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from the green-green-grass-of-the-Tanami-Desert dept.
For decades, paleobotanist David Greenwood has collected fossil plants from Australia—some so well preserved it's hard to believe they're millions of years old. [...]
The fossils date back 55 to 40 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch. At that time, the world was much warmer and wetter, and these hothouse conditions meant there were palms at the North and South Pole and predominantly arid landmasses like Australia were lush and green. [...]
To sustain a lush green landscape, the continent required a steady supply of precipitation. Warmth means more evaporation, and more rainfall was available to move into Australia's continental interior. Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time, 1500 to 2000 parts per million, also contributed to the lushness via a process called carbon fertilization. Reichgelt explains that with the sheer abundance of CO2, plants were basically stuffing their faces.
"Southern Australia seems to have been largely forested, with primary productivity similar to seasonal forests, not unlike those here in New England today," Reichgelt says. "In the Northern Hemisphere summer today, there is a big change in the carbon cycle, because lots of carbon dioxide gets drawn down due to primary productivity in the enormous expanse of forests that exists in a large belt around 40 to 60 degrees north. In the Southern Hemisphere, no such landmass exists at those same latitudes today. But Australia during the Eocene occupied 40 degrees to 60 degrees south. And as a result, there would be a highly productive large landmass during the Southern Hemisphere summer, drawing down carbon, more so than what Australia is doing today since it is largely arid."
"It obviously will take a long time for plants to adapt to changing CO2 levels, but fossil floras allow us to peek into the biosphere of ancient hothouse worlds."
Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 produced a climate during the Eocene that rendered the southern hemisphere lushly forested. As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climb, would the climate do so again?
Journal Reference:
Tammo Reichgelt et al., Plant Proxy Evidence for High Rainfall and Productivity in the Eocene of Australia, Paleoceanography, 2022. DOI: 10.1029/2022PA004418
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @07:30PM
In nature, are there any nigger plants?
Fully animated and shit like when you walk by it grabs your wallet/purse and hits you over the head and you wake up on a surgeon's table with your anus five times the normal size and throbbing out a message in code?
In other news, I lived a year off of nothing more than bull and gopher semen.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @07:53PM
My little buttercup has the sweetest smile
Dear little buttercup, won't you stay awhile
Come with me where moonbeams paint the sky
And you and I might linger in the sweet by and by, oh...
Dear little buttercup, with your eyes so blue
Oh little buttercup, you' re a dream come true
You and I will settle down in a cottage built for two
Oh, dear little buttercup, I love you...
Everybody !
My little buttercup, has the sweetest smile
Dear little buttercup won't you stay awhile
You and I will settle down in a cottage built for two, oh
Dear little buttercup
Sweet little buttercup,
My little buttercup
I love you
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @09:30PM
8===NIGGER=COCK==D
YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE
YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE
GO GO GO
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @11:20PM (1 child)
Sleepy Joe's begging the oil industry and the Arabs to produce oil shows his love of plants... should help him get more green votes.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:06AM
Look everybody, runaway the apk is mad and doing the racist spam shit again. Better than becoming another mass shooter, but that is likely more due to his mental health issues and the fact that Enguhland actually has gun control, thus why he dreams of being a yankee with big guns. Sad doesn't even cover it.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:05AM (11 children)
Not one single blasted photo of aforementioned fossils!?!?!?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:09AM (1 child)
Why, you want to display them along with your other murderous trophies? Human genocide not enough for you, you want to see long dead corpses to make that withered heart feel a tad more alive?
(Score: 4, Touché) by HammeredGlass on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:49AM
Yes, please. With extra murder on top too, please.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 04 2022, @04:23AM (8 children)
There you have an example https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loy_Yang_open_cut_brown_coal_mine_and_dredgers.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Those coking coal mines in Queensland are a bit older, in Permian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Saturday June 04 2022, @01:44PM (7 children)
You give me an image of a modern mining operation and that is supposed to help with the consistent failure of history scientists to provide even potato phone snaps of what they are talking about?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @09:17PM
History sceintists sooo dumb.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 05 2022, @03:22AM (5 children)
Listen to me and listen to me good, I'm not going to repeat it.
Those fossils you are after are called "brown coal" and they are so common that only a seriously Internet search impaired person would complain about images not being available.
Now, if you are one of those internet-search impaired, here's something that shows it and explained how it was formed to you [vic.gov.au].
So, let me try to hammer this in your head: the story is not about "Hey, we just discovered some fossils which showed Australia, while still linked to Antarctica, was a green and luscious place" - this is known for quite a while and we're burning those fossils in high quantities every day (but we should stop doing it).
Instead, this FA is "We tried to model what CO2 atmospheric concentration was necessary to make an Australia-linked-to-Antarctica a warm wet green and luscious place. And we came with the answer of 1,680 ppm".
