I thought you said global warming doesn't exist?
Hedging your bets?
No, he's cognizant of the fact that we're one asteroid away from following the dinosaurs. Over a hundred billion wasted on AGW crap research could have funded a nice bit of the space program that would give us definite benefits, the climatologists have been able to tell us that for the mere expense of 76 trillion dollars over the next ten years we
MAY
lower the temperature of the globe by one degree in 100 years.
A more ridiculous idea has NEVER been uttered.
Oh yes...we have so much more to fear from a rouge asteroid than the FACT that we are ******* up our own planet
Scientists are just dorks you used to beat up in High School right?
No, I
AM a scientist! A geologist to be exact. And yes we should fear a asteroid. IT CAN destroy civilisation. Global warming can't. End of story. Just take a stroll through history some day. Whenever it has been warm it has been nice. The only time that life has been bad on this planet is when it has been cold. 90% of the planets history has been much warmer then it is today...much warmer.
olfraud loves to talk about "extinction events" and loves to talk about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and how bad it was for fauna on the planet. Unfortunately for him even wiki reports that other than for some foraminefera (small one celled critters) it was a paradise...I quote from them...and no I wouldn't normally but he likes it as source material..
There are many problems with their assumptions but the underlying information is actually correct for once.
The PETM is accompanied by a mass extinction of 35-50% of benthic foraminifera (especially in deeper waters) over the course of ~1,000 years - the group suffering more than during the dinosaur-slaying K-T extinction.
Contrarily, planktonic foraminifera diversified, and dinoflagellates bloomed. Success was also enjoyed by the mammals, who radiated profusely around this time.
The deep-sea extinctions are difficult to explain, as many were regional in extent (mainly affecting the north Atlantic). General hypotheses such as a temperature-related reduction in oxygen availability, or increased corrosiveness due to carbonate-undersaturated deep waters, are insufficient as explanations. The only factor which was global in extent was an increase in temperature, and it appears that the majority of the blame must rest upon its shoulders. Regional extinctions in the North Atlantic can be attributed to increased deep-sea anoxia, which could be due to the slowdown of overturning ocean currents,[12] or the release and rapid oxidation of large amounts of methane.[20][verification needed]
In shallower waters, it's undeniable that increased CO2 levels result in a decreased oceanic pH, which has a profound negative effect on corals.[21] Experiments suggest it is also very harmful to calcifying plankton.[22] However, the strong acids used to simulate the natural increase in acidity which would result from elevated CO2 concentrations may have given misleading results, and the most recent evidence is that coccolithophores (E. huxleyi at least) become more, not less, calcified and abundant in acidic waters.[23] Interestingly, no change in the distribution of calcareous nanoplankton such as the coccolithophores can be attributed to acidification during the PETM.[23] Acidification did lead to an abundance of heavily calcified algae[24] and weakly calcified forams.[25]
The increase in mammalian abundance is intriguing. There is no evidence of any increased extinction rate among the terrestrial biota. Increased CO2 levels may have promoted dwarfing[26] which may (perhaps?) have encouraged speciation. Many major mammalian orders including the Artiodactyla, horses, and primates appeared and spread across the globe 13,000 to 22,000 years after the initiation of the PETM.[26]
Paleocene
