OT: Wacky Science?
Question:
It’s no real secret that the GWB administration has claimed that they don’t believe there is proof that global warming is real….and is a problem. In fact, that was the basis for the U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol…an agreement between nations to reduce CO2 emissions. But now, the administration has quietly started looking into possible solutions to the problem of global warming…you know…the problem that isn’t….and they’re looking for methods that would not force their business buddies to change their gassy ways. What a team they are! Here’s one of the ideas, currently being explored– A giant, 600,000 square mile orbiting mirror, that would block out part of the sun’s energy. I kid you not! You can’t make stuff this good up! If you doubt me, go to the Popular Science website and do a search on "orbiting mirror." It’s all there. Holy freakin’ cow! OK busheviks, that’s *your* boy. You must be *so* proud! (big grin) Mike
Response:
courageously avow: – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text ->It’s no real secret that the GWB administration has claimed >that they don’t believe there is proof that global warming >is real….and is a problem. In fact, that was the basis >for the U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol…an >agreement between nations to reduce CO2 emissions. >But now, the administration has quietly started looking into >possible solutions to the problem of global warming…you >know…the problem that isn’t….and they’re looking for >methods that would not force their business buddies to >change their gassy ways. What a team they are! >Here’s one of the ideas, currently being explored– >A giant, 600,000 square mile orbiting mirror, that would >block out part of the sun’s energy. >I kid you not! >You can’t make stuff this good up! If you doubt me, go to >the Popular Science website and do a search on "orbiting >mirror." It’s all there. >Holy freakin’ cow! >OK busheviks, that’s *your* boy. You must be *so* proud! >(big grin) >Mike
Sounds like your boys have been watching way too much Star Trek. What’s next, a Dysan’s <sp> sphere? hehehe Sounds much like Ronnie’s Star Wars plan. The only problem with that one was they couldn’t find a planet to beta test on. Ken Wilson Proud Owner of LV, Paul Know less, John Boy Wheaton, Clod and the rest of the Union of Rightwing Idiots Needing Explantions (URINE) Former owner of Jet Ski, traded to Elvis Kabong for a half-eaten twinkie and an old stub from a Mom & Dads concert. www.resisters.ca
Response:
> It’s no real secret that the GWB administration has claimed that they > don’t believe there is proof that global warming
bullshit! pure and simple. > is real….and is a problem. In fact, that was the basis for the U.S. > withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol…an agreement between nations to > reduce CO2 emissions.
gee, and i thought it was because of the HUGE pollution credit giveaway to China and India that would allow them to pollute FAR more than they do today… or… SELL their "pollution credits" to other countries for cash and other considerations. Kyoto in fact did very very little to stem pollution, and what it DID do, was to be done at the expense of the American taxpayer at many many times what it would cost if we just did it ourselves > But now, the administration has quietly started looking into possible > solutions to the problem of global warming…you know…the problem that > isn’t….and they’re looking for methods that would not force their > business buddies to change their gassy ways. What a team they are!
they are AMERICA’S team, and we are very proud of them! but i suppose that you would not be in favor of any solution that DIDN’T crush the economies of the civilized world? > Here’s one of the ideas, currently being explored– > A giant, 600,000 square mile orbiting mirror, that would block out part of > the sun’s energy. > I kid you not!
post the link, if you have one, that says that this is what Bush wants to spend your money on. scientists explore ALL KINDS of things on the road to a solution. that doesn’t mean that anyone is wanting to spend your money on an ineffectual orbiting mirror. > You can’t make stuff this good up! If you doubt me, go to the Popular > Science website and do a search on "orbiting mirror." It’s all there.
no, you only make up the implications, not the underlying facts. > Holy freakin’ cow!
thats what I thought when i read your bullshit. > OK busheviks, that’s *your* boy. You must be *so* proud!
