Current Events > Antarctica is turning green.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/18/thanks-to-global-warming-antarctica-is-starting-to-turn-green/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.bf2bcf8ad427

Researchers in Antarctica have discovered rapidly growing banks of mosses on the ice continent’s northern peninsula, providing striking evidence of climate change in the coldest and most remote parts of the planet.

Amid the warming of the last 50 years, the scientists found two different species of mosses undergoing the equivalent of growth spurts, with mosses that once grew less than a millimeter per year now growing over 3 millimeters per year on average.

“People will think of Antarctica quite rightly as a very icy place, but our work shows that parts of it are green, and are likely to be getting greener,” said Matthew Amesbury, a researcher with the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new study. “Even these relatively remote ecosystems, that people might think are relatively untouched by human kind, are showing the effects of human induced climate change.”

The study was published Thursday in Current Biology, by Amesbury and colleagues with the University of Cambridge, the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Durham.

Less than 1 percent of present-day Antarctica features plant life. But in parts of the peninsula, Antarctic mosses grow on frozen ground that partly thaws in the summer — when only about the first foot of soil ever thaws.

The surface mosses build up a thin layer in the summer, then freeze over in winter. As layer builds on top of layer, older mosses subside below the frozen ground, where they are remarkably well preserved due to the temperatures.

Amesbury said that made them “a record of changes over time.”

Soil samples from a 400-mile area along the northern part of the Antarctic peninsula found dramatic changes in growth patterns going back 150 years.

The Antarctic peninsula has been a site of rapid warming, with more days a year where temperatures rise above freezing. The consequence, the study found, was a four- to five-fold increase in the amount of moss growth in the most recent part of the record.

Photos taken by the authors during the research also captured some strikingly green Antarctic landscapes, like this one on Green Island:
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2017/05/Green-Island-moss-bank-with-icebergs-in-background-CREDIT-Matt-Amesbury.jpg&w=1484

“This is another indicator that Antarctica is moving backward in geologic time — which makes sense, considering atmospheric CO2 levels have already risen to levels that the planet hasn’t seen since the Pliocene, 3 million years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet was smaller, and sea-levels were higher,” said Rob DeConto, a glaciologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved in the study but reviewed it for The Washington Post.

“If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, Antarctica will head even further back in geologic time…perhaps the peninsula will even become forested again someday, like it was during the greenhouse climates of the Cretaceous and Eocene, when the continent was ice free,” DeConto continued by email.

The authors agree the current observed changes are probably just the beginning. “These changes, combined with increased ice-free land areas from glacier retreat, will drive large-scale alteration to the biological functioning, appearance, and landscape of the [Antarctic peninsula] over the rest of the 21st century and beyond,” they wrote.

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lmao, maybe we can all move to Antarctica

So we might be able to colonize it soon?
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whoa thats pretty cool
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Soviet_Shurima posted...

whoa thats pretty cool

It's...really not?
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Soviet_Shurima posted...

whoa thats pretty cool

it's actually becoming pretty warm
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its bad but its still cool

just like the sith
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Soviet_Shurima posted...

whoa thats pretty cool

getting warmer actually
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Painting a mental picture of a green Antarctica is probably not the best way to convince people to curtail global warming.
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So what does this mean?
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masterpug53 posted...

Painting a mental picture of a green Antarctica is probably not the best way to convince people to curtail global warming.

basically this
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It's that damn snow algae again.
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but theres no global warming!
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That's awesome, we'll have an entirely new land to bring human society to and form a nation with its own history and culture in the modern era.

I want to be an original Antarctician.
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3rd_Best_Master posted...

So what does this mean?

We're about to have a new continent full of trees!
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EffectAndCause posted...

That's awesome, we'll have an entirely new land to bring human society to and form a nation with its own history and culture in the modern era.

I want to be an original Antarctician.

Sorry but the original Antarcicans are the penguins.
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guess I just gotta go there and colonize it befre anyone else
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All those ancient diseases about to come play with us. Sounds real great... x.x
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LOL washingtoncompost pushing it's usual climate change hoax stories. .
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It means there is measurable humidity at the south pole.
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EffectAndCause posted...

That's awesome, we'll have an entirely new land to bring human society to and form a nation with its own history and culture in the modern era.

I want to be an original Antarctician.

What about the already hot places on earth?
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Davjat posted...

LOL washingtoncompost pushing it's usual climate change hoax stories. .

"Climate change hoax"

kek

don't do this to yourself, davjat
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Zero_Destroyer posted...

