melting ice caps exposing trees?

Question

these trees lived thousands of yrs ago proves that that area was warm enough thousands of yrs ago to sustain plant life.

question: why is it bad that once again plant life will thrive again there, and please dont give the rising water mumbo jumbo. this should be proof that maybe the planet is warming but not cased by man for reasons previously stated.

i personally am hoping for warmer weather, we re not going to die from heat the same that we arnt freezing like they planned in the 70's.

for those who will pick on spelling or punctuation if you dont have a good answer, save it

ky, so you re implying perhaps global warming was worse 100 yrs ago since it was as bad then?

sapp, im the idiot? lol

Answer 1

I asked this basic question too.

Got some good answers.

The ONLY thing it proves is that naturally the earth was warmer back at that time.

Those who say this proves man-made global warming know not what they talk of. It slightly refutes man-made warming. If anything, it proves a natural warming is likely.

And it may also help prove that Global Warming is GOOD for the earth, rather than bad.

Rising waters will be very slow, thousands of years, not a huge Gorean flood, and will allow us more shallow ocean farming and fishing. Melting ice shows up more reserves of minerals, even oil(!), and will allow more food to be grown. We are close to a Malthusian Crisis if we do not find ways to provide more food.

Even the polar bears dying...been lots warmer not long ago and they survived!! Lots of outright lies being passed around as scientific truth. And making lots of politicians and industrialists and opportunists rich. And the rest of us...???

And history shows us a good simple cheap way to stop warming and set the global temperature where we want if...just NOBODY reads history! I can tell you how.

History says so!! And History was around long before Al Gore!

Just an addenda, I don't know about 100 years go, but the Dust Bowls in the '30's are the worst drought I know of in the US, and this was before much industrialization, and most cars!! Was not man-made global warming.

And I do not know of a Pangea other than multiplied millions of years ago, and in any event, the times of much greater natural warmth were back before the meteor strike that moved the earth's poles out of open seas and into landlocked positions, where the cold of the poles could not be washed away by warm ocean currents. We had dinosaurs, and the great coal and oil fields were laid down.

And back then the climate was always warm, and oodles of CO2 in the air, and plant life flourished. No men, note! Imagine how nice it would be if we could garden all the earth, it being warm enough, and the CO2 high enough, and raise much much more food than we do now! No more need for hunger!! I think that would be a great plus for CO2 going up AND global warming!!

Nourish a plant, Burn a Carbon Credit today!

Answer 2

Jennie made a good point. Antarctica wasn't always located at its current position. It was once located fairly close to the equator. Continental drift has moved all the continents far away from their "original" (whatever that means) locations. The amazon, is one of the only places in the world that has pivoted some what, and has remained in its current location for a long time.

However, I half way agree with you. The ecology of the world will adapt. Trees and forest's natural zones will migrate, habitats will relocate. True many plants and animals might not change fast enough, get submerged, blown up, frozen... who knows.

What people forget is, nothing on this planet has ever been steady. The coastal Doug-fir forest of the northwest has only been around for 1600 years. That's 4 tree "generations". So lets say you were Jesus, and you decided to take a stroll the pacific on your 33rd birthday. "Oh! lets visit the Olympic peninsula! Wait a minute... this isn't nearly as impressive as the brochure said it was.."

The Spruce fir forest of Maine has only been around for 700 years. The "Big woods" of Minnesota also had a completely different ecosystem several hundred years ago. All these areas were occupied by different ecosystems that were relocated with a change in climate. Were animals displaced then? Yes! Did some go extinct? Probably.

Now, are we accelerating this climate change? Maybe. If so will more plants and animals become extinct? Quite possibly. But the point is to keep ecosystems and specific species on "life support" is ridiculous.

Managing your resources responsibly is the only thing we can do, if not for its worldly effects, are own well being.

Answer 3

dont be such an idiot! If ur area has a warmer weather...imagine the form of the weather in tropical areas.. it wud be SCORCHING heat. There is NO problem that once again new plants will come.. If u want proof about the CO2 trapping sun's heat.. DO AN EXPERIMENT! keep a glass container SHUT for a lot a time.. Put toys.. one real plant.. a worm or an insect and check the temperature for one day and ofcourse keep three ice cubes together in it.. check the time period for its melting.. the next day: Burn a whole newspaper inside.. and shut the container and keep it outside in the sun. remember the container should be airtight. was there any effect in the temperature? If no.. then global warming is RUBBISH. If yea.. then there is proof.. check the tym period for the ice melting.. if its faster..there u go.. the ice caps will start melting due to this global warming.. U sattisfied NOW?

