Thursday, April 26, 2007

Arctic hippopotamus to survive the polar bear

We only have one hundred years till mankind can start experiencing life in our own Jurassic Park according to Appy Sluijs, an expert in ancient ecology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and fossil footprints of a pantodont found on an Arctic island.
:::[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantodont]

Most adult polar bear males weigh 300-600 kg (660-1320 lbs) and measure 2.4-3.0 m (7.9-10.0 ft) in length, about the size of a pantadont. That both animals have made Svalbard archipelago their home over time is a stunning demonstration of how ecology adapts to climate change over 55 million years.

The questions each one of us has to answer is - do our descendents start having to adapt in 2107, within 100 short years? Or are you the type that intuitively believes that mankind should live out our benign interglacial bonus in accordance with natures prescription?
:::[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Natural_range]
clipped from www.reuters.com
COAL MINE SEVEN, Svalbard, Norway (Reuters) - Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida
Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg (880 lb), add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high.
about 55 million years ago
"Where we are now was once a temperate rainforest,"
orests grew in the Arctic when carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was at about 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere because of natural swings in the climate.
clipped from www.reuters.com
Sea levels 55 million years ago were about 100 meters higher than now -- Antarctica was free of ice.
Carbon dioxide levels are now at almost 390 per million in the atmosphere, up from 270 before the Industrial Revolution and rising fast. Sluijs said they could reach 1,000 parts per million by 2100 if not held in check.

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