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 5/10 Good --- thecurrent.theatlantic.com http://feeds.feedburner.com/theatlantic/TZRn
Thursday, May 15, 2008 --- 54 days ago http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/post-17.php
| New research into the ancient climate of the Sahara shows that the region went from lush and wet to dry and desolate within a few thousand years. The classic evidence for a wet Sahara comes from the Tassili frescoes , a series of fifty Algerian cave paintings that depict humans living with crocodiles, buffalo, giraffes, and other animals that do not thrive in arid climates. Ten thousand years ago, it appears, our ancestors could have grown rice in the Sahara, or spent their weekends Jet-Skiing at their North African lake-houses. For millennia, they had no reason to fear their water running out, or their settlements' being reclaimed by desert sands, or of water running out. What the new reports about this bizarre climatological period don't much emphasize, though, is that the Sahara was wet during a period of comparative global heat , and that it became parched only as the planet chilled. There are reasons to downplay this side of the story. Global-warming skeptics enjoy pointing out (often with endearingly impish recklessness ) that environmental alarmists haven't got their story straight, and that they've foolishly underestimated the cunning of climatological history. A hot-weather Saharan paradise seemingly supports at least the latter point: Even armed with our best models today, I wouldn't want to bet on which parts of a hotter planet would become pleasant and which hellish, although overall I'd suspect the hel ... |
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