo time
A dabba doo time
You'll have a gay old time
Al Gore's ancestors must have been buying carbon offsets back then too...
So THAT’S what the evil SUVs looked like back then! Of course! It HAD to be SUVs!
Yeah but Al Gore didn’t own the company back then.
We got Algore's Magical Computer Models (TM) to tells us how thing were, and how thing are going to be.
Just send your money to Algore.inc and quite reading this stupid science crap.
Other References:
Yea, and the ‘tards are still gonna have their eco-wacko concert to “help” the planet.
But the best part is that some people think musicians and actors know something about the planet.
Earth to nutjobs, these wackos are stoned goofballs who could never accomplish anything more than making some tunes and speaking/wailing some jibberish....That the other ‘tards seemed to like!
allah akbar fumar blacktar
Ping
“Oldest DNA”
Was it on an old blue dress?
Close... a Prom dress in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Good article except for that since it's so loosely coupled. The kind of plants and animals that could live at a latitude and their frequency would be a much more precise indication of temperature. Now the scientists need to figure out the mechanics of change and what we can influence. I bet clouds play a major role and there are probably inexpensive ways climate engineers can create and dissipate clouds.
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