Fifty-six million years ago, enough carbon leaked into the atmosphere to alter the climate and acidify the ocean. The same thing is happening now, much faster. But this time, we know what's going to happen, and it isn't pretty.
Even the most extreme natural global warming episode of the last 65 million years can't hold a candle to what we're doing to the atmosphere now. If a new study of layered rock deposits from the Norwegian Arctic is correct, then we're releasing carbon dioxide 10 times faster than at any other time since the dinosaurs died out.
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is one of the best geo-historical examples of what a future super-greenhouse could be like. It happened about 56 million years ago, and although nobody knows exactly what triggered it, numerous studies show that carbon emissions were the main culprits--perhaps arising from various coal seams, limy organic ocean muds, and frozen methane ices. This, of course, was long before people appeared on Earth, so we had nothing to do with it. Instead, undersea volcanism might instead have started it by immolating carbon-rich marine deposits.
What did the PETM do to the planet and its inhabitants? Carbon dioxide concentrations jumped as much as five times higher than those in our present atmosphere, adding at least 10°F to climates that were already much warmer than today and probably finishing off what little ice and snow may have whitened the polar regions in winter. The greenhouse gas surplus lingered for 150,000 to 200,000 years, and turned the deepest parts of the oceans into stagnant, acidified dead zones.
What The Past Can Tell Us About A Future "Super-Greenhouse" World | Fast Company
Even the most extreme natural global warming episode of the last 65 million years can't hold a candle to what we're doing to the atmosphere now. If a new study of layered rock deposits from the Norwegian Arctic is correct, then we're releasing carbon dioxide 10 times faster than at any other time since the dinosaurs died out.
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is one of the best geo-historical examples of what a future super-greenhouse could be like. It happened about 56 million years ago, and although nobody knows exactly what triggered it, numerous studies show that carbon emissions were the main culprits--perhaps arising from various coal seams, limy organic ocean muds, and frozen methane ices. This, of course, was long before people appeared on Earth, so we had nothing to do with it. Instead, undersea volcanism might instead have started it by immolating carbon-rich marine deposits.
What did the PETM do to the planet and its inhabitants? Carbon dioxide concentrations jumped as much as five times higher than those in our present atmosphere, adding at least 10°F to climates that were already much warmer than today and probably finishing off what little ice and snow may have whitened the polar regions in winter. The greenhouse gas surplus lingered for 150,000 to 200,000 years, and turned the deepest parts of the oceans into stagnant, acidified dead zones.
What The Past Can Tell Us About A Future "Super-Greenhouse" World | Fast Company
