[HN Gopher] Scientists discover dead plants beneath mile-deep Gr...
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Scientists discover dead plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice
Author : rbanffy
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-03-16 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| BariumBlue wrote:
| Million year old plant fossils were found.
|
| The real "so what": It shows that even without human-induced
| climate change with lower atmospheric C02, Greenland was
| completely without ice "just" a million years ago (not enough
| time for the position of Greenland to significantly shift).
|
| Greenland is 100% definitely going to lose it's ice, given that
| it's more prone to not having ice than we thought, and
| unprecedented atmospheric C02. "UVM's Paul Bierman, 'it can
| quickly melt, pouring enough into the oceans that New York,
| Miami, Dhaka--pick your city--will go underwater.'"
| chippy wrote:
| They could be at least 400,000 years old.
|
| https://www.uvm.edu/uvmnews/news/secrets-under-ice
| nathias wrote:
| duh, it's called green-land
| danaliv wrote:
| It was called Greenland because Erik the Red wanted to convince
| people to move there.
|
| The sagas about this are fascinating, and quick reads. They
| include the Norse landing on America. Definitely worth your
| time. Penguin sells a slim English translation called The
| Vinland Sagas.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| The title is technically true, but clickbait: the plants are
| dead. They were alive in the "recent geologic past". The
| discovery may be surprising anyways, but it is no longer as
| bizarre as I thought it was.
| medstrom wrote:
| You correctly doubted that any scientists were "stunned" to
| discover plants, so you interpreted it as they found living
| plants, the one thing that might stun them.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've killed the plants and unstunned the scientists above.
| wdb wrote:
| The title gave me Journey to the center of the earth vibes, the
| famous book by Jules Verne :D
| pvaldes wrote:
| Hum, Yep, seeing (S4-G and E) Ericaceae was my first feeling also
| (I was thinking in Calluna in any case) (S4-E) resembles also a
| Conifer.
| aaron695 wrote:
| > In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly a mile
| of ice in northwestern Greenland
|
| Interesting line.
|
| Do we still have army scientists?
| sam86pa wrote:
| We know that temperature got a good 1-2 degC warmer than today
| during the Eemian period 130,000 years ago. That was enough for a
| considerable portion of Greenland to melt.
|
| The exact map of ice extent during the Eemian is under debate;
| the region is notoriously difficult to model as this is directly
| next to a highly fickle ocean current known as the Atlantic
| Meridional Overturning Circulation in the Labrador Sea. As a
| result, different model assumptions produce different possible
| maps.
| vmception wrote:
| huh, I wonder how the corals and ecosystem survived back then?
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| This all happened much more slowly. Climate change isn't
| necessarily destructive to life. It's destructive to life
| when the rate of change exceeds the rate of adaptation of
| many species. Warming 2 degrees in even just 10,000 years is
| much more survivable than when it happens in 300.
| phkahler wrote:
| This is why I cant accept the climate alarmists. From TFA:
|
| >> The discovery helps confirm a new and troubling understanding
| that the Greenland ice has melted off entirely during recent warm
| periods in Earth's history--periods like the one we are now
| creating with human-caused climate change.
|
| What is troubling? That this goes against the alarmist narrative?
| That this has happened before, and might well happen again even
| without human activity?
|
| It's like the final episode of that Neil Tyson show where he's
| looking at tundra eroding in the arctic and they note there are
| buried leaves and such in there - ignoring the implication that
| it used to be nice up there.
|
| Does this invalidate human effects? NO. Does it invalidate the
| idea that we are solely responsible for some cataclysmic outcome?
| IMHO it suggests both inevitability and that it won't be so bad.
| I'm more concerned that the warming somehow triggers the next
| glaciation - which... is there a reason to think won't happen?
| cinntaile wrote:
| How does the presence of twigs and leaves underneath the ice in
| Greenland suggest that it won't be so bad? How does this imply
| that the climate would be tolerable for humans?