I am. I TRULY am! > (big grin)
(no grin, just a satisfied smile) > Mike
paul az
Response:
here’s the real problem visit here – http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/popcult/cartoons/anthropo/kaypasa2.jpg Note the following: The ’scientists’ are all male, wear glasses, and are middle-aged. They wear white coats. They miss some very obvious facts, which explains why we haven’t been able to understand how dolphins communicate: They speak Spanish! The ’scientists’ are weird and maybe not very smart? (Also have bad haircuts.) Can Jackie Chan really bend iron bars? Is Paul Newman’s stomach capable of holding 50 eggs? Does that bus really have enough Speed to jump the gap? Paul I think you need to atend a few days at Open Univerity. Spend some time sharpening your analytical skills. Impress girls. Hollywood science here http://www.open2.net/science/hollywood_science/ Real science here http://www.open2.net/home.html
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> here’s the real problem visit here – > http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/popcult/cartoons/anthropo/kaypasa2.jpg > Note the following: > The ’scientists’ are all male, wear glasses, and are middle-aged. > They wear white coats. > They miss some very obvious facts, which explains why we haven’t been > able to understand how dolphins communicate: They speak Spanish! > The ’scientists’ are weird and maybe not very smart? (Also have bad > haircuts.) > Can Jackie Chan really bend iron bars? Is Paul Newman’s stomach capable > of holding 50 eggs? Does that bus really have enough Speed to jump the > gap? > Paul I think you need to atend a few days at Open Univerity. Spend some > time sharpening your analytical skills. Impress girls. > Hollywood science here > http://www.open2.net/science/hollywood_science/ > Real science here > http://www.open2.net/home.html
hm, you didn’t address so much as a single point that I made in my original reply, AND you clipped ALL of it out of YOUR reply. THEN you suggest (obliquely) that my perception of reality is more properly served up by Hollywierd’s perception of reality. guess what? Hollyweird is all liberals like YOU. YOU are the one who should stick to questions about the size of Paul Newman’s (another liberal) stomache. I deal in reality, not the Roger Moore Hollywierd BS "documentery" type that YOU subscribe to. and by the way, not everything that Hollyweird puts out is a documetery, even if they "label" it as such. and by the way, a BBC program support site, http://www.open2.net/home.html, does NOT constitute a legitimate source of true science, and at any rate, i found NOTHING there about the Kyoto accords. YOU are the one who needs to come in out of the rain of hollywood (or BBC as the case may be) BS. Post something relevant to the discussion at hand, or else go crawl back under your rock! paul az
Response:
put your lighter away you didn’t search http://www.open2.net/home/view?entityID=9583&jsp=prog_pages%2Fbigques… and you didn’t explore the hollywood science page either or you would’t be offended. Re: Movie Speed Speed was the 1994 smash hit film starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Keanu Reeves plays Jack Traven, an L.A.P.D. SWAT team specialist who is sent to defuse a bomb that a revenge-driven extortionist (Dennis Hopper) has planted on a crowded bus. Bullock has to maintain the velocity of the bus at 50mph (or greater) so that the bomb does not explode, killing all on board. The film is a high-octane race of suspense, non-stop action and surprise twists. In a heart stopping, adrenalin pumping moment, the bus turns onto an uncompleted section of a freeway overpass, with a 50-foot gap in the road. Of course they leap the gap, this is Hollywood! Our Hollywood Scientists, using their unique backyard technology prove the flaws in the movie’s thesis. But what forces are at work in Speed, and how fast and at what angle does the bus have to be at to make it? How could you work this out theoretically? We decided to find out… If you watch the film, the section of the freeway they are jumping appears to be flat. It does not look like there is any kind of ramp, an angled surface, to jump off. This is a problem, why? Because vertical motion and horizontal motion are independent of each other. What does this mean? Let’s look at each one in turn. Vertical Motion (objects falling due to gravity, or aeroplanes rising, overcoming gravity). If we consider an object falling due to gravity, how long would it take to fall a set distance? If an object falls due to gravity from rest, then it will fall at approximately , this is due to the constant pull of the earths gravity. So how fast will it be falling after 5 seconds? If speed = acceleration x time then 10 x 5 = or 180km/hr. That is the final vertical speed, but what would the average speed have been? If you are accelerating at a constant rate (and when falling you ususally are) then the average speed would be half of the final speed so it will be . So how far would the object have fallen in 5 seconds? 