Answer 4

Global Warming may not happen and if it does it may not be all that bad, but this is the only world we have, so it's best to minimise our impact on the environment.

We need to become more energy efficient for a number of reasons - if nothing else, fossil fuels are getting expensive.

Answer 5

well me im not looking for warmer weather cuz that means the sunis out and that means i need to slather on some suntan lotion.

depends on where they were on the ice caps. if it was in the middle of the icecaps that would be pretty odd. but if it was torward the edge of the caps - well all of the continents used to be 1. Those millions of years ago the earth was all hunky-dory, it is possible they were just frozen from when the continents used to be together and there wasn't a really cold on the continent.

untill everything started moving then of course that land would get cold and start to freeze, hence the trees from the icecaps

Answer 6

I'm guessing that the trees you're referring to are either...

a) In Greenland
b) Fossilised or preserved
c) In certain mountain valleys, notably the Alps

I'll provide an explanation for each, hopefully it will cover all bases...

a) The Greenland ice cap is retreating and this is exposing the remains of trees and old buildings. Clearly these were established on land and not on ice. Several ice cores have been drilled on Greenland (and around the world in other places). Three of them suggest that Greenland may have been slightly warmer in the past (whilst some records indicate Greenland may have been warmer, most don't and those same records indicate that globally temperatures were lower than they are now.

Glacial movement is dynamic, it's possible for glacial advance to reach a maximum even if temperatures increase - the total volume of ice decreases but through glacial creep it can advance into new areas. So whilst there are some parts of Greenland that are still covered in ice, the overall picture is one of massive ice loss - hence the remains are only appearing in very specific. Most places where the ice is retreating don't reveal anything of archaeological interest thus indicating that the current retreat is of a much greater extent than anything in the past.

b) Fossilised trees and remains found in peat bogs come from trees that existed many thousands of years ago. Since then there have been a series of ice age cycles and the planet has been warmer and cooler, especially at a regional level. There are parts of the planet that are currently covered by ice that tens of thousands of years ago were forests.

c) Valleys create microclimates, so do trees, these often have a warming effect. If trees are planted low down in a valley the climate higher in the valley warms, thus making it possible for trees to grow there. If a valley is full of trees and the ones lower down are felled then it can have a knock on effect by cooling the upper valley leading to glaciation. This has happened in many places and during the Bronze Age, Iron Age etc when many trees were felled it inadvertently led to the loss of far more trees than succumbed to the woodcutters tools.

There are other reasons as well but these aren't specific to any one area but to trees in general. Through evolution and adaptation trees and plants can adapt to warmer and cooler climates. Because historically, warming and cooling has been much slower than it is now it has enabled species to adapt to their environments. Trees that now only grow in certain temperature ranges once thrived in different temperature ranges. The trees under the ice in themselves don't prove that the climate was warmer or colder but they do prove it was ice free.

- - - - - - - - - -

Picking up on a couple of the points you mentioned. It has long been established that humans are affecting the climate, this having been theorised in 1824 and proven by Svante Arrhenius in 1893. The role played by greenhouse gases in relation to global warming is a well understood one. These gases ensure that planet is at a habitable temperature, any change in the balance of them ultimately has no alternative but to lead to warming or cooling. With a 40% increase in their concentrations since the onset of industrialisation the outcome is inevitable.

As for the cooling scare of the 70's, this is something that has been blown out of all proportion by the skeptics. The sum total of the scare was a handful of non scientific media reports written by journalists and not backed up by any science. What the journalists did was to take the work of scientists who were studying warming and cooling cycles, carry it to it's illogical conclusion and distort it beyond recognition. It's the same as people in 30 years time saying we were predicting an ice age now and using movies like The Day After Tomorrow as proof.

Answer 7

I don't pretend to be an expert on global warming. I do know in the US, the south experienced the worst drought this summer in over 100 years. To me, this is a tad scary.