It's showing Tasmania separated from the Australian mainland 20,000,000 years ago, even though supposedly it separated only 12,000 years ago? Also, the constant spinning is super infuriating and mildly sickening.
Ancient Earth Globe
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Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#12Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#13This is awesome. I like how it goes from 20 million years ago to present in one jump, which is sort of interesting on the timeline. We had a warm period without ice ages 3-5 million years ago, then had the onset of ice ages 2 million years ago(and that cycle might have been terminated by current fossil fuel use). Just a blip in time from this perspective.
Just so we’re clear—the most recent ice age was already ending before the industrial revolution. Unless you believe like a couple did in the 70s that there was a coming ice age which we completely stopped and reversed. I would love to hear the steelmanning for that.
However, if the goal was to head off the next Ice Age, all the scientists agree, "Mission Accomplished!"
Probably best to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix immediately, don't you think?
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#14Like many of these tools it suffers from northern hemisphere bias that hides interesting information about the southern hemisphere.
In looking to correctly simulate axial tilt we get Gondwana and Antarctica hidden from view in the shadow, their sunlit versions only available via options rather than hidden by default.
The southern polar region is the more interesting of the two for the vast majority of geological history and I think as Antarctica thaws we will need more interested geologists in it than our current conversations are generating.
I wish authors would emphasise it more when creating visualisations like this.
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#15Are we losing water at a pretty quick pace or something? Seems like there is far more surface area above water now.
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#16I am definitely not a geologist, and this is probably un-provable... but, to me, it sure seemed like a plausible idea.