25 x 5 = 125 metres. Here come the equations! http://www.open2.net/science/hollywood_science/speed_3.htm ans so on. Mirrors in space to deflect sun energy to lower earth’s temperature is a whacky idea. Planting millions of trees is not. One makes idea makes money for a certain segment one idea makes a little less money for another segment. Is there global woarming caused by human activity? One thing is for certain, the weather always changes. Is it caused by termite farts? http://www.heptune.com/farts.html, industrial emmisions, volcanic emissions, or hairspray and should we do something about it are the big questions. consider this post "There are high levels of phytate in the soybeans used to supplement animal feed. These high levels of phytate cause excessive fermentation in the animal’s stomachs producing methane. The phytate also causes elevated levels of nitrogen in the manure which causes problems for water ways due to run off. One of my current projects is to lower the amount of phytate in soybeans through advanced breeding techniques. I am also working on the amino acid complement in other feed crops to help with the nitrogen run off. Phytate is actually an anti-nutritive chemical; its digestion strips nutrients from the animal thus requiring more feed to get the same results. ETA: Half of the U.S. production of calcium carbonate goes into animal feed to help mitigate their sour stomachs." Sounds damned silly but cow farts affect our environment and they cost producers money. Acccccctually…. This is the same theory that some people have put forth to the end of the dinosaurs. High methane. FIRST UP: Seventy-six percent of Americans believe the Pillsbury doughboy is a virgin. The other 24% have a yeast infection.
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> put your lighter away > you didn’t search > http://www.open2.net/home/view?entityID=9583&jsp=prog_pages%2Fbigques… > and you didn’t explore the hollywood science page either or you would’t > be offended. > Re: Movie Speed > Speed was the 1994 smash hit film starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra > Bullock. Keanu Reeves plays Jack Traven, an L.A.P.D. SWAT team > specialist who is sent to defuse a bomb that a revenge-driven > extortionist (Dennis Hopper) has planted on a crowded bus. Bullock has > to maintain the velocity of the bus at 50mph (or greater) so that the > bomb does not explode, killing all on board. The film is a high-octane > race of suspense, non-stop action and surprise twists. In a heart > stopping, adrenalin pumping moment, the bus turns onto an uncompleted > section of a freeway overpass, with a 50-foot gap in the road. Of > course they leap the gap, this is Hollywood! > Our Hollywood Scientists, using their unique backyard technology prove > the flaws in the movie’s thesis. But what forces are at work in Speed, > and how fast and at what angle does the bus have to be at to make it? > How could you work this out theoretically? > We decided to find out… > If you watch the film, the section of the freeway they are jumping > appears to be flat. It does not look like there is any kind of ramp, an > angled surface, to jump off. This is a problem, why? Because vertical > motion and horizontal motion are independent of each other. What does > this mean? Let’s look at each one in turn. > Vertical Motion > (objects falling due to gravity, or aeroplanes rising, overcoming > gravity). > If we consider an object falling due to gravity, how long would it take > to fall a set distance? > If an object falls due to gravity from rest, then it will fall at > approximately , this is due to the constant pull of the earths gravity. > So how fast will it be falling after 5 seconds? > If speed = acceleration x time then > 10 x 5 = or 180km/hr. > That is the final vertical speed, but what would the average speed have > been? If you are accelerating at a constant rate (and when falling you > ususally are) then the average speed would be half of the final speed > so it will be . So how far would the object have fallen in 5 seconds? > 25 x 5 = 125 metres. > Here come the equations! > http://www.open2.net/science/hollywood_science/speed_3.htm > ans so on. > Mirrors in space to deflect sun energy to lower earth’s temperature is > a whacky idea. Planting millions of trees is not. One makes idea makes > money for a certain segment one idea makes a little less money for > another segment. Is there global woarming caused by human activity? One > thing is for certain, the weather always changes. Is it caused by > termite farts? http://www.heptune.com/farts.html, industrial emmisions, > volcanic emissions, > or hairspray and should we do something about it are the big questions. > consider this post > "There are high levels of phytate in the soybeans used to supplement > animal feed. These high levels of phytate cause excessive fermentation > in the animal’s stomachs producing methane. The phytate also causes > elevated levels of nitrogen in the manure which causes problems for > water ways due to run off. > One of my current projects is to lower the amount of phytate in > soybeans through advanced breeding techniques. I am also working on the > amino acid complement in other feed crops to help with the nitrogen run > off. > Phytate is actually an anti-nutritive chemical; its digestion strips > nutrients from the animal thus requiring more feed to get the same > results. > ETA: Half of the U.S. production of calcium carbonate goes into animal > feed to help mitigate their sour stomachs." > Sounds damned silly but cow farts affect our environment and they cost > producers money. > Acccccctually…. > This is the same theory that some people have put forth to the end of > the dinosaurs. High methane. > FIRST UP: Seventy-six percent of Americans believe the Pillsbury > doughboy is a virgin. The other 24% have a yeast infection.
