And this is supposed to be bad news or something
(Nature World News) Warming that occurred almost 56 million years ago isn’t all that different from the human-caused global warming we’re experiencing today. And a new study suggests that this past warming event can provide a window into future climate change.
During the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, 56 million years ago, temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit). It also involved the average annual release of at least 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere. While it’s promising that Earth and most species managed to survive this episode, it also took millennia for them to recover.
First of all, if you are using improper terminology, referring to CO2 as “carbon”, your point is a political one, not scientific. That same bad terminology is used in the statement from the scientists
“There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” lead author Gabe Bowen, from the University of Utah, said in a statement. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
Normal? What is normal? Can any Warmist tell us what that is? If we look at the history of the Earth, normal would be much higher temperatures than today. But, there is no “normal.” They Earth has gone through periods of heat, warmth, cool, cold, even snowball Earth.
Let’s delve into the statement, shall we?
Bowen says previous research has shown that during the Paleocene-Eocene warm period, there was “enhanced storminess in some areas, increased aridity in other places. We see continent-scale migration of animals and plants, ranges are shifting. We see only a little bit of extinction – some groups of deep-sea foraminifera, one-cell organisms that go extinct at the start of this event. Not much else went extinct.â€
“We see the first wave of modern mammals showing up,†including ancestral primates and hoofed animals,†he adds. Oceans became more acidic, as they are now.
So, nothing bad? Just typical changes to the Earth?
One also has to ask “what caused the spike in CO2 and methane release during that time period, which are being blamed for the temperature increase?” They offer some conjecture. Why can’t those conjectured reasons be applicable today? Oh, right, “climate change” is a political movement. Not scientific.
Actually, the temp rose first, then CO2 increased which caused incredible plant growth. I remember it well. Parties on the beach. Wearing a thong and flipflops. No heat or air conditioning needed. Pleasant breezes, and cool nights under the thatched roof still sticks in my mind. Food was ubiquitous, and learning to surf was such a pleasure. Now, I live in the tropical highlands trying to emulate the conditions of long ago. Ah, the good old days when the sea was slightly acid. Swimming in the ocean was so refreshing. Like exfoliating courtesy of Mother Nature. As we continue into the current cooling cycle, I don’t look forward to the harsh, frigid conditions that await us.
The entirety of human civilization developed during the current epoch, the Holocene. During the current rapid warming period the average global temperature has risen more than the entire range of temperatures during the Holocene. And as we keep converting the long chain carbons in fossil fuels to carbon dioxide we’ll increase the temperature another 2 or even 4 degrees C.
We’ll survive as a species. Who knows, maybe the Yellowstone caldera will erupt creating a ten year winter killing a few billion humans before the Earth warms too much. Or perhaps a giant asteroid will slam into Eastern Europe with the same horrible result.
In any event, we’ll likely enter another ice age in 50,000 years or so!
And it’s absolutely precious that you fault actual scientists for calling carbon, carbon. Do you really think you know more about their jobs than they do?
Yup, the facts don’t matter, it’s only how we feel about them, right? The fact that, “(n)ot much else went extinct” besides some one-celled organisms, and biological diversity increased with the arrival of modern mammals, meaning NOTHING BAD HAPPENED, is ignored. Let’s just keep repeating the unproven assertion (I would not grace it with the title “theory”) that AGW is happening and it is bad and we are all gonna die and you are mean and and and and….
I think the point is, when said “actual scientists” prove that a release of so much carbon into the atmosphere will cause the formation of so much CO2, and that so much CO2 is actually bad, then we will be getting somewhere.
The carbon is directly released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. When we burn long chain carbon fossil fuels we are combining oxygen with carbon to form carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation, slowing the loss of heat from the Earth. That’s why the Earth is warming now. Actual scientists understand this.