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The earth saw a mysterious episode of global warming 56 million years ago due to a surge of carbon into the atmosphere. Animals could walk from continent to continent and never see ice. That period is called PETM, or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and it changed everything about life on earth. Paleontologist Philip Gingerich has been studying the fossil record of the era for forty years, mainly in the Bighorn Basin, just east of Yellowstone National Park.
During the PETM itself a strange thing happened to some mammals: They got dwarfish. Horses in the Bighorn shrank to the size of Siamese cats; as the carbon ebbed from the atmosphere, they grew larger again. It’s not clear whether it was the heat or the CO2 itself that shrank them. But the lesson, says Gingerich, is that animals can evolve fast in a changing environment. When he first drove into the Bighorn four decades ago, it was precisely to learn where horses and primates came from. He now thinks that they and artiodactyls came from the PETM—that those three orders of modern mammals acquired their distinctive characteristics right then, in a burst of evolution driven by the burst of carbon into the atmosphere.
Learn more about the changes that happened during the PETM in the October issue of National Geographic magazine. Link
(Image credit: Ira Block)
Scientists have discovered the reason why global warming trends seemed to be locked in stasis between 1998 and 2008: layers of pollutants, particularly sulfur, being spewed into the air by Asian factories in record breaking quantities. The layer of sulfur that formed in the atmosphere counteracted against warming greenhouse gases while reflecting light back into space, thereby staving off the global temperature hike. Read more about it over at Science News.
(image courtesy of Jonesy22 at Wikimedia Commons)
There are hybrids, cap-and-trade, and wind energy … and then there’s Genghis Khan. Guess which one has the biggest environmental impact?
Genghis Khan’s Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com.
Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.
So how did Genghis Khan, one of history’s cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today’s environmentalists to stomach, but Khan did it the same way he built his empire — with a high body count.
Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world’s total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.
In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan’s unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere.
If global warming proponents are right, then we’re all doomed and life on Earth as we know it would cease to exist – but the manner by which it will happen may surprise you. See, the words "global warming" conjure up images of a hot and scorched Earth, but the end may actually be the opposite: encased in snow and ice.
Global Warming is an event that could possibly cause melting of the polar ice caps, rising sea levels, raised temperatures, and widespread famine. These are all good reasons to not invite Global Warming to a party. What this potential catastrophe has in destructive power, it lacks in creativity. The earth will keep getting warmer and we’ll all be in trouble – pretty simple, right? Luckily, people from the future have sent a robot back in time to warn us about Global Warming: Al Gore.
Hearing ‘Global Warming’ and thinking ‘freezing to death’ would be like hearing ‘Steve Jobs’ and not thinking ‘black turtleneck’. But it’s very possible that a mass melting of the northern ice caps would send a great deal of cold water into the Gulf Stream currents – currents which take warm water into the northern hemisphere (like the UK) keeping it as habitable as it is today. Without these currents, areas like England could reach temperatures comparable to another area of the same latitude: Canada.
If global warming disrupts these currents, temperatures in these northern areas will plummet and the land might even become covered in ice. If there is enough ice, there is an increase in albeado, the reflection of sunlight off light colored surfaces. This leads to a further reduction in temperature, creating more ice and possibly a runaway, ‘snowball earth’ scenario. The only way to get out of such a hellish ice prison is to wait for volcanoes to pump out enough C02 to melt the ice. In the end, it’s pretty clear that whether it’s saving us or killing us, C02 is a massive dick.
Read about 4 more disasters that will kill all humanity in the opposite ways you’d think over at Weird Worm: Link
Gorgeous women in bikinis do not usually bring to mind the image of the arctic, but that’s exactly what Canadian magazine Up Here wanted you to think about when it released its first ever swimsuit edition:
The 26-year-old northern Canadian magazine, Up Here, has published its first swimsuit issue to draw attention to climate change.