and this has what to do with the Kyoto treaty or even the broader topic of Global Warming? you are losing it. paul az
Response:
I do not say but I implied in the post with cartoon that scientists sometimes see the uhhh "symptoms" but miss the underlying cause because they have a result that they want or haven’t anticipated. That’s called misdiagnosis. So in that way I am listening to you but you need do to be more analytical when you deconstruct the content of a post. So….How was that not relevent to what you posted???? Anyway mirrors in space make about as much sense as humans on Mars or towing chunks of ice around the ocean to change the Ninos. Simple things can have large effects, like planting trees. I can give you one of those painful mathematical calculations to show you how many trees are needed to repair air damage per pound of carbon emission. We do have a problem and Mr. Dominate The World and Take All It’s Oil doesn’t have the answer. Selling and trading pollution credits isn’t the answer either. That’s a card trick invented by tricksters, the same guys who brought you Enron.
Response:
>I do not say but I implied in the post with cartoon that scientists > sometimes see the uhhh "symptoms" but miss the underlying cause because > they have a result that they want or haven’t anticipated. That’s called > misdiagnosis. So in that way I am listening to you but you need do to > be more analytical when you deconstruct the content of a post. > So….How was that not relevent to what you posted???? > Anyway mirrors in space make about as much sense as humans on Mars or > towing chunks of ice around the ocean to change the Ninos. Simple > things can have large effects, like planting trees. I can give you one > of those painful mathematical calculations to show you how many trees > are needed to repair air damage per pound of carbon emission.
hm, some scientist, working on his own, comes up with an idea that YOU think is stupid, so that makes it G.W.B.’s fault? how? > We do have a problem and Mr. Dominate The World and Take All It’s Oil > doesn’t have the answer. Selling and trading pollution credits isn’t > the answer either. That’s a card trick invented by tricksters, the same > guys who brought you Enron.
lol, no! trading pollution credits was brought to you by the promoters of the Kyoto Accords. that is what it says. you should check it out! That is absolutely why the U.S. did not sign up for that joke! paul az
Response:
If *that’s* all it took to kill a neocon, e’d have been free of these chair farting phuctards years ago 
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > This is the same theory that some people have put forth to the end of the dinosaurs. High methane.
Response:
> > We do have a problem and Mr. Dominate The World and Take All It’s Oil > doesn’t have the answer. Selling and trading pollution credits isn’t > the answer either. That’s a card trick invented by tricksters, the same > guys who brought you Enron. > lol, no! trading pollution credits was brought to you by the promoters of > the Kyoto Accords. that is what it says. you should check it out! That is > absolutely why the U.S. did not sign up for that joke! > paul > az
Yo Dude – ENRON – These guys play both sides of the fence. Do not forget that the top 200 corporations who rule the world have offices in the 114 countries who DID sign the accord. Before there was Bush to buy, there was Clinton but there was still Bush http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/EvansEnron.html The expressive term ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who transported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. It was in the interests of the bootleggers and their associates to maintain prohibition, but their capacity to engage openly in politics was circumscribed. However, they had allies in the Baptists (and other teetotalists), who believed that alcohol was a deadly threat to the social order, and had worked for decades to get prohibition onto the statute books. The Baptists provided the political cover and the bootleggers pocketed the proceeds. The two groups maintained a great social distance from each other. The middle man in the coalition was a politician who would receive the bootleggers on Sunday morning, and accept campaign donations, and reassure the Baptists, at a convenient weekday appointment, that he was firm for prohibition. Enron was at the centre of an awesome Baptist-bootlegger coalition, but there is no shortage of evidence of the connections which the company and its CEO, Kenneth Lay, had with their Baptist allies. The rents which Enron energetically sought, were truly gargantuan, but could only be realized if the Kyoto Protocol became established as part of US and international law. Ken Lay saw Enron as not only making billions from sales of the natural gas which was to displace coal as the preferred fuel under the Kyoto commitments, but he realised that as an international and domestic trader in carbon credits, Enron could realise hitherto unimagined wealth. Such credits, of course, would only become bankable pieces of paper if governments, particularly the US Government, established and policed a global policy