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Comment by danteembermage | Hacker News Reader

I tend to think atmospheric pressure was higher then:

https://gdesilvestri.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/was-the-atmosp...

One point of the article is that there's no need for a higher athmospheric pressure to explain pterosaurs flight. It would work fine under the conditions we have today.

The writing of that author you link to nicely matches the description from the other article of the author posted originally (Mark Witton):

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-to-spot-palae...

Mark Witton:

"Another major red flag common to all cranks is their frequent comparison between themselves and scientists who received establishment pushback against their ideas - Wegner, Galileo, Darwin and so on."

The article you posted:

"It is admirable how the persistent efforts of a handful of Wegener’s converts were able to overcome the arrogance of the majority." ... "This present article is having a somewhat similar history."

Mark Witton:

"Saving the best until last: yes, unbelievable as it is, there are individuals who suggest mainstream scientists are somehow organising against them to suppress their work. While maybe not imagining something as sinister as the Big Pharma conspiracy, some cranks infer that palaeontology is governed by individuals who dictate what is and what isn't acceptable science, and who forbid the publication of work that challenges the status quo."

The article you posted:

"This paper in its various versions has had a battered history. Here are the journals that were sent this paper and either returned it unread or just discarded it." "It seems that this paper is too radical for today’s journals."

By the way, the article from your link is not by the guy who posted the copy of it on his blog, but by a much older chemist:

https://issuu.com/pedrott600re/docs/levenspiel.com_octave_ol...

Here's another article discussing various theories about past earth's atmosphere:

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/30/i12/html/12learn...

Actually a newer “version” by the same chemist who's text was just copy pasted by that Ing. (i.e. Engineer) guy (who names that copy-pasting “A small Tribute”)

That (the newer one, from your link) was published by: “Chemical innovation 30 (12), 50-55, 2000”

Compare with the peer reviewed, not confirming "many times higher pressure" claim:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/101

"We show from the analysis of nitrogen and argon isotopes in fluid inclusions trapped in 3.0- to 3.5-billion-year-old hydrothermal quartz that the partial pressure of N2 of the Archean atmosphere was lower than 1.1 bar, possibly as low as 0.5 bar, and had a nitrogen isotopic composition comparable to the present-day one. These results imply that dinitrogen did not play a significant role in the thermal budget of the ancient Earth and that the Archean partial pressure of CO2 was probably lower than 0.7 bar."

There is sure possibility that the pressure changed through the times, but not alk “proofs” are real proofs.

Wouldn't that just mean everything was more buoyant? How does that hurt the conclusion?

GOOD point. Also o2 was higher leading to more compact powerful muscles?

If some deactivated ancient genes reactivate, due to high co2, we are going to have that again :D

Yeah. The assumption that the Earth's environment parameters have been stable for billions of years is bunk. (Especially ironic if the person is railing about 'global warming' at the same time.)

Implicit in your sentence is however an assumption that there was any life comparable to today's during the "billions of years" which is false. More than just 500 million years ago there were not even plants on the land:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_plant_evolution

So it's simply wrong mentioning "billions of years" when humans worry for the environment in which they can live while depending on it.

For most of the "billions" of years on Earth, there wasn't anything on land, and the "life" in oceans was not something we understand as today's life, and the environment could not support our life (as in, there was not even enough oxygen!). The Earth started to "resemble its present state" only less than 400 million years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_h...

Human civilizations exists only less than ten thousands of years, during which the climate was very stable (until the recent human influences):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world

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