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| It's the classic mistake of thinking the problem with
| anthropogenic climate change is the change itself when the
| real problem is the rate of that change.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> thinking the problem with anthropogenic climate change
| is the change itself when the real problem is the rate of
| that change.
|
| No, people keep acting like life on earth is going to die
| due to higher temperatures. It will probably just move
| north. In that sense it's not so bad. It is still
| disruptive, but not the end of the world.
|
| It's also not unstoppable just by going green.
| cinntaile wrote:
| It would be great if you could answer my questions in the
| parent comment. I'm curious to hear your opinion.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| And how much more difficult it is for us to adjust to that
| change now. Even if the climate had shifted extremely
| quickly and moved inland 100 miles in 10 years, a tribe of
| hunter-gatherers or a herd of wolves can migrate 10 miles
| per year. That's about a quarter mile a day.
|
| When you put down roots and build New York City, good luck
| picking back up and moving to dry land.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think the biggest problem for humans is not the loss of
| our coastal cities as devestating as that may be but what
| happens to our food.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Big picture of climate change, agreed that food is a huge
| concern. Sea level rise in particular is an issue for
| coastal cities though.
| j4yav wrote:
| Not so bad for whom? The article says that this happening would
| put coastal cities under 20 feet of water:
|
| > Since some twenty feet of sea-level rise is tied up in
| Greenland's ice, every coastal city in the world is at risk.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Not so bad for whom? The article says that this happening
| would put coastal cities under 20 feet of water
|
| The point is that we should expect this to happen anyway,
| weather we speed it up or not. Once that's accepted, we can
| talk about moving people instead of trying to stop the
| inevitable.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Literally the next paragraph:
|
| _> Understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet in the past is
| critical for predicting how it will respond to climate warming
| in the future and how quickly it will melt. Since some twenty
| feet of sea-level rise is tied up in Greenland 's ice, every
| coastal city in the world is at risk. The new study provides
| the strongest evidence yet that Greenland is more fragile and
| sensitive to climate change than previously understood--and at
| grave risk of irreversibly melting off._
|
| Is "the Greenland ice sheet could melt faster than we thought
| and raise sea levels twenty feet, flooding every coastal city"
| not troubling to you?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I agree with this. Knowing what we know now, there should be
| a plan to get everyone moved to higher ground while we have
| time. Perhaps a tax incentive program and a land buy-back
| program. The governments can use that land for non civilian
| purposes. Maybe let nature reclaim it to some degree. I
| realize this is not easy, given people won't want to give up
| their expensive coastal homes.
| undersuit wrote:
| We could start the tax incentives on the low end
| financially and as climate change ravages the land value of
| coastal homes more and more people will qualify. /S... but
| only slighty.
| mint2 wrote:
| So you're saying that in the past about 130k years ago
| Greenland ice sheets were much smaller and our hunter gatherer
| ancestors either weren't disrupted by it or didn't write down
| an account of their hunter gatherer lives being disrupted. And
| because of that, concerns about our modern built up and fixed
| in place infrastructure being disrupted by the sea level rise
| implied by returning to that state are overblown?
|
| Where did I misinterpreted your point?
| phkahler wrote:
| The point is that we can't stop it no matter how much we jump
| up and down about CO2. So let's deal with the real problem of
| having built shit in a 130k year flood zone instead of
| pretending we can prevent it.
| mint2 wrote:
| Okay but that seems short sighted. If we don't worry about
| the CO2 then we'll have to start building for something
| much more extreme than just Greenland melting. Also
| implying it's like a flood plain is not treating sea level
| rise seriously. Floods plains are under water in temporary
| events. If it's going to be underwater for thousands of
| years that is not a flood plain.
| kolinko wrote:
| Humans were also not at fault when the meteorite struck and
| wiped all dinosaurs.
|
| It doesn't mean we can't stop it from happening again.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's not (so much) the magnitude of the change but the speed of
| the change.
|
| There's a massive difference between a few degrees of
| temperature changing over millenia vs it changing over decades.
| Evolution and migration can adapt to the former, but not the
| latter.
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