of de-carbonisation under which a global tax on carbon was to be enforced. So as the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, Ken Lay built up alliances with the green movement, his contemporary Baptists allies. On December 12, 1997, just a day or so after the Kyoto meeting had concluded, an internal Enron memo asserted that the Kyoto Protocol ‘will do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States’. It described the Protocol’s endorsement of international trade in CO2 credits as ‘another victory for us’ adding ‘this agreement will be good for Enron stock’. The memo claimed that Enron had ‘excellent credentials with many green interests’ including Greenpeace. These groups, in turn, were described as referring to Enron ‘in glowing terms’. The organisation which has done more to build and sustain the Baptist-bootlegger coalition which continues to push for US ratification of Kyoto, or an equivalent de-carbonisation programme for the US, is the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, headed by Eileen Clausen, a frequent visitor to Australia. Eileen Clausen was Assistant Secretary of State under President Clinton with responsibility for International Environment Affairs. When she realised that the US Senate had set its face (in July 97) against the Kyoto Protocol, she resigned her post within the State Department to build a coalition which would, in the long term, reverse that position. Enron was a founding member of her Business Environment Leadership Council. However, Enron’s name no longer appears in the membership list. As the US presidential campaign of 2000 worked its way through the primaries, the conventions, and the TV debates, the polls were, increasingly, indicating a Republican victory. It was only during the last two weeks, when the story of a youthful drink-driving indiscretion by George W broke, that the Democratic nominee, VP Al Gore, made some headway. Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to Dubya, but few people are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush and did so because the coal industry in that state decided to back Bush because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference. Given the situation which Ken Lee found himself during 2000, cultivating the Republicans was the obvious strategy. He had Kyoto partisans inside the Republican tent. Indeed, the Republican policy platform contained within it a proposal to regulate CO2 emissions from US power stations, just as Enron had been arguing within the Clinton White House for years. The new Bush cabinet met for the first time in late January 2001, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill put on the table a paper calling for carbon dioxide regulation and limitation. In so doing, he precipitated a major row within the new Administration. Only now is it emerging that a key figure in persuading O’Neill to step outside his portfolio brief and carry the environmentalist flag, was Timothy Wirth, former Under-secretary of State for Global Affairs under President Clinton, and close confidant of Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron. http://slate.msn.com/id/2061023/ With the Bush administration taking heat for its ties to Enron, and pointed questions being raised about whether Enron’s collapse suggests that accountants and pension funds require tighter regulation, conservatives have gone on the counterattack. The main strategy has been to point out that many Democrats and/or liberals also fed at the Enron trough, which is certainly true. (Chatterbox continues to believe that in the "government sleaze" department, the only scandalous nugget so far is that former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin lobbied Treasury on behalf of Citigroup, a major Enron creditor.) In the long run, though, arguing that Bob Rubin can be bought with corporate lucre just as easily as Larry Lindsey won’t help conservatism’s twilight struggle against liberalism. It’s a liberal argument. PAY ATTENTION HERE: If the Republicans push this line too hard, they’ll be heading down the slippery slope toward support for campaign-finance reform. Rising to this ideological challenge, the more entrepreneurial conservative commentators have begun to argue that liberalism itself created the Frankenstein monster known as Enron. So far, the argument has taken two forms: 1) The 1960s created Enron. Social conservatives have long argued that the Woodstock generation’s If-It-Feels-Good-Do-It ethic destroyed the nation’s moral fiber. It was a useful tack against homosexuality, abortion, and various other Christian-right bugaboos, but not really helpful when the cause was greater latitude for the free market to wreak creative destruction. In a Jan. 21 column, though, the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Bartley attempts a bold synthesis: The systemic failure is not a matter of economic arrangements, but of the societal collapse of standards and morality over the last three decades or so. As a society we seem increasingly incapable of sitting in judgment of each other-certainly not on the behavior of prominent entertainers, sports figures or presidents. We have a legal