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Death of the Millennia Old Baobab Trees
Author Topic: Death of the Millennia Old Baobab Trees (Read 910 times)
Shiranu
Traveling to the Other Side
Around 1,500 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the Roman Empire, a baobab tree started growing in what is now Namibia. The San people would eventually name the tree Homasi, and others would call it Grootboom, after the Afrikaans words for "big tree." As new empires rose and fell, Homasi continued growing. As humans invented paper money, printing presses, cars, and computers, Homasi sprouted new twigs, branches, and even stems, becoming a five-trunked behemoth with a height of 32 meters and a girth to match.
And then, in 2004, it collapsed.
The tree's demise was sudden and unexpected. In March, at the end of the rainy season, Homasi was in full bloom. But by late June, its health had suddenly deteriorated. One by one, its stems broke off from the gargantuan trunk and toppled. The last of them fell on New Year's Day, 2005, ending 15 centuries of life.
Common throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the African baobab is one of the biggest flowering plants in the world, and reputedly one of the longest-lived. It's also known as the upside-down tree, because its bare branches look like roots, or as the monkey bread tree, because of its nutritious and edible fruit. It's exceptionally long-lived, but recently, several of the oldest baobabs have been dying. Homasi, for example, was part of a grove of seven baobabs, six of which perished within a two-year period.
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This isn't an isolated event. Of the 13 oldest known baobabs in the world, four have completely died in the last dozen years, and another five are on the way, having lost their oldest stems. "These large and monumental trees, which can live for 2,000 years or more, were dying one after another," says Adrian Patrut from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania, who has catalogued the deaths. "It's sad that in our short lives, we are able to live through such an experience."
It's not just the baobabs, either. Around the world, the creaking deaths of ancient trees are testifying to the period of extraordinary environmental change that we are living through. "In Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, I've come across whole forests of trees that have died since 2001," says Wise. "While they are not as old as the baobabs, they are 400 to 500 years old. The die-off has other immediate causes, like insects, but a 500-year-old tree has experienced a lot of insect outbreaks and lived through them. Something is pushing them over the brink this time around."
"The ancients still want to speak to us, we've just forgotten the language.
Re: Death of the Millennia Old Baobab Trees
The climate is changing. Those who deny it is are nuts.
Mousetrap
It is interesting to know that the Earth iswarming up, but not just in the last 150 years, as we are made to believe, but since 4 700 years ago.
Over the past 3 000 years the oceans of the world rose by more than 300 meters (+1000 feet) [Lighthouse reef]
Imagine how shallow the seas was, and how many Ice was on the continents 3 000 years ago, to allow the oceans to rise this high!
More evidence of this global warming is found at lake Missoula and the scab-lands.
The greater part of North America would have had as much Ice as Antarctica.
Anyone that thinks the Earth was always cold, and only started to warm up now, are ignoring Geology and should do further investigation.
Just as there was this huge ado about the ozone layer in the 80's and 90's, which by the way was never disproved as a natural occurrence, science is ignoring the fact that this too is a natural stage the Earth is undergoing.
It is a consequence of the global flood and a natural result of the Atmosphere that lost its water contents as gravitational strength increased 4 700 years ago
Evolution, the religion whereby one believes your children more human, and your parents more ape, than you!
The Human Mind, if it has nothing to do with Evolution...What an incredible entity...
If it does, what a waste!
Atheism, what a wonderful religion, where one believe to believe is erroneous.
That is AWESOMELY pathetic! Yes, the Earth as warmed and cooled many times during its 4.5 billion years, but the reasons are generally understood. This current warming, however, is best understood as the result of human burning of fossil fuels. The modern warming tracks the fuel use very accurately and no other reason is evident. The sea level rise from 20KYA is about 130 meters
I hesitate to ask you any questions, as the answers will be so inaccurate and faith-based, but (sigh):
Where did the water for the flood come from?
How old do you think the Earth is?
Were humans and dinosaurs co-existent?
Two anaerobic microbes were talking one day, about 2 billion years ago. One says to the other: "Can you believe those fear-mongers? They claim that the oxygen we exhale will poison the atmosphere, making it impossible for us to keep living out in the open like we do! They say we'll have to go underground, or someplace, where we can escape all that poisonous oxygen! What a load of hype! To think we could change the whole atmosphere like that is just idiotic! LOL"
Forgive me, Carl...
A century ago, astronomers looked at Venus and saw it was covered with opaque clouds. "Well", they said, "what are clouds made of? Rain. So all those water clouds must mean Venus is soaking wet. Well, all that water must mean swamps. What grows in swamps? Ferns. What eats ferns? Dinosaurs!"
Observation: You can't see anything on Venus. Conclusion? Dinosaurs!"
And that's how religion was created...