Davjat posted...

LOL washingtoncompost pushing it's usual climate change hoax stories. .

"Climate change hoax"

kek

don't do this to yourself, davjat

Yes, it's a massive hoax that humans have any *significant* impact on climate change. the planets climate has been changing forever. Up, down, up, down, etc. Billions of years. No humans.
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Davjat posted...

Yes, it's a massive hoax that humans have any *significant* impact on climate change. the planets climate has been changing forever. Up, down, up, down, etc. Billions of years. No humans.

Climate does change naturally. The issue is that this particular change has been incredibly rapid.

We, of course, understand that humans are a primary cause due to increased co2 output from humans, despite decreased solar activity over the last several decades.
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Trump's gonna conquer it first

Make Antarctica Great(not again, for the first time)
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Zero_Destroyer posted...

Davjat posted...

Yes, it's a massive hoax that humans have any *significant* impact on climate change. the planets climate has been changing forever. Up, down, up, down, etc. Billions of years. No humans.

Climate does change naturally. The issue is that this particular change has been incredibly rapid.

We, of course, understand that humans are a primary cause due to increased co2 output from humans, despite decreased solar activity over the last several decades.

No, CO2 does next to nothing and is an extremely dilute and weak greenhouse gas.
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Notice how the picture is from a place called "GREEN" Island

something tells me its been green there for a long ass time before now
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Davjat posted...

No, CO2 does next to nothing and is an extremely dilute and weak greenhouse gas.

The fuck are you basing this on? We have decades of scientific evidence to demonstrate otherwise because we know that co2 traps heat.

We know that feedback loop warming is what melted snowball Earth and is likely why Venus is in its current condition.
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Davjat posted...

Zero_Destroyer posted...

Davjat posted...

LOL washingtoncompost pushing it's usual climate change hoax stories. .

"Climate change hoax"

kek

don't do this to yourself, davjat

Yes, it's a massive hoax that humans have any *significant* impact on climate change. the planets climate has been changing forever. Up, down, up, down, etc. Billions of years. No humans.

Thats true, but the earth hasnt seen this amount of carbon in the air for three million years. You might think thats a minor detail until the day you're looking back at how important bees were to the cost and availability of food.
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why is this bad? I thought green was good?
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ReignFury posted...

Davjat posted...

Zero_Destroyer posted...

Davjat posted...

LOL washingtoncompost pushing it's usual climate change hoax stories. .

"Climate change hoax"

kek

don't do this to yourself, davjat

Yes, it's a massive hoax that humans have any *significant* impact on climate change. the planets climate has been changing forever. Up, down, up, down, etc. Billions of years. No humans.

Thats true, but the earth hasnt seen this amount of carbon in the air for three million years. You might think thats a minor detail until the day you're looking back at how important bees were to the cost and availability of food.

fuck bees
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Honestly there are people down there so this could be from making yellow snow.
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I'm not denying climate change but this is a farce.

Antifar posted...

“If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, Antarctica will head even further back in geologic time…perhaps the peninsula will even become forested again someday, like it was during the greenhouse climates of the Cretaceous and Eocene, when the continent was ice free,” DeConto continued by email.

Still has yet to be proven. If or when it's proven then people might take it more seriously, but there still isn't anywhere close to a consensus that we're the main culprit. Correlation =/= causation until proven otherwise.
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voldothegr8 posted...

Still has yet to be proven. If or when it's proven then people might take it more seriously, but there still isn't anywhere close to a consensus that we're the main culprit. Correlation =/= causation until proven otherwise.

Well, except for the part where we examined the spectrum of long wave radiation over thirty years and found that, yes, co2 has a demonstrable link with warming. Beyond the definitive link demonstrated by this, however, we haven't found anything. Damn scientists making shit up.
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Antarctica used to look like Pacific northwest does now. Back in dinosaur times.
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http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr72.pdf

i bet al gore made all of this up

damn him and his globalist conspiracy
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Well, on the bright side...

With this much green stuff growing, it could sort of make up for the lost oxygen producers from deforestation.

It also sort of makes up for all that land that's going to become uninhabitable due to desertification and increasing temperatures in said deserts, as well as from coastal flooding.

Sort of.
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M-Watcher posted...

Well, on the bright side...

With this much green stuff growing, it could sort of make up for the lost oxygen producers from deforestation.

It also sort of makes up for all that land that's going to become uninhabitable due to desertification and increasing temperatures in said deserts, as well as from coastal flooding.

Sort of.

you forgot the ancient diseases, sort of
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