profession that tolerates and even promotes abuse of the legal system in class action suits-in the current Microsoft claims settlement enriching lawyers while not even trying to give a cent to supposedly injured plaintiffs. What kind of behavior can an "I’m OK, you’re OK" society expect from its professionals or business leaders? "Presidents" is of course a sly reference to Bill Clinton, the pre-eminent political poster child for 1960s self-indulgence. A Jan. 18 editorial in the Journal blamed Clinton more explicitly: We’d say it’s also impossible to understand Enron outside of the moral climate in which it flourished. Those were the roaring ’90s, when all of America reveled in the economic boom. They were also the Clinton years, when we learned that "everybody does it." The culture wanted to believe in Enron’s promises, which helps explain why 16 of 17 Wall Street analysts rated Enron a "buy" as recently as last October. Not only was Clinton bad, but his economic boom was bad, too! The obvious problem here is that railing against prosperity is a liberal thing to do. Worse, it’s a dumb liberal thing to do. Back to the drawing board. 2) Environmentalism created Enron. Blaming environmentalism is more shrewd than blaming the 1960s because while Timothy Leary and Ken Lay never made common cause, Timothy Wirth and Ken Lay did. A Jan. 17 column by Robert Novak made much of the fact that Wirth, a former Clinton point man on global warming who is now president of Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, spread the Kyoto Treaty gospel from Ken Lay to Paul O’Neill when the latter was still running Alcoa. That Enron stood to benefit from the Kyoto Treaty’s international limits on carbon emissions is indisputable: To burn coal, it would be necessary to purchase credits for the emission of CO2. That would create a market for Enron, buying and selling emission credits. Internal memos show that Enron envisioned a profit here as early as 1996. … [A Dec. 1997 Enron memo] asserted that the Kyoto treaty ”will do more to … read more »
Response:
> and this has what to do with the Kyoto treaty or even the broader topic of > Global Warming? > you are losing it. > paul > az
Sounds damned silly but cow farts affect our environment and they cost producers money. Acccccctually…. This is the same theory that some people have put forth to the end of the dinosaurs. High methane. Now, a new theory holds that OAEs – in particular the Toarcian OAE, which occurred about 183 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs – are triggered by the burning of vast underground coalfields. These coalfields were set ablaze by the intrusion of molten rock from the Earth’s crust. "The burnt coalfields are hundreds of feet thick and cover vast areas of the Transantarctic Mountains of Antarctica, as well as South Africa," said Jennifer McElwain, PhD, Associate Curator of Paleobotany at Chicago’s Field Museum and lead author of the research. "Huge quantities of methane and carbon dioxide would have been released from these coals as they were heated to high temperatures by the molten rock." Although OAEs are not universally accepted as models upon which an understanding of modern climate change can be based, this new research sheds light on the possible consequences of the current level of consumption of carbon-based fuels. "If the incredibly high global temperatures that occurred during the Toarcian oceanic anoxic event were caused by burning a significant amount of the Earth’s coal deposits within one hundred thousand years, it doesn’t take much imagination to realize what will happen if we burn most of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuels over the coming century, which is what we are in the process of doing," McElwain said. The scientists, who worked on this research for more than four years, also turned up a totally unexpected result: they identified a 200,000-year interval when atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped to surprisingly low levels at the start of the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event. This was probably due to the great number and activity of marine organisms at this time that effectively sucked carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere like a sponge. This drop cooled the Earth, maybe even enough to have enabled ice sheets to form and grow in the polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctic. The idea of ice sheets during the age of dinosaurs has always been a controversial topic. Nevertheless, McElwain and coauthors Steve Hesselbo, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford in England, and Jessica Wade Murphy, who was an undergraduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago at the time of this study, believe they have tantalizing evidence that the global temperatures were not as uniformly warm and ice free during the age of dinosaurs, as once assumed. In this study, which was funded by the Comer Foundation of Science and Education, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were determined by counting the stomata in small fossil leaves collected from B
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