Two hundred years ago the world heard of extinct beasts buried in Polar regions. In Siberia hairy mammoths were found quick-frozen as they had stood—one still had buttercups in its mouth! Giant oxen, woolly rhinoceros and saber-toothed tigers were dug out in Arctic Europe and Asia; bison, wolves and mountain lions from similar latitudes in America.
Nineteenth century geologists, botanists, zoologists, astronomers, mathematicians and enthusiastic amateurs jumped in to solve the mystery. How, and when, could a region of permanent ice support huge animals.
At the same time, scientists recognized our largest trees in fossils brought back by Arctic explorers. On the forest floor from millions of years ago lay fossilized parts of Sequoia (redwoods), oak, pine, birch, poplar, walnut, ginkgo and ferns! Similar species seemed to have grown from Alaska to Greenland, Spitzbergen to Siberia.
The richness of Polar species… Botanists identified one hundred sub-species of fossil ginkgo: too many to name each separately! Mixed in with the plant fossils were layers of sea shells. Explorers also found fresh shells and whale bones piled up on terraces many meters higher than the sea level of their day. Scientists guessed the sea had risen and flooded the land. Several times. Fossil records and more recent marine debris pointed that way. And 20th century data backs them up.
Petroleum geologists noticed wedge-shaped patterns to sediment at the edge of the continents. They guessed rising and falling sea-levels were the cause. Seismic data from oilwells also pointed to MASSIVE changes in sea level. And gave an estimate of geological time and length for these cycles of relative change.
In the Cretaceous (144 – 65 million years ago), seas were as high as 300 METERS above ours. In Tertiary times (65 – 1.8 million years ago), sea levels fell 100 – 200 meters over almost one million years. Besides these large cycles, the earth goes through short ones too.
Scientists say Greenland’s climate was once like ours. An ice sheet keeps record of it over hundreds of thousands of years. So American and European teams are studying its ice cores. Frozen gas bubbles, pollen and dust grains, sea salt and other chemicals reveal conditions from when the ice formed.
One surprise: climate changed in Greenland but not globally. Another is that within a long, warming cycle there were sudden flips to a cold climate. In 8200 BCE (before current era), 3800 BCE, and lately 2600 BCE. But researchers can’t say yet what triggered these quick changes in less than ten thousand years. The good news is that humans and animals and plants survived their environment going topsy-turvy. Over and over again.
It’s past time for us to learn how meltwater, water vapour, dust and sunlight affect climate. And quickly pinpoint ocean currents and forces that keep seas circulating. Native people fish and hunt around Arctic seas. They are the best look-outs to alert us when freshwater dilutes seawater in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering Seas. The level of salt in the water and temperature already affect the fish, seals, walruses and whales they live off. So why don’t we teach the many theories of climate change.
Wall Street’s money-lenders and brokers control the climate change message. They profit from risks—death, disability, fire, flood—and climate makes the perfect risk. Their 2007 booklet described climate change insurance:
“Such catastrophic risks, and society’s wish to avoid them, explains why society may be willing to pay a bit ‘over-the-odds’ to reduce further the risk of irreversible climate-change-related event, i.e. people may be willing to pay more than the cost-benefit-calculated ‘social’ cost of carbon.”
Wall Street consults scientists who say we must ban coal and petroleum. If we do this, can we stop Arctic ice from melting and the seas from rising? NO. Because climate has been changing since the earliest Cambrian records (500 million years ago). We’re still learning why it switches from warm to cool and back. We can’t stop it. But our ancestors managed to survive. And so will we.
Reference
1. John Llewellyn and Camille Chaix, “The Business Of Climate Change II”, 2007.
2. Kim Murphy, “Engineers say Alaskan village could be lost as sea encroaches”, 2001.
3. Jonathan Adams et al., “Sudden climate transitions during the Quarternary”, 1999.
4. Peter R. Vail and Jan Hardenbol, “Sea Level Changes During The Tertiary”, 1979.
5. Ivan T. Sanderson, “The Riddle Of The Quick Frozen Mammoths”, 1960.
