I almost didn’t make it today for my weekly Thursday post. My laptop was in for repair all week. I should get it back tomorrow. Plus some unpleasant time spent with doctors and hospital procedures slowed me down until now. So I’m using a computer in the Sandy Public Library. They have a one hour time limit and it took me about 20 minutes just to enter all my passwords and go through 2 step confirmations necessary for getting into my accounts from an outside computer.
On 6/21/24 livescience posted an article about Antarctica.
Here are a few excerpts and my comments. Phrases in bold type are my emphasis. If you see 3 dots (…) in a quote, that means I skipped something for simplicity.
Talk about climate change - how’s this?
“Between 34 million to 44 million years ago, an epoch known as the middle-to-late Eocene, Earth's atmosphere transformed drastically. As carbon dioxide levels plummeted, global cooling triggered the formation of glaciers on an ice-free Earth.”
What I see in this statement is an assumption that carbon dioxide levels are the cause of global cooling or warming. The problem with that reasoning is that correlation is not the same as causation. In other words, for all we know, the CO2 levels may be caused by global warming or cooling, not the reverse. Or they may have nothing to do with each other at all. There are many other possibilities and theories about what causes global cooling or warming, that have no connection with CO2 levels.
I have no confidence in the “scientific consensus” on radiometric dating methods or their accuracy, especially when talking about 34 to 44 million years ago, but that’s another story and beside the point. The huge difference in past climate is the point, regardless of the specific time scale.
“Scientists are interested in investigating how this major climate event unfolded in Antarctica, especially as carbon dioxide levels on Earth continue to rise due to human-caused climate change.”
There’s another whopper - an assumption - that rising CO2 levels are caused by humans. That’s totally controversial and surely the writers know it.
The next sentence blew me away. In an article describing the tropical flora and fauna of ancient Antarctica during the “Eocene” and evidence of a giant river system in the past, now covered with ice, we’re told that the CO2 level was close to double what we have today. Which makes one wonder what’s all the global warming hysteria about?
“The amount of carbon dioxide during the late Eocene period was almost double the amount we have today.”
“After drilling nearly 100 feet (30 meters) into the seafloor, the researchers retrieved sediments with layers from two distinct periods…they found that the lower part of the sediment was formed during the mid-Cretaceous period, about 85 million years ago. This sediment contained fossils, spores and pollens characteristic of a temperate rainforest, which existed at that time.”
It sounds to me like earth did very well when the CO2 level was twice as high as it it now. I like temperate rainforests.