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Climate Change is Turning Antarctica Green, Say Researchers (theguardian.com)
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, (the link could be paywalled; alternative source below) the Washington Post reported on Thursday. From a report: "Antarctica is not going to become entirely green, but it will become more green than it currently is," said Matt Amesbury, co-author of the research from the University of Exeter. "This is linking into other processes that are happening on the Antarctic Peninsula at the moment, particularly things like glacier retreat which are freeing up new areas of ice-free land -- and the mosses particularly are very effective colonisers of those new areas," he added. In the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced rapid temperature increases, warming by about half a degree per decade. Plant life on Antarctica is scarce, existing on only 0.3% of the continent, but moss, well preserved in chilly sediments, offers scientists a way of exploring how plants have responded to such changes.
The Greens Party should be happy, Antarctica is becoming Green, after all. Much better than that PC-incorrect all White!
"Scientists" might but I don't think real scientists would.
What is alarming about moss taking advantage of warmer weather for a rapid growth splurge?
Because this is a global issue and green absorbs heat meaning the feedback loop is going to become increasingly stronger and thus harder to break.
There are lots of examples in nature of things that grow very slowly with an incredibly rapid ramp-up when conditions are even a tiny bit more favorable.
Alternatte headline "warming expands zone of habitability for species".
The problem here is that the increased warmth is destroying existing habitats. Normally these changes happen over thousands of years which results in species being able to adapt to change. However, with rapid change like this you are going to see mass extinctions happen in rapid succession because the fates of species within an ecosystem are interlinked.
It's a headline that is equally true but one you will never see in the current climate of fear-mongering.
The Earth's ecosystems are being destroyed and will being to collapse, so people should be afraid of what is happening. I do not believe you recognize the gravity of the situation. We are experiencing a mass extinction event in progress.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"warming expands zone of habitability for species"
Not so much expand as shift the zone of habitability, towards the poles. There with be plenty of growth of uninhabitable desert near the equator.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Moss is a Chinese hoax.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not old enough to remember the 70s, but I am old enough to remember science books, articles, videos etc. referencing such science from the 70s.
There was absolutely a "new ice age" idea/theory that was given broad consideration and even acceptance. If the internet had existed and a shitty documentary had been made about it, you might even say there was a "consensus" or that "the science" was "settled".
I'm old enough to remember; I got my physics degree during early 1970's.
There was not a general acceptance in the scientific of an imminent ice age, and the scientists who first broached the possibility of an imminent ice age were saying things like "in ten to twenty thousand years at soonest". Scientists were concerned about a possible cooling trend, but that's not an ice age.
As for broad consideration, that consisted of scientists shooting holes in the idea of an imminent ice age, and among the scientists that did shoot it down were the ones who first broached the possibility. That's what climatologists do, give consideration to studies of the climate.
As for the popular press, there were probably as many articles about bigfoot as the imminent ice age, and they were equally scholarly.