Its latest edition, out this week, features 10 swimsuit-clad women posing in threatened northern landscapes such as burnt-out forests and melting icescapes.
Why swimsuits?
"When you want to get attention in a room full of people talking, you tend to yell," writes Tim Querengesser on Up Here’s blog. "So, when we decided to dedicate an entire issue to climate change in the North…we knew we’d have to yell to be heard above the already deafening howl."
Link | Up Here magazine post, where sadly there’s no more details on the swimsuit edition
Blame global warming or not, but there’s no mistaking that the Andean glaciers in the mountains of Peru are vanishing. But what to do about it?
A Peruvian inventor named Eduardo Gold has got an idea – brilliant to some, daft to others – that may just work to "regrow" the glaciers. He’s painting the mountain top white:
Four men from Licapa, the village which lies further down the valley, don boiler suits and mix the paint from three simple and environmentally-friendly ingredients: lime, industrial egg white and water. The mixture which has been used since Peru’s colonial times.
There are no paint brushes, the workers use jugs to splash the whitewash onto the loose rocks around the summit. It is a laborious process but they have whitewashed two hectares in two weeks. They plan is to paint the whole summit, then in due course, two other peaks totalling overall some 70 hectares.
Mr Gold may not be a scientist but his idea is based on the simple scientific principle that when sunlight is reflected off a white or light-coloured surface, solar energy passes back through the atmosphere and out into space, rather than warming the Earth’s surface.
The US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has endorsed a similar idea using white roofs in the United States – possibly more pragmatic than painting mountains.
Changing the albedo (a measure of how strongly an object reflects light) of the rock surface, would bring about a cooling of the peak’s surface, says Mr Gold, which in turn would generate a cold micro-climate around the peak.
Previously on Neatorama: Zebra is a Painted Donkey
For years, two nations have both claimed the territory of an uninhabited island the Bangladeshis called South Talpatti Island and the Indians called New Moore Island. The dispute is now moot, as the island has vanished underwater.
“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.
Anyone wishing to visit now, he observed, would have to think of travelling by submarine.
The island never rose more than about six feet above sea level. Professor Hazra predicts more islands in the Indian Ocean will vanish as sea levels rise. Link -via J-Walk Blog
This clever "Disappearing Civil Liberties" mug features the complete text of the Bill of Rights that disappear (thanks to the Patriot Act) as you add hot beverage. From the Neatorama Shop: Link
More disappearing mugs:
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Climate change isn’t all bad; it just depends on your perspective! If you’re a mountain, a jellyfish, or some of the other things on this list, your future may be pretty bright.
1. GREENLAND GETS A MAKEOVER
The town of Qaqortoq (Julianehåb), Greenland by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen
[wikipedia]
In “The Princess Bride,” the evil genius scolds his henchman by saying, “Do you want me to send you back where you were? Unemployed … in Greenland?”
That threat might have carried some weight in the movie, but in real life, Greenland’s prospects are looking up. Its massive ice sheet is rapidly thawing, which means more and more arable land is surfacing all across the island. Industrious residents have begun growing broccoli and other crops during summer months, and speculators are drilling for gold, diamonds, and coal. Geological surveys also suggest that Greenland may contain vast offshore oil reserves.
These newfound sources of wealth have the island’s 58,000 residents, most of them Inuit, feeling empowered. In November 2008, three-quarters of them voted for independence from Denmark, which has governed the island as a colony for centuries. Ambitious local politicians even hinted that, if the movement continues, they may deserve some special consideration from the European Union. Especially because, as the Arctic ice continues to melt, new shipping lanes will open up just off of Greenland’s coast.
2. JELLYFISH LIVING LARGE
Although times are rough for most ocean-dwelling plants and animals, jellyfish are flourishing. For reasons that scientists don’t completely understand, the higher temperatures and increased acidification of ocean water are making the marine environment more hospitable to jellyfish. In addition, the overfishing of predators has left this invertebrate with an abundance of plankton to munch on. All these factors have led to record jellyfish “blooms” around the world, from Mexico to Great Britain to South Africa. In some parts of the Black Sea, blooms contain as many as 1,000 tiny comb jellyfish per cubic meter.
