Global warming. Rising sea levels. Massive volcanic activity around the world. Widespread climate change.
It’s not a scene from the Hollywood disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow, but the Earth as it appeared during the mid-to late-Cretaceous geological period, 145 million to 65 million years ago, when the largest dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled the planet.
Our planet during the late Cretaceous period was very different than it is today. Not only were dinosaurs like T-Rex present, but the climate was extremely warm and global sea levels were significantly higher than they are today. This was a time when there were no glaciers in either the Arctic or Antarctic.
Late Cretaceous atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were two to four times higher than today, which resulted in a greenhouse climate with tropical sea-surface temperatures rising to more than 34 degrees Celsius, 3 to 7 degrees Celsius warmer than today.
Calderia and Rampino concluded in their 1991 paper - The mid-Cretaceous super plume, carbon dioxide, and global warming - that carbon dioxide emissions resulting from super‐plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre‐industrial value of 285 ppm. Carbon dioxide levels today are around 390 ppm. According to Calderia and Rampino, temperature sensitivity to carbon dioxide increases used in the weathering‐rate formulations, would have caused global warming of from 2.8 to 7.7°C over today's global mean temperature.
Further supporting Calderia and Rampino’s 1991 paper is John Tarduno and his collaborators 1998 paper - Evidence for Extreme Climatic Warmth from Late Cretaceous Arctic Vertebrates.
In 1996, Tarduno’s expedition team literally stumbled across a unique fossil find: vertebrate remains from fish, turtles and Champsosaurs.
The fossils indicate that at least once in Earth's history, high amounts of the greenhouse gas warmed Earth to much higher temperatures than usual.
The reptiles, which were tied to their freshwater environment on Axel Heiberg Island, needed an extended warm period each summer to survive and reproduce. Based on the numbers and sizes of the animals found, the Tarduno’s team estimated that the annual mean temperature in the Arctic during the late Cretaceous period, from about 92 million to 86 million years ago, was about 14 degrees Celsius. That means it was rarely if ever freezing during the winter, and summer temperatures consistently reached between 27 and 32°C.
The Arctic today is defined as being the area where the average temperature for the warmest month (July) is minus 10°C.
The fossils of the Champsosaur are a record of what was happening in the Arctic just as extreme volcanism on Earth was winding down.
Most of the volcanic activity didn't resemble spectacular eruptions like Mt. Pinatubo. Instead, the eruptions were "basaltic" – billions of tons of lava oozed out, and carbon dioxide floated skyward. Besides huge amounts of lava in the Arctic, where hardened lava rock today measures more than a kilometre thick in some places, magma oozed from volcanoes in the Caribbean, in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia, in the Indian Ocean, off the coasts of Madagascar and Brazil, in South Africa and in the Southwestern United States.
Understanding how our past atmosphere, land and ocean system interacted while in this global greenhouse mode is very relevant if we want to understand the fate of our future climate.
It also further illustrates that we live on a dynamic planet who's climate is always changing over the millennia.
Whilst no one denies that the world’s industrialisation has increased considerably the output of greenhouse gases, to ascribe the current phase of our ever changing climate to one single variable (carbon dioxide) or, more specifically, to a very small proportion of one variable (i.e. human produced carbon dioxide) is not science, for it requires us to abandon all we know about our planet Earth, the Sun, our Galaxy and the Cosmos.
And believing that putting a price on Carbon Dioxide will make any difference to the Earth’s climate is madness. The only sensible action to tackle climate change is by adaption, as trying to prevent it is a fool’s game.
Andy Semple
B.App.Sc., B.Com
Follow him on twitter @Bulmkt
We also know that the Great Barrier Reef owes its existance and form to the fact that it was exposed - sea levels were below the GBR in the past.
On the other hand, fossils of marine animals have been found in Queensland (e.g. Richnond). This indicates that sea levels were considerably highar than today.
It looks like we are currently close to the middle of these known extremes in sea levels. And we are supposed to panic about it?
Posted by: Anton | July 24, 2011 at 10:59 AM
Andrew Bolt introduced Vaclav Klaus this a.m. His book "Blue Planet in Green Shackles. What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom" was given me by a well known mining enginer 2 years ago and I have promoted this book since then as I feel that it is the best book I have read on climate change. I suggest that the sceptics who state that "we NOW believe that climate change is REAL" get "REAK" and stop promoting such incorrect propaganda. Dare you to read Vaclav Klaus' book.
I have never known such discourtesy shown to a President of another country to be ignored by Julia Gillard. Vaclav Klaus has LIVED when his country was in turmoil and is able to speak authoratively on his subject. Julia Gillard has thrown her arms around President Obama and other Presidents who visit this country, so why has she spurned Vaclav Klaus. Is she so desperate and frightened of the truth.