With the implication of "If we raise the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere about 4 times the current value, the Earth is likely to sport an ice free, luscious, green Antarctica".
You get it now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Monday June 06 2022, @01:58PM (4 children)
No.
Give me photos.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @02:08PM (3 children)
In the very beginning of the page that I linked you have a photo. For your convenience https://368678.smushcdn.com/1847991/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Science-Week-brown-coal-1536x1536.jpg?lossy=0&strip=1&webp=1 [smushcdn.com]
Feel free to find others using "brown coal Victoria Australia" in a search for images.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday June 08 2022, @12:53AM (2 children)
As you have demonstrated, it is quite easy to furnish photos with an article for which visual aids are more than welcome, they are required.
And yet we constantly see every kind of history scientist fail to include even a single photo of "very important thing" that they have apparently not even photographed yet.
You can make all of your jokes with pics of mining operations. It won't shield them from their due ridicule.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 09 2022, @11:19AM (1 child)
TFA in Paleoceanography, 2022. DOI: 10.1029/2022PA004418 would not have been benefited from a photo, it's a sci publication - not sci popularization.
And I don't think is fair to blame blame the author of a sci paper for the failure of phys.org (which is sci popularization) to include one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Friday June 10 2022, @07:14PM
I blame them all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @09:14AM (10 children)
More scientific evidence that a lot of those "climate change" bunch are just scaremongering. Things were actually pretty good for most organisms millions of years ago when there was more CO2.
It's not good to invest in beach property that needs 50+ years to break even. But other than that lots of lifeforms including humans will do OK even if we don't drastically cut CO2 emissions. A rise in temperatures will make some places worse for us but also make other places better for us.
In past centuries and millennia lots of humans have died due to weather and related issues (drought, hurricanes, etc). Just a lot less TV and leisure time to get enough people scared back then. And now there are billions of people so naturally there'd be even more people dying when "stuff happens". We're just got used to the anomaly of crops not failing. Just like we've got used to antibiotics working (even as many are starting to not work).
To me a better argument against indiscriminately burning our fossil fuels is they're nonrenewable[1] resources that are better reserved for more important stuff - like developing space and space colony tech - you're not going to get humans into orbit as easily with solar power. Space tech is the only known path that has a chance of significantly postponing our extinction. If we don't care about postponing the extinction of humanity then the problems of climate change don't really matter either... ;)
[1] Even if they renew they won't renew fast enough to be considered renewable on the time scales that are useful for humans.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @12:03PM (3 children)
I expect you have extraordinary evidence to back your "including humans" extraordinary claim.
Table that evidence, because so far the excessive events caused by climate change have produce a lot of damage and life loss. You'll only have to look at the insurance companies, the guys that are putting serious money on managing risks, as they bet that people won't be doing that OK as you suggest. Sure the human race will continue, but a lot of individual humans won't.
Feel free to use your fav search engine with "climate change insurance industry"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 05 2022, @05:08PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 07 2022, @10:32PM (1 child)
First, you don't have evidence that there is a lot of excessive events. Second, the transition to developed world country usually reduces life loss by an order of two magnitude. People will still build in harm's way, they just don't die as much.
And that completely devastates your argument because a world that is completely developed world will have moderately higher extreme weather events, but far less loss of life than today's world.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 07 2022, @10:37PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @01:40PM
"resources that are better reserved for more important stuff - like developing space and space colony tech"
sure thing
let's shit all over our nest so we can try to survive in an environment that wants to kill us
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @03:59PM
Time frames bub.
Historically these weather pattern shifts took thousands of years giving life time to adapt. We will see how things play out when thousands of years of change get condensed into 100. Humans will likely survive as a species, but our faith-in-miracles approach instead of doing the hard work of drastically cutting fossil fuel use, is what will make the collapse so very painful. Wars will not be limited to small areas, and over the decades even the assholes in bunkers will be overrun.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday June 04 2022, @04:57PM (2 children)
> To me a better argument against indiscriminately burning our fossil fuels is they're nonrenewable resources
Actually, it is relatively easy to synthesise hydrocarbons given an energy source. Search for Fischer-Tropsch process.
On the other hand, you are somewhat blase about the annihilation of half the world's species and many millions of your fellow human beans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 05 2022, @05:49AM
yeah the climate artards have no idea. Imagine them looking for carbon capture solutions, when you can just fucking plant a tree. And their insistence on recycling paper, where you can just bury it deep in the fucking ground, mission accomplished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 05 2022, @05:14PM
Oh wow the Fischer-Tropsch process, that's clearly a better and easier way to get those space stations into space... How did I miss that.
It's obvious that converting sunlight into energy and then using that energy to synthesizing hydrocarbons is going to be easier than just using hydrocarbons from petroleum reserves.
/s
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2022, @09:19PM
> More scientific evidence that a lot of those "climate change" bunch are just scaremongering.
Caught one! Troll bait effective - will buy again +1