GOOD Magazine video of the Giant Nomura jellyfish [YouTube
Clip]
But do good times mean drawbacks for humans? You bet. Some jellyfish can weigh up to 450 lbs., with tentacles up to 120 feet long. Massive Nomura jellyfish off the coast of Japan have decimated fishing villages by devouring fish eggs and tearing apart fishing nets. Plus, as we all know, their stings are nasty. Swarms around Hawaii and Japan have wreaked havoc on tourism industries that rely heavily on snorkeling and boat tours.
3. MOUNTAINS REACH NEW HEIGHTS
Jungfrau, one of the summits of the Alps. Photo: Jphoto [wikipedia]
While climate change is forcing glaciers to recede, it’s also allowing mountains to get taller. As the water stored in glaciers drains away, they mountains underneath them have less of a load to carry. And without all that weight, they can rise to their full heights. In the western arm of the Alps, for instance, mountains are growing at a rate of .035 inches per year. That’s good news for skiers, climbers, and large hills with Napoleon complexes.
4. HELLO, SMALLPOX
Smallpox virions. Transmission electron micrograph by Dr. Fred Murphy,
Sylvia Whitfield / CDC
After decades of vaccination campaigns, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in December 1979. But thanks to global warming, this little virus, which wiped out half a billion people during the 20th century, may be making a comeback.
Scientists believe that smallpox can live for decades, or even centuries, while frozen in the Arctic tundra. As temperatures continue to rise, some experts believe there is a distinct possibility that caches of smallpox stored in the ice could thaw, leading to a global epidemic. Indeed, when a mass grave was unearthed in Siberia in the 1980’s , testing showed that the antigen the virus was still active in the dead bodies. It’s a terrifying thought, but there is some good news. Even if smallpox resurfaces, an effective vaccine has already been in invented, so casualties wouldn’t be nearly as high as they were in previous centuries.
5. SATELLITES SPIN FASTER
Track Earth's satellites with NASA J-Track-3D
[Java applet]
For years, space researchers have recorded small changes in the speed of orbiting satellites. Sometimes they’d speed up; other times they’d slow down. Scientists soon found a correlation between these changes and the 11-year cycle of sunspots—the dark areas on the surface of the Sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity. Sunspots alter the density of the gases in the thermosphere, the outer layer of the atmosphere that is home to most satellites. When the gases become less dense, satellites travel faster; when they become more dense, satellites slow down.
It turns out that it isn’t just the Sun that’s been affecting the satellites, though. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are also altering their speeds. On the surface of the Earth, carbon dioxide actually cools things down. This makes the thermosphere less dense, allowing satellites to go faster. Scientists confirmed the effect in 2006, and the phenomenon may actually be benefiting us. With less drag, satellites require fewer course corrections and stay aloft longer, meaning that the giant hunks of metal won’t fall to the ground as often.
__________
The
article above, written by Gideon Banner, appeared in the Jan - Feb 2010
issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.
Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!
Well I’m a polar bear and my name is Bjorn
and I’ve been a polar bear since the day I was born.
Welcome to my kingdom and the world that I roam
the circumpolar arctic, the place that I call home.
Written by science teacher Tom Rugg. Complete lyrics are available at the YouTube link. This video is part of the BBC Wales’ series Green Season. Link -via Arbroath
Just when you thought that the world is safe from the One World Government that is meeting in Copenhagen, here comes another menace: black carbon. Okay, okay. We know it more commonly as soot, but you have to admit it sounds much cooler when you say "black carbon."
A new modeling study from NASA confirms that when tiny air pollution particles we commonly call soot – also known as black carbon – travel along wind currents from densely populated south Asian cities and accumulate over a climate hotspot called the Tibetan Plateau, the result may be anything but inconsequential.