I would like to know why man today is supposed to be the culprit in changing the climate. History tells us that the climate has changed in pre-historic times and through the centuries. So what did man do in those centuries to induce climate change? There were no cars, no aerooplanes, no coal mines, etc. Just to quote one piece of history - in 500/600AD the Moche people of Peru had a mega climate change from warm to cool, cool to warm and they adapted. They built mudbrick canals and pipes for containing water to be used in the dry and they survived that to be at war with each other because they no longer trusted the views of their leaders. Sound familiar.
I suggest that those who believe the propaganda being forced on them to go to the library and look up the BBC documentary as above and other history on how the climate has changed through the ages, not just NOW.
Posted by: Georgina | July 24, 2011 at 12:28 PM
Andy: Your article should be published. It is so true and as I said in my last comment, those who don't believe it, just go to the library and you will find that these are FACTS
I have lived quite a number of years and for one have seen the seas much higher than they are today and any rise will be sooner or later decrease. Why has Kevn Rudd and Combet bought seaside houses if they believe the nonsense of seas rising dramatically.
The book called "Volcanoes - Fire from the Earth" should also be read. It is written by Maurice Krafft, a world expert on volcanoes who died while studying the eruption of Mt.Pinatubo. That tells how great was the carbon dioxide spewed from the mountain.
Posted by: Georgina | July 24, 2011 at 12:36 PM
Georgina,
I still can’t get over the fact that our PM will not meet the Head of state from the Czech Republic – really quite disgraceful.
Posted by: Andy | July 24, 2011 at 01:08 PM
Cheers, Georgina.
It's had gotten a few plugs already so that's all one can ask
Posted by: Andy | July 24, 2011 at 01:13 PM
It absolutely astounds me that our government, or any government for that manner, thinks that the climate it something that they can somehow "control". To think that this can be achieved by focusing on one minute trace gas is even more astounding.
Planet Earth has been evolving for 6 billion years, and will continue to do so long after we humans are gone. Our atmosphere and climate are the result of a myriad of complex interactions between a number of systems that no-one fully understands yet. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been recorded at far higher levels than we are seeing today - all before we became industrialized, and even before humans roamed the earth. On this basis alone, you cannot draw a direct relationship between AGW and the current CO2 levels.
It is about time this government came clean and admitted that the Carbon Dioxide Tax is simply a way to raise revenues in a time when Australia is drowning in debt and facing record budget deficits that are spiralling out of control due the ALP’s fiscal irresponsibility and inability to manage Australia’s economy. Whilst they are at it, they could also admit to the socialistic wealth re-distribution aspects of the Carbon Dioxide Tax. If they are that desperate for income, just admit to it and increase the GST instead – something that also undesirable, but which would have far less repercussions for Australia’s economy in both the short and long term.
In the meantime, it is about time that this government stopped trying to play “God” by having the audacity to think that something as complex as our climate can be altered by a tax, and some flawed Treasury Department modelling in an insignificant corner of the globe. If this wasn't such a serious threat to Australia's economy, standards of living, and our future prospects - we would all be able to have a laugh at the "monty-pythonesqueness" of the whole farce.
Posted by: Monika500 | July 24, 2011 at 08:12 PM
Idiots! Past 70 m sea level rises, temperature increases, melting of large ice sheets etc were caused by changes to earths orbit or the tilt of earth's axis. The recent changes are caused by humans. When last the sea levels were high there weren't billions of humans living in coastal cities so it wasn't a problem for humans but this time it will be!
Posted by: Jane R | July 25, 2011 at 09:33 AM
It's a bit presumptuous to think we (humans) are a match for plate tectonics and the sun.
Posted by: Andy | July 25, 2011 at 10:51 AM
errant nonsense
Posted by: Pia Robinson | July 25, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Andy, are you following the "cloud" experiment at Cern. No doubt you are because there has been much ado about it in Watt's Up with that over the past week.
Much of it generated by Nigel Calder's blog. But the issue at hand is that the results are about to be published but the Director, or big wig, at Cern has said he wants no prior "interpretations" coming out on it.
Everyone seems to be getting very excited because usually the IPCC brings out statements preceding results and often the statements are at variance with the results. Some are saying the clamp down might mean that CERN has proof of Svensmark's theory?
If interested watch this link:
The Cloud Experiment
CERN
SVENSMARK EXPERIMENT
http://www.turn180.ie/?p=322
Posted by: Pip | July 25, 2011 at 06:44 PM
Vaclav Klaus was a guest on Alan Jones 2GB show today. Very little was discussed but I guess President Klaus wants to save most of it for his IPA, paying audience.
Even so, I think it would be more interesting if Alan Jones had brought Vaclav Klaus' views on the Lisbon Treaty into his questioning. This rounds out the political motivations behind Climate change in a more direct and all encompassing way than just saying AGW is the same as communism's propaganda that they could control the wind and rain etc.
Vaclav Klaus was the only European leader to try and stall on the Lisbon Treaty, besides the Irish who failed to pass it first time round, by mistake!
Naturally, if you are trying to get a fully Globalised economic system going when half the World still operates a centralised command economy, you are not going to get them onboard unless the final result is somewhat similar to their approach?
Posted by: Pip | July 25, 2011 at 06:57 PM