Researchers have now found evidence that roughly 52 million years ago. Palm trees and other types of vegetation grew in the antarctic. According to sciencedaily.com: The study published in the journal Nature shows that tropical vegetation, including palms and relatives of today’s tropical Baobab trees, was growing on the coast of Antarctica 52 million years ago. These results highlight the extreme contrast between modern and past climatic conditions on Antarctica and the extent of global warmth during periods of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Around 52 million years ago, the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was more than twice as high as today. “If the current CO2 emissions continue unabated due to the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, as they existed in the distant past, are likely to be achieved within a few hundred years”, explains Prof. Jörg Pross, a paleoclimatologist at the Goethe University and member of the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) in Frankfurt, Germany. “By studying naturally occurring climate warming periods in the geological past, our knowledge of the mechanisms and processes in the climate system increases. This contributes enormously to improving our understanding of current human-induced global warming.”
In this same article and in many others, Jörg Pross also states:
“The CO2 content of the atmosphere as assumed for that time interval is not enough on its own to explain the almost tropical conditions in the Antarctic”,
“Another important factor was the transfer of heat via warm ocean currents that reached Antarctica.” When the warm ocean current collapsed and the Antarctic coast came under the influence of cooler ocean currents, the tropical rainforests including palms and Baobab relatives also disappeared.
So basically if we continue to burn fossil fuels for another several hundred years. That would not cause enough warming to create those conditions. It would need several other factors for warming like that to happen again. Including ocean currents changing back to what they were 52 million years ago (warm current instead of cold). Then we COULD possibly see this effect?
Now there is some exact science! But void of any common sense the main stream will tow the line, that the warming was a direct effect of high levels of CO2.
