Do we as a species want to close our eyes, all hold hands, and step into the abyss together? Or do we as a species want to open our eyes to where our current industrialized path is leading our now hospitable planet. Probably rendering it significantly less hospitable for our modern industrialized civilizations to keep doing many of things they do in the ways we've been used to doing them. The ways our parents were used to doing them, and in turn the ways our grandparents did them. This is the greatest challenge we have faced as a species over the last 70,000 years. Thousands of generations ago.
Current Carbon Dioxide Emission Higher Than It Was Just Before Ancient Episode of Severe Global Warming
ScienceDaily (June 8, 2011) — The present rate of greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions through fossil fuel burning is higher than that associated with an ancient episode of severe global warming, according to new research. The findings are published online this week by the journal Nature Geoscience.
Around 55.9 million years ago, Earth experienced a period of intense global warming known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which lasted for around 170,000 years. During its main phase, average annual temperatures rose by around 5°C.
Scientists believe that the warming may have been initially triggered by an event such as the baking of organic-rich sediments by igneous activity that released the potent greenhouse gas, methane. This initial temperature increase warmed ocean bottom waters which allowed the break down of gas hydrates (clathrates), which are found under deep ocean sediments: this would have greatly amplified the initial warming by releasing even more vast volumes of methane. As the methane diffused from the seawater into the atmosphere it would have been oxidised to form carbon dioxide, another potent and longer-lived greenhouse gas.
Now these organic-rich sediments are at high risk of being baked, leading to the possibility of releasing massive amounts of methane (a very potent greenhouse gas), not by igneous activity as in the Ancient Episode, but by human caused Climate Change. This kind of massive massive methane release has been Climate Scientists' worst case, nightmare scenario for some time now.
Based on their carbon isotope measurements and computer simulations of Earth system, the researchers estimated that the rate of carbon emissions during the PETM peaked at between 300 million and 1,700 million metric tonnes per year, which is much slower than the present carbon emission rate.
"Our findings suggest that humankind may be causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase at rates never previously seen on Earth, which would suggest that current temperatures will potentially rise much faster than they did during the PETM," concluded Dr Harding.
I hate to state the obvious, but the implications of this news couldn't be more grave, especially for our children's and our grand-children's futures.
Corporatocracy enables capitalism's excesses. Severing corporate control of the U.S. federal (and states) government(s) is the most critical task Americans have. The whole rest of the world is on the sidelines rooting for us to take our government back from corporate control.