Well....
Posted on 08/02/2012 1:05:45 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Scientists drilling deep into the edge of modern Antarctica have pulled up proof that palm trees once grew there.
Analyses of pollen and spores and the remains of tiny creatures have given a climatic picture of the early Eocene period, about 53 million years ago.
The study in Nature suggests Antarctic winter temperatures exceeded 10C, while summers may have reached 25C.
Better knowledge of past "greenhouse" conditions will enhance guesses about the effects of increasing CO2 today.
The early Eocene - often referred to as the Eocene greenhouse - has been a subject of increasing interest in recent years as a "warm analogue" of the current Earth.
"There are two ways of looking at where we're going in the future," said a co-author of the study, James Bendle of the University of Glasgow.
"One is using physics-based climate models; but increasingly we're using this 'back to the future' approach where we look through periods in the geological past that are similar to where we may be going in 10 years, or 20, or several hundred," he told BBC News.
The early Eocene was a period of atmospheric CO2 concentrations higher than the current 390 parts per million (ppm )- reaching at least 600ppm and possibly far higher.
Global temperatures were on the order of 5C higher, and there was no sharp divide in temperature between the poles and the equator.
Drilling research carried out in recent years showed that the Arctic must have had a subtropical climate.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Do you live in a pineapple?
Maybe those palm species were carnivores.
What a life for the polar bears. They could eat coconuts and hunt for seals off the beach.
And all of it was caused by the acts of Man,especially the use of cars and trucks using fossil fuels.
Well....
When South America and Antarctica were connected, the Antarctic Current we have today was impossible, and warm ocean currents were diverted south around the continent. It was ice-free at that time.
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