Ancient Climate Change: When Palm Trees Gave Way To Spruce Trees
ScienceDaily (June 17, 2009) — For climatologists, part of the challenge in predicting the future is figuring out exactly what happened during previous periods of global climate change.
One long-standing climate puzzle relates to a sequence of events 33.5 million years ago in the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene. Profound changes were underway. Globally, carbon dioxide levels were falling and the hothouse warmth of the dinosaur age and Eocene Period was waning. In Antarctica, ice sheets had formed and covered much of the southern polar continent.
Apparently Dinosaur farts were actually keeping them alive.
But what exactly was happening on land, in northern latitudes? When and how did Northern glaciation begin, and what does this knowledge add to the understanding of the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and today’s climate?
An international team that included Dr. David Greenwood, an NSERC-funded researcher at Brandon University, now provides some of the very first detailed answers, and they come from an unusual source.
“Fossils of land plants are excellent indicators of past climates,” said Dr. Greenwood. “But the fossil plant localities from the Canadian Arctic and Greenland don’t appear to record this major climate change, and pose problems for precisely dating their age, so we needed to look elsewhere.“
Sucks when the data doesn’t fit the theory.
Ancient Climate Change: When Palm Trees Gave Way To Spruce Trees
This is a nice little junket for some.
Big question is how honest are their findings going to be if they get the opposite results to what they were expecting or trying to prove?
There’s been a number of various CO2 experiments on food crops, etc and for the most part increased CO2 was more beneficial the plants thrived and needed less water/irrigation and produced better crops!
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Australian project simulates effects of runaway climate changeMultimillion-dollar study subjects bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns
An Australian university has embarked upon an ambitious project – hailed as the first of its kind in the world – to simulate how the environment would cope with runaway climate change.
This, scientists say, will recreate an atmosphere where CO2 is at 550 ppm – about 40% higher than current levels – to see how the environment would change for living things, including humans.
This level of CO2 has been chosen to mimic how the environment would react in a world where no significant action is taken to reduce carbon emissions over the next 35 years.
It has been predicted that a 40% increase in CO2 would result in an average global temperature increase of about three degrees centigrade.
An automated computer-controlled system will modulate the amount of CO2 pumped from the rings, to account for environmental variability.
Scientists will use a giant 43-metre high crane to study the impact on all parts of the towering eucalypt trees, such as soil bacteria and fungi, the growth patterns of the tree canopy and the insects that dwell in the foliage.
The sprawling facilities at the institute have been funded via a AUS$40 million (£25m) grant from the federal government, bolstering a $15m investment by the University of Western Sydney.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/14/australia-runaway-climate-change