Global warming to make miniatures

[gyeonghwa]

Paleontologist speculates: http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/global-warming-could-give-rise-miniature-animals.html#mkcpgn=fbapl1

Climate scientists have painted a pretty grim outlook for our planet in the wake of an unabated release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- from rising sea levels and increasing weather disasters, to resource shortages and mass extinctions -- but there's one side effect of global warming sure to make you go 'aww'. According to paleontologists, an early species of horse was discovered to have responded to an extended bout of unusually hot temperatures million years ago in the most peculiar of ways: by going miniature. And given the steamy future which may be in store, it could happen again -- this time, to your quite-possibly-mini great-great-grandkids.

For 175 thousand years, due to a rise in global temperatures 58 million years ago known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, one of the first equestrian species to gallop the planet underwent a dramatic change in size. During this period, a higher than normal levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide lead to hotter planet, and in response fossil evidence of shows that an early ancestor of the horse, Sifrhippus, shrunk to the size of a house cat. Other species, say researchers, even halved in size to accomodate the hot spell.

I guess that will be one interesting aspect of global warming. Still, there's gonna be many species driven to extinction, not to mention the economic and political consequences if we let these trends continue.

[Old Viking]

@ Gyeonghwa: Too late to do anything about it.  We passed the tipping point long before the furor started.  All we can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

[MaybeNever]

I must travel one million years into the future so that I may be king of the Lilliputians!

[gyeonghwa]

@ Gyeonghwa: Too late to do anything about it.  We passed the tipping point long before the furor started.  All we can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

I figured as much that we're already fucked but we need not add more to it. Like lets try and not become even more fucked.

[Art Vandelay]

@ Gyeonghwa: Too late to do anything about it.  We passed the tipping point long before the furor started.  All we can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

Ayup. Personally I'm only hoping that the worst of it hits some time after I'm dead.

[MadCatTLX]

@ Gyeonghwa: Too late to do anything about it.  We passed the tipping point long before the furor started.  All we can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

I thought we weren't supposed to pass that point for another five years. Is there nothing that can be done to reverse the effects? How bad will it get and is it survivable? Are we far beyond fucked already and no one realizes? Fucking politicians that contributed to this problem need to be killed painfully.

[Witchyjoshy]

I wonder if we can, like, vacuum up some of the harmful gasses in our atmosphere...

[DrFishcake]

@ Gyeonghwa: Too late to do anything about it.  We passed the tipping point long before the furor started.  All we can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

I figured as much that we're already fucked but we need not add more to it. Like lets try and not become even more fucked.

This! "Even more fucked" is a distinct possibility once tar sands and fracking (which I'm reliably informed is on the table for a location just 20 miles from here - waaay too close for comfort) start to get out of control. 

[Hades]

But I want a tiny giraffe nooooow.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkB9OT2XVvA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkB9OT2XVvA</a>

[Captain Jack Harkness]

Horses evolved to be smaller during this time of extreme greenhouse gasses, eh?  Is it bad that I immediately thought "So Equestria is Earth in the Future?"

Really, this is intriguing to hear, given that humans have gotten taller in the past couple hundred years, on average.  Could it be that the better farming techniques are overriding the resource competition that would be driving humans shorter if we had no such techniques?  If there's a major event that causes our infrastructure to crumble (and subsequently causing greater fighting for resources), will smaller humans become the "hot" thing for evolution to produce?

[gyeonghwa]

That would be difficult to say. One cannot say that condition x will make a species taller/shorter without considering that the species may respond to condition x completely differently.