GHG Release Rate Now 30X Faster Than Eocene Epoch Rapid Warming

[hatrack]

Greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere 30 times faster than the time when the Earth experienced a previous episode of global warming. A study comparing the rate at which carbon dioxide and methane are being emitted now, compared to 55 million years ago when global warming also occurred, has found dramatic differences in the speed of release.

James Zachos, professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the speed of the present build-up of greenhouse gases is far greater than during the global warming after the demise of the dinosaurs.

"The emissions that caused this past episode of global warming probably lasted 10,000 years," Professor Zachos told the American Association for the Advancement of Science at a meeting in St Louis. "By burning fossil fuels, we are likely to emit the same amount over the next three centuries." He warned that studies of global warming events in the geological past indicate the Earth's climate passes a threshold beyond which climate change accelerates with the help of positive feedbacks - vicious circles of warming.

Professor Zachos is a leading authority on the episode of global warming known as the palaeocene-eocene thermal maximum, when average global temperatures increased by up to 5C due to a massive release of carbon dioxide and methane.

EDIT

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345928.ece

[phantom power]

1. Some things make me go "hmm..."

And other things, like this, make me go "Oh fucking hell, we're all doomed! Dooooooooooomed!"

[hatrack]

2. I find myself using the word "Oops!" a lot of late

Ever been there, Phantom?

More :beer:

[phantom power]

3. Yeah. Oopsie. I'll have one of what you're having...

:beer:

There should be an icon for the kind of drinking that isn't for enjoyment, but for keeping the howling demons of horror locked in the subconscious.

:beer: :beer: :beer:

[neoblues]

4. Do your grandchildren a favor...

Buy some well placed land in the arctic and leave it to them. Or, invest in solar-electric air-conditioning research/development companies and bequeath that stock to them. Start looking to buy an old, closed mine that's in good repair--for living below ground may become an important part of our lifestyles (to avoid the UV radiation no longer filtered by the depleted ozone layer, and besides, it's might be cooler if you don't go too deep--lots of insulation anyway, so it should be easy to heat/cool in small sections anyway). Investments in companies that can grow a nutritious bacteria/algae in total darkness would be good. Technologies to extract water from air or for filtering extremely polluted water will be valuable as well. Sell your coastal properties now, while they aren't flooded by the rising sea levels or blown away by the increasing storms... Learn to take photos and invest in trips to snowy places to take 1000's of top quality photos... since snowy mountains, forests, trees--indeed, all wildlife and wilderness as well as winter/snow subjects will become worth much more money--for books and movies to evoke nostalgia for the "good old days" (when there was an abundance of food, there were live trees and plants and "real" wild animals still existed!). Your great-grandchildren will appreciate knowing what the world, when it could support more than a few tens of millions of people, was like.

We should bury a box, a sealed, armored time-capsule with such items in it, along with digital copies on durable recording media of the details of all the Republican violations of our world's environment. That way, in a few million years, if the Earth recovers, if mankind has survived (and not mutated into blind cave crawlers), they will be able to piece together the kinds of mistakes they must avoid as they begin to spread across the face of the Earth once again.

[hatrack]

5. "Mutated into blind cave crawlers" - you mean, become Republican?

:evilgrin:

[neoblues]

7. That'd be...

angry, deceitful, hateful, intolerant, selfish, narrow-minded, egotistical, ignorant, cannabalistic (especially of their young) blind cave crawlers...

[hatrack]

6. Most rapid increase since the Eocene kick

nt