93 million years ago earth was far warmer than today?

Question

so much so that palm trees grew in alaska and large reptiles roamed canada, this was caused by undersea volcanos, whats to say thats it wasn't volcanos that caused the recent warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7510541.stm

Answer 1

"whats to say thats it wasn't volcanos that caused the recent warming."

Because we don't see enough volcanic activity to explain the warming.

The first sentence of your link is:

"In the so-called "anoxic event" of the late Cretaceous Period, the ocean depths became starved of oxygen, wiping out swathes of marine organisms."

Has this happened recently?

Answer 2

You could be right. There's a huge split in the whole world opinion about this as you know. I used to be pro global warming as caused by man made pollution, but I just don't know any more. The govt just uses it as a cash cow to tax us on fuel and power.

Answer 3

i agree

Answer 4

the earth is 12000 years old

Answer 5

Global warming or whatever is cause by a lot of different factors ( my opinion ) and until our respective governments come clean and tell the truth we are not going to get any where, there is too much of  " do as I say and not what I do "  Some thing needs to be done but not just by forcing and taxing the people with tax etc, the leaders have to stop wasting all our resources on wars and weapons

Answer 6

there are cycles in our Solar System that we may never understand.. the Earth gets warm/er every 150,000 years or so (I think) and I think we are going through this cycle..to be honest the way we keep using our fossil fuels, we will have bigger problems that 2 degrees!!

Answer 7

Why do you feel it's necessary to find an alternate explanation for the recent warming, than the one accepted by the vast majority of climate scientists around the world?

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report....

http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/news/2007/Ba...

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positi...

Are you driven by political ideology or have you found some solid evidence that there's been recent increased volcanic activity? If you've found evidence, then please provide a link.  Otherwise, I suspect your merely speculating because of your own ideology.

Events from 90 million years ago are only useful in analyzing today's events, if there's evidence that the same process is going on.

Answer 8

Alaska and Canada were in different locations in the Mesozoic Era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea

The Earth was much warmer then.  It is likely that the current Ice Age was caused when continents moved toward the poles and the Isthmuth of Panama shifted the ocean currents and other geologic forces may have had an impact as well.  

Volcanos are relatively steady though sometimes there are extremely violent events and big eruptions.  There hasn't been one of those since Toba eruption 75,000 years ago.  There is actually relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere compared to levels in the Mesozoic Era.

It has been demonstrated that CO2 doesn't drive temperature changes.  Temperature changes drive CO2.  

Ken pretends that alarmist assigning blame to recent warming on CO2 isn't more than a leftist political cause.  He is mistaken IMO.  It is mostly politics driven.  We have been coming out of the little Ice Age for 300 years.  There is nothing that is happening now that hasn't happened in the past.

Answer 9

That's when earth first started out though. Our recent wave is too fast compared to the one 93 million years ago.

Answer 10

there were not many mammals 93 MYA and no humans at all, in fact, there were no primates. Life has evolved to the present climate, not the climate of 93 MYA. Life evolves to slow climate change, rapid climate change causes mass extiction.

volcanoes are not responsible because scientists are about 100% sure where the increase in CO2 concentration has come from, this is not debabatable, it is fact. It did not come from volcanoes or from the oceans via lag from solar activity - past temperature change did not lead to an increase in CO2 today, the increase in CO2 concentration has been driven by human activity. There are many claims regarding global warming that are still open for scientific debate, this isn't one of them.

Answer 11

One problem with your question is the age assigned to the earth is based on the unprovable scientific assumptions of radiometric. A better understading of the earth's age is the Biblical time frame of about 6,000. The reason that there are palm trees in Alaska and large reptiles in Canada, is the atmospheric change effect of the flood of Noah's day which occured about 4,000 years ago. Environmental conditions before the flood were much different than the conditions after the flood. The reason is that there was a layer of water in the atmosphere which kept tropical conditions for palm trees in Alaska. After the flood that layer of water in the atmosphere was gone and the post flood regrowth of life was encased in the great ice sheet.

Answer 12

Things that did not exist on earth 93 million years ago:

human beings

wheat

barley

rice

cattle

hogs

sheep

... and pretty much everything you currently eat, except fish. These things all evolved to live on a cooler planet that the one that existed 93 million years ago.

So what are you going to eat when climate change leads to ecosystem collapse which leads to mass extinction? How many of us will starve in the dystopian hellhole future you imagine?

Answer 13

The global warming hoax has been brought to you by the same people who brought you killer bee's and Y2K.

Answer 14

Whoa whoa whoa - - I don't think it makes sense to compare the present to 93 million years ago, other than to note that CO2-driven warming periods that far back involved CO2 levels 10 to 15 orders of magnitude greater than the level today.      We're talking about a 1/3 to 1/2 increase, possibly doubling if we just kept going for a few hundred years.

It's just not the same question at all.

Answer 15

Uh..93M??

Last time i checked it was -2008-

Answer 16

Ken wrote

"Why do you feel it's necessary to find an alternate explanation for the recent warming, than the one accepted by the vast majority of climate scientists around the world?"

This is a bit of a frightening statement Ken. Was it directed at the asker only, or everyone who seeks an alternate explanation? Either way, a little odd.

Answer 17

It must of have been in order for any of the two theories in that article to be supported.

I've seen similar theories talked about on Nova and such..

Answer 18

Asteroids that decimate 90% of the species on earth are natural. Therefore why are people worried about asteroids?

Answer 19

Yes. there is not one shred of evidence to support 'man-made' global warming. In fact, we just had one of the coldest springs on record!

Answer 20

Yes it was. Scientists believe that our Earth has a pattern of global changes. For example, after what you mentioned above, there was the Ice Age. But what most people don't know is that, that Ice Age was not the only one this planet has faced. So yes, this system still continues today. Now, and for the last few centuries, a warmer time period has evolved. The only difference this time is that humans are accentuating this sector of time we call 'Global Warming'. We can't stop this phenomenon, but we can tone down the harsh after-effects on the world and its populants.

Answer 21

Im guessing its all the tree huggers toking up when nobody's around.

That has to be some kind of factor.

Answer 22

Volcano's do spue out a significant amount of CO2.  Actually 300 times more than man every year.  The entire Environmental Movement is concentrating on this new propaganda line of CO2 as a means of exercising control.  This and other means (Gasoline, and Food) have been how they have been manipulating public opinion to believe in their cause.

The SUN is what warms the earth, and it is in an active state.  It has been projected by 2015 cooling will be re-initiated as the cycle is expected to end.  

What really causes global warming is the lack of cloud cover.  When the Earth is showered in Solar winds not as many clouds develop allowing the sun to radiate more.  However contrary to published opinion the earth's troposphere is not heating up as would occur if carbon was accumulating like Venus.