Friday morning links

The Antarctica findings align with what is already well supported in the data. Similarly, Alaska has Cretaceous fossil assemblages that are tropical/sub-tropical. During those times a circum-equatorial current flow was established and this was very efficient at distributing the world's heat - there were no ice caps. And while CO2 levels were higher, a lot of carbon was being sequestered in the ocean basins as limestone muck. Mother Earth knows well how to run things, while we puny human whelps just scramble along trying to keep up.

#1 Aggie on 2020-04-03 10:02 (Reply)

Antarctica: It was part of Pangea which started to break up 200M years ago. How many millions of years did it take til Antarctica migrated to its present position?

#1.1 Exasperated on 2020-04-03 11:18 (Reply)

Nevermind Im wrong. Antarctica has always been around the South pole. In my memory from HS, I always placed Pangea around the equator.

#1.1.1 Exasperated on 2020-04-03 11:27 (Reply)

A New Great Depression For Higher Education?

QUOTE:

Moody’s Investor Services and Fitch have proclaimed that the financial outlook for American higher education looks bad. Moody’s has given the sector negative ratings for most recent years, predicting low albeit positive tuition revenue growth. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is the undoing of colleges, as it reeks havoc on many other businesses, families, and institutions as well.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2020/03/24/a-new-great-depression-for-higher-education/#77aa4f9f5b44

#2 feeblemind on 2020-04-03 10:38 (Reply)

Full Surrogacy Now:
I believe this is a mental illness. It is almost impossible to follow the convoluted thinking that you get from these people with this mental disease. The reason is actually simple. They lie. What they want is what every toddler wants which is everything given to her with no responsibility or effort. Imagine living in a country where they already have exactly what they want but they trump up ideas and events to support their belief that they are terribly and inhumanely discriminated against.

I have never read The Handmaiden's Tale and probably wouldn't. From what I know about why would anyone want to read it. I'm one of those people who shuts their eyes if the news or a movie shows something particularly disgusting. Why would I then read it. Why would any sane person read it. I like stories of people with honest strong beliefs about life and people who work hard and succeed and make themselves a good life. It seems odd to me that anyone's fantasy would actually be the opposite or worse. I just don't understand unless it is explained by a mental illness in those who think like that.

#3 Saul on 2020-04-03 10:44 (Reply)

Saul, you have made the correct choice. I read the book back in the '80's. It was ridiculous then and I assume the movie is just as bad so haven't seen it. I knew then that I would never read anything else by Margaret Atwood.

#3.1 mary on 2020-04-03 11:20 (Reply)

I know what you mean. The older I get the less patience I have for novels about whining people who are stuck in their problems. I like stories about people who face facts and act, who live up to their responsibilities, who rise to occasions. More Jane Austen, less Margaret Atwood. Actually I put Margaret Atwood in a class with books devoted to Holden-Caulfield-style protagonists, oy, oy, oy, life forced me to be a miserable failure, why should I change my strategy when I can inflict my misery on everyone around me.

#3.2 Texan99 on 2020-04-03 12:41 (Reply)

Rainforests in Antarctica? Not sure I buy it. How do we know that the roots/pollens weren't carried there from somewhere else on an ocean current? It just doesn't make sense to me that a forest is going to grow in a place that's completely dark for half the year. Tundra is tundra for a reason.

#4 California on 2020-04-03 10:59 (Reply)

I don't think anyone is asking you to buy anything. Here's some free knowledge, though: www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/environment/weather/sunlight-hours

#4.1 Aggie on 2020-04-03 12:04 (Reply)

This was what? 70 million years ago?

What about continental drift? Wouldn't that have an effect?

QUOTE:

Around 200 million years ago, Antarctica was joined with Australia, Africa, South America, India and New Zealand in the supercontinent Gondwana. Ten million years later, Gondwana began the enormously slow process of breaking into the pieces we recognize today, and the continents, subcontinent and islands began moving into their present positions. By about 70 million years ago, the continents were becoming widely separated and what is now known as the Drake Passage opened. After making its final detachment from the Australian continent, about 40 million years ago, Antarctica settled into its present polar position and began to cool dramatically.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/antarctica/history

#4.1.1 feeblemind on 2020-04-03 13:06 (Reply)

This animation starts about 140 Ma, just after Pangea started breaking up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k65Wtl1hdxQ&feature=emb_logo

You can see the open circum-equatorial channel I was referring to. Antarctica has moved to more-or-less center over the south pole, but it started pretty far down at the beginning of the period.

#4.1.1.1 Aggie on 2020-04-03 14:32 (Reply)

How Things Are Now is not How Things Always Were. The Earth is constantly changing, and was a vastly different place in the past.

Now, apply that to 'climate change.'

#4.2 Christopher B on 2020-04-03 13:33 (Reply)

Re: Full Surrogacy Now

If we separate the creation of children from parenthood, then children will become a commercial product. It's already possible to gestate human babies in an artificial womb. So if we allow full surrogacy, the next natural step is customized babies. Genentech will allow anybody to choose the ethnicity, personality, and intelligence of his or her "offspring". Those super-babies are called "Children of the Rain." So after a while, everybody will be forced to artificially gestate their babies, in an effort to keep-up. And then, people will increasingly accept the idea that "Purchased DNA" is part of having a child, and that we are all the private property of someone else.

#5 Ron Liebermann on 2020-04-03 15:33 (Reply)

The "tropical foliage in Antarctica" stuff isn't news; that's been reported for the last 30 years or so.

But I think the cause is less about climate than about plate tectonics; the South Pole was never tropical, but Antarctica wasn't AT the South Pole back then.

#6 Kenneth Mitchell (Link) on 2020-04-03 16:50 (Reply)

Thank you. That's the sort of wrinkle that I'm alluding to. If the continents have moved around then calling the current Antarctica a polar region with a former rainforest is a misnomer. It feels like saying that water used to boil at a lower temperature.

Remember, reading something in Nature should automatically raise suspicions.

#6.1 California on 2020-04-03 18:46 (Reply)

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Friday, April 3. 2020

Friday morning links