Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I feel like I should split this comparative economics tangent off into its own thread.

[grumbler]

I feel like I should split this comparative economics tangent off into its own thread.

I don't think that that would help it make any more sense. It's between people with completely different definitions of economic terms.

[crazy canuck]

Jasper Alberta is burning.  Wildfires have become a common occurrence now, so the fact that there is another wildfire isn't really noteworthy, but it really hits when we lose a gem like this.

[Valmy]

Yeah we rarely had wildfires in Texas. Now they are becoming distressingly common.

It is kind of funny how we are always talking about climate impacts but nobody is allowed to talk about why the climate might be changing, it just wouldn't be politically correct in a conservative state.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Yeah we rarely had wildfires in Texas. Now they are becoming distressingly common.

It is kind of funny how we are always talking about climate impacts but nobody is allowed to talk about why the climate might be changing, it just wouldn't be politically correct in a conservative state.

Obviously Jewish Space Lasers™.   

[viper37]

Icy Greenland was greener than scientists once thought — and more vulnerable to climate change


So, the Vikings were right.  Everyone laughed at them.  Tourist scam by Erik the Red they said.  Turns out he was just as misunderstood as Galileo?

He was just off by a few hundred thousand years.

(CN) — The story of how an island about 80% covered by an ice sheet came to be called Greenland is usually told as an early attempt at false advertising. But it turns out the center of Greenland was full of green tundra not so long ago, indicating the ice sheet might be less resistant to climate change than scientists realized.
Using an ice core sample from the center of Greenland taken in 1993, researchers found soil that contained willow wood, fungi, a poppy seed, and the legs and compound eye of an insect.

Those signs of life, especially the presence of rock spikemoss megaspores — which is only found on sandy gravel or rocks today in the area's greener southern edges — show that Greenland's now 2-mile-thick ice sheet melted away between 1 million and 400,000 years ago.

During that time, that region of the Arctic island had a mean July temperature between 33.8 F and 50 F, the researchers write in a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The ice on the island dissipated for long enough for soil to form and an ecosystem to take root, wrote Paul Bierman, a geologist and professor at the Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, in a press release accompanying the study. Bierman co-led the study with UVM graduate student Halley Mastro and nine other researchers.

Scientists once believed the island's ice was millions of years old and thus resistant to climate change.
But Greenland's ice sheet "is vulnerable, fragile and capable of disappearing," Bierman said. And, it's a "great piece of evidence that the world has changed in the past, and it will again."

While the natural processes that melted the ice before are infinitesimally slow, climate change caused by greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions from humans has hyper-charged the phenomenon.

Bierman said: "Greenland has really long arms that reach around the planet. It might seem like an obscure place high in the Arctic, but every bit of ice that melts becomes water that flows into the ocean, raising sea level. If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, raising sea level more than 20 feet, hundreds of millions of people would see their homes, farms and places of work slip under rising seas.

"Look at Boston, New York, Miami, Mumbai or pick your coastal city around the world, and add 20 plus
feet of sea level," said Bierman. "It goes underwater. Don't buy a beach house."
While this study won't reveal anything about the next decade, it could inform the next century as humans try to live with and solve the problems of climate change, he said.

Richard Alley, a leading climate scientist at Penn State who reviewed the research, said: "This new study confirms and extends that a lot of sea-level rise occurred at a time when causes of warming were not especially extreme, providing a warning of what damages we might cause if we continue to warm the climate."

[Valmy]

If you go back far enough I am sure even Antarctica was a tropical paradise at some point.

[Norgy]

Icy Greenland was greener than scientists once thought — and more vulnerable to climate change


So, the Vikings were right.  Everyone laughed at them.  Tourist scam by Erik the Red they said.  Turns out he was just as misunderstood as Galileo?

He was just off by a few hundred thousand years.

Greenland had one of the biggest churches in Norway. But since social status was determined by owning cattle, the upper class had a hard time finding grazelands in Eiriksfjord and the likes. Sheep weren't really their thing, but they also had sheep.

The "small ice age" probably spelled doom for that society. I think the last ship loaded with Greenland's prime commodity, walrus bone, arrived in Norway around 1423 or so.

The fate of the Greenland colony has been an object for speculation for decades here. I personally tend towards the theory that the natives had had just about enough with the Norsemen and that the ice range kept creeping closer, making it impossible to sustain. So, yes climate change is nothing new.

But most historians agree that the name "Greenland" was just a sales pitch to get settlers there. Which makes the name "Iceland", with active volcanos and whatnot seem like a really poor sales pitch in comparison.

[viper37]

If you go back far enough I am sure even Antarctica was a tropical paradise at some point.

At tha point, I believe Antartica was further up north though.

[Grey Fox]

If you go back far enough I am sure even Antarctica was a tropical paradise at some point.

At tha point, I believe Antartica was further up north though.

2500 to 1500 millions years ago, Antartica was part of Columbia and was hanging out between 30N to 60N.

[Syt]

Like many places, Vienna is aiming for another record year. We've had 24 days of 30°+C temperatures so far, with more coming (record is 40, I think?). Today and tomorrow it's projected for 36° in the inner city. July was "only" the second warmest on record in Austria, it did feature the longest heatwave on record.

Likewise, the nights are not cooling up properly at the moment. There was some rain overnight, and though it was "only" 24°C at 7am, the humidity was disgusting.

Also, elevator at work was out of order. We're only on the second floor. But it's an old building, so from where the elevators are you go to the "elevated ground floor", then to mezzanine, then 1st and 2nd floor. And because of the room height, if I look at the modern building across the street I'm between 6th and 7th floor.

At least we have AC at work.

If my weather app is right, we might see under 30° on Sunday (28, plus rain ).

[Josquius]

Funny you mention this. Just a few days ago during 30-something degree temperatures in Switzerland someone was telling me about how horrible it gets in Vienna - though he did have positive remarks on the public misters.

As yes. Just returned to the UK after 2 weeks over there where it was just hell.
Yet again my old annoyance comes back  - the UK has so many natural advantages, like the 90% of the time decentish weather,  that it just spurns in an effort to be shit.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I found Vienna quite taxing weatherwise. Like the UK they don't really bother much with AC and the hotels seem to be set up to cope well with cold weather rather than heat. But 30C+ temperatures seem to be routine there and to emerge from the hotel in a non-sticky state was difficult 

Conversely, Spain and Greece seem to be fine and comfortable if the temperature is "only" 30C.

For balance I do recall a spring trip to Greece where it rained a lot, my fully tiled and stone room suddenly seemed sub-optimal...rather damp and cold.

[Josquius]

I do remember Vienna being pretty damn hot yes, but I've only been there a week. Maybe the days I went there I got lucky and it was cool. One advantage it does have is its so built up so you can always find shade- old Italian towns tend to be quite tolerable as compared to more modern places for this reason.

[Syt]

Well, Vienna used to have about 8-10 30+ days per year (60s-90s average). It's now 3-4 times that amount.