by John Galt » Tue Feb 26, 2019 1:27 pm
yeah basically some warming can cause a lot more, by releasing CO2. in the case of the PETM -- the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum -- this was consistent extra CO2 for thousands of years, which probably released methane as well. this caused an 8C spike in global tempertures. the ocean was bathwater warm, and there were rainforests at the poles. and it would have stayed that way if it weren't for the azolla event. the azolla fern that lived in the slightly brackish lake at the top of the world can live on very little amount of fresh water. and it can push freshwater throughout a thin layer of the surface. as this was more lake than ocean, there was much stratification, like the black sea. nothing lived at the bottom. and every summer with constant daylight the azolla flourished. and every winter in constant night it sunk to the bottom of the sea. and there it took the carbon with it, slowly but surely cooling our planet. it reached a point where other sinks could take over, causing runaway cooling, where it would sink more carbon than put into the atmosphere. and that is where we evolved. now we are back to putting more into the atmosphere at levels unseen in this history of the world except for, as theorized, as part of the K-T extinction event (the end of the dinosaurs). some scientists think vaporized carbon from the rocks that the comet hit, in addition to worldwide volcanism as a result of the impact, caused increases in CO2 similar to human-caused increases, and it was this shock to the global climate that actually killed the dinosaurs. an interesting theory. i'm not saying that it is the end of humanity. i don't think we could kill ourselves with climate change if we tried. we'd get to max about 8C warmer... yeah, warmer, and yeah, it would cause a lot of issues but humanity would endure. but that doesn't matter, i think there's a lot of things we would lose, from cities on presentday coasts, to various breadbaskets, to most species of plants and animals alive today (especially the oceanlife), and a lot of things we need to try and keep.
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.