What was the Climate like when T-Rex Ruled the Earth?

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 highlight of the expedition find are bones that belonged to an eight-foot Champsosaur, a now-extinct crocodile-like beast with a long snout and razor-sharp teeth.

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

Comments

[Dazzleline]

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[Friday]

The one single crcoenn that is threatening the very existence of lives in this planet is global warming. Global warming can be minimized to a great extent, if we eliminate the causes which are mostly human made… Introduction To the ThreatenThe one single crcoenn that is threatening the very existence of lives in this planet is global warming. The drastic changes in the climatic conditions pose serious threat to our future generation. Owing to the results of global warming glaciers is retreating, sea levels are increasing, polar bears and other rare cold climate species are slowly becoming extinct. Navigators maintain that the Icebergs that once dominated the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have now vanished. Scientists and environmentalists conducted various studies and concluded that the past 30 years has been the warmest period in the global history. The main causes attributed towards global warming are human activities. The burning of fossil fuel is one of the major factors that contribute to global warming. Reasons for Global Warming Global warming can be minimized to a great extent, if we eliminate the causes which are mostly human made. The responsibility of preventing global warming rests both on individual as well as the state. In individual level we can change our practices such as minimize the usage of fossil based fuel, reduce the electricity consumption by using energy efficient appliances. Vehicular pollution can be minimized by using the public transport system. The nucleus goal is to beget the global warming under control by restricting the carbon dioxide release and other heat ensnaring greenhouse gases into the environment. On an average nearly 10000 pounds of carbon dioxide is released per year in significant countries like Canada and US. This can be immediately curtailed by becoming energy efficient. Reducing the usage of oil, coal and gasoline are one of the effective ways of preventing global warming. Home Appliances Contribution to Global Warming Regrettably, it is noticed that an average home contributes to global warming more than a car. The increase of contribution is at home because the energy utilized in our homes is received from power plants that burn fossil fuel to provide power for our electric products. We can save energy by substituting compact fluorescent bulbs in the place of incandescent light bulbs. This will save your money as well as your energy bill will be minimal. The CFL bulbs last longer and the energy consumed is also less. LED bulbs are efficient and energy savers. Home appliances also contribute a lot in elevating the energy bill. The higher is the energy efficient appliance, the lesser is the cost of running the appliance. So purchasing energy efficient appliances will help in reducing the utility bill and also in protecting the environment. Similarly, purchase major appliances such as dishwasher, air conditioner or refrigerator with maximum energy efficiency. This reduces the carbon dioxide pollution. As per the U.S. energy report, heating as well as cooling systems emit maximum carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The energy used for our homes for heating goes in vain though the prevention is inexpensive and simple. This energy that goes vain can be saved by reducing the need for air conditioners. This can help improve the environment from pollution. The largest source is transportation that adds to greenhouse gases. Vehicles are responsible and poor maintenance of vehicle contributes to pollution and global warming. Maintaining Vehicle Efficiency This can be protected by increasing the overall fuel efficiency of your vehicle and paying attention to your driving style and maintenance. Buying fuel efficient hybrid cars and using bio-fuel that allows using gas electric engines and thereby cutting global warming pollution to a great extent. Driving less and making use of public transports, walking or riding a bike will save the environment from pollution. Besides this, consolidating trips and encouraging car- pooling is one of the effective ways of preventing global warming. Recycling maximum products, eating local foods and vegetarian meals, painting home in light color, purchasing energy certificates as well as carbon offsets are few of the ways of preventing our wonderful planet, the earth from the disastrous global warming. Though, there are many ways to prevent initiating and following it with determination will yield the desired results. This is a unison effort and so all the hands have to join together with force to push the effects of global warming back beyond sight.

[Fabio]

go to the wiki page on Milankovitch cycles to get an idea of the gross ipunts and feedbacks that affect global climate and also the uncertainties involved.What isn't discussed is how the continent layout and ocean circulation restrictions appear to also have a role (these two factors affect how the heat is distributed around the world), as well as the effects of ice cover in solar reflection.One of the problems is that how the climate is controlled in actuality is really not all that well understood. In gross terms, there is a pretty good idea of the important factors. It is how these factors play together to produce climate variability that is the big question. Anthro warming proponents emphasize greenhouse effects as dominant over the short term. It isn't clear that that is actually the case, but it is the essence of the argument that they present.I don't think I would characterize the idea that recent global warming is mainly caused by man as either a fact or a fiction. It is one possible explanation, one possible interpretation of the available data in terms of a poorly understood and very complex system.Not mentioned in your case is whether antro global warming is necessarily a good or bad thing. That opens up a whole different set of questions. For example, it may be that in the absence of our (man's) ipunts to climate, things would have gone and would be going fairly rapidly in the other way, towards cooling, glacial expansion, and so forth (return to the ice age), and thus warming may actually be the lesser of two evils.I think it is very important to point out that the climate is not static. It does not stay the same for long. It will change to warmer or colder and tends to cycle back and forth, sometimes fairly severely. People that scream about the horrible warming tend to operate under the false premise that without man, there would have been no climate change. This is emphatically a false presumption.Not sure if that helps you or not.

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