In fact, the new research, by NASA’s William Lau and collaborators, reinforces with detailed numerical analysis what earlier studies suggest: that soot and dust contribute as much (or more) to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases. This warming fuels the melting of glaciers and could threaten fresh water resources in a region that is home to more than a billion people.
Lau explored the causes of rapid melting, which occurs primarily in the western Tibetan Plateau, beginning each year in April and extending through early fall. The brisk melting coincides with the time when concentrations of aerosols like soot and dust transported from places like India and Nepal are most dense in the atmosphere.
"Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five times faster than warming globally," said William Lau, head of atmospheric sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Based on the differences it’s not difficult to conclude that greenhouse gases are not the sole agents of change in this region. There’s a localized phenomenon at play."
A true danger or just another bogeyman? You decide: Link
Photo: Justin Ries
Yay for global warming! New study by marine geologist Justin Ries shows that if carbon dioxide emissions increase to extreme levels, we’ll get giant lobsters:
A new study published in the journal Geology shows that if carbon dioxide emissions reach extreme levels, the changes in the world’s oceans might result in lobsters 50 percent bigger than normal.
Lobsters can take carbon from the water and use it to build their exoskeletons, says marine geologist Justin Ries, who oversaw the study. The theory, he tells NPR’s Guy Raz, is that lobsters are able to convert the extra carbon into material for building up their shells.
Climate change may be serious stuff for many of us, but for Al Gore, it’s seriously profitable. He’s about to become the world’s first "carbon" billionaire:
Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, has claimed that Mr Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.
Mr Gore had said that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.
Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event in which participating bloggers post about a particular issue to raise awareness and trigger global discussion that will – hopefully – bring about positive change. This year’s topic is climate change – which, shall we say, is a wee bit controversial.
We’ll get to some Neatorama-worthy posts on the blog today, but first I’d like to ask YOU what you think about global warming/climate change. Do you believe that it is happening? Or is it just a passing hysteria, much like the concern over global cooling in the 1950s to 1970s?
[poll=14]
It’s an open mike – let’s hear your opinion.
Dutch architect Koen Olthuis responded to the rising sea level by designing a floating apartment building:
The Dutch are uniquely accustomed to dealing with fluctuating water levels; much of the Netherlands is below sea level, and vast swaths of land, known as polders, are continually pumped free of the accumulating rainwater that threatens nearby homes and buildings. The Citadel will simply rise and fall with the changing water levels, making it impervious to flooding, tides, and sea waters inching upward as a result of global warming.
Built atop a floating heavy concrete foundation, The Citadel will house 60 luxury apartments, a parking garage, a floating roadway, and boat docks. Each apartment will naturally have waterfront views via a garden terrace, and greenhouses will be interspersed throughout. But the greenest feature of the Citadel is its cooling system: submerged pipes will pump water throughout the structure to cool it, reducing its energy use by 25 percent compared to a conventional building.
Global warming has an upside!
“It has been so hot in South Australia for over a week…40+ degrees Celsius everyday – 104 F, very dry also. These are the photos of a little Koala that just walked into the back porch of a home around the way looking for a bit of heat relief. The lady of the house filled up a bucket and this is what happened!”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Trace1138.
Photo: Red Cross of Argentina
This is a pretty clever guerilla marketing by the Argentinian Red Cross: a "melting" man passing out fliers urging spectators in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to fight global warming.
Link | Photo via Comunicadores.info [in Portuguese] – Thanks Adam!
Previously on Neatorama:
No, New York is not underwater (yet, anyhow) – that’s a clever ad for HSBC by Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai ad agency in India. The bank wanted to raise awareness of the dangers of global warming, so the clever ad guys glued an aerial photo of a city’s skyscrapers to the base of a swimming pool … the effect of a submerged cityscape is fantastic!
