Australian Ocean Study Supports Theory Of Rapid Cooling In Antarctic Past

[hatrack]

Tiny fossils dug up from deep below the ocean floor around Tasmania are being seen as evidence that when the global climate changes, it does so much quicker than previously thought. The fossil remains of marine plankton that lived more than 35million years ago challenge a long-standing belief of climate scientists that the Antarctic icecap developed because warm currents turned cold over millions of years.

Instead, scientist Matthew Huber said their existence showed that a cold current flowed past Antarctica for millions of years before the polar ice sheet developed.

EDIT

Dr Huber's work, published in the science journal Paleoceanography, is one of the most dramatic findings yet to emerge from studies of holes drilled hundreds of metres below the seafloor off Tasmania in 2000 by the international Ocean Drilling Program. As the continents drifted apart during the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana 35million years ago, Tasmania was strategically placed, standing like a stepping stone between Antarctica and Australia.

Off its west coast was a shallow, warm bay. To the east was ocean, where a precursor to the East Australian Current was thought to carry warm water south. "To the east, we found only fossils of cold-loving dinoflagellates. That indicated there was no warm current flowing along that coast," Dr Huber said. A paleoceanographer at the University of Tasmania, Will Howard, said Dr Huber's work came as other scientists were making the case that a marine gateway opened between Australia and Antarctica 2million years before glaciation began at the pole. "This is the first time I am aware of that such arguments have been brought together in such a convincing way," he said."

EDIT

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Science/Icecap-theory-that-goes-against-the-floe/2005/01/09/1105205981016.html?oneclick=true

[aquart]

1. Velikovsky.

Earth in Upheaval.

[htuttle]

2. aka., Planetary Billards

Snooker with Mars and Venus? I doubt it.

I think the Earth's atmospheric systems can be volatile enough on their own to account for rapid climate change.

[aquart]

3. He pointed out lightning-fast climate changes

When NO ONE would accept it.

Frozen mammoths with flowers in their stomachs? Remember that one?

Proved right again. Gets zero credit. Again.