Scientists: What We're Doing To The Earth Has No Parallel In 66 Million Years (washingtonpost.com)

mspohr writes from an article on The Washington Post: We haven't seen this much CO2 added to the atmosphere in 66 million years: "If you look over the entire Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, the only event that we know of at the moment, that has a massive carbon release, and happens over a relatively short period of time, is the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)," says Zeebe. "We actually have to go back to relatively old periods, because in the more recent past, we don't see anything comparable to what humans are currently doing." [New research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We're putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then.] "The anthropogenic release outpaces carbon release during the most extreme global warming event of the past 66 million years, by at least an order of magnitude," writes Peter Stassen, an Earth and environmental scientist at KU Leuven, in Belgium, in an accompanying commentary on the new study. "Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections," the study concludes.

Comments

Re:Notice how all dissenting views get modded to -

[sycodon]

You use the word Fuck a lot.

Do you need some alone time or maybe a hooker?

Give up scientists. The discussion is useless...

[javabandit]

The world is filled with skeptics, nihilists, and ideologues. There is no point to these discussions anymore. The presentation of scientific data to most people is now considered to be the same kind of data that Malcolm Gladwell or Michael Lewis publishes. Basically, just opinions and fun facts. Scientists, climatologists, and the (minority of) people who believe in global warming need to just give up, already. You are not being listened to, anymore.

I definitely understand the impact that global warming is having. I see the data. I know it is there. But get real. We are a world who still allows genocides to occur unchecked unless there is profit to be made. We are a world who still straps dynamite to our bodies and runs into buildings. We are a world who grows and creates enough food for the whole planet to eat... but allow millions of people to die each year of starvation and illnesses related to malnourishment.

Given those things... somehow this world is supposed to give two fucks about a gradual global increase in temperature that will result in a severe climate shift and cause extinctions, deaths, and population relocation? Since when did the world at large give a shit about anything outside their own backyard? Since NEVER.

Here's reality. Climate shift and global warming will not be dealt with until it starts costing rich people a lot of money. When that happens, you'll see action. Until then, you aren't going to see shit.

As the saying goes, "Money makes the world go round".

Re:Questioning isn't "denying"; it's science!

[silentcoder]

>Blah blah blah. At the end of the day, deniers are denying the science. They can dress up their pseudo-scientific denial in any clothing they like, but what it boils down to is "we want to burn as much fossil fuels as we want and any scientist that points out that there are serious consequences to that is a fucking liar!"

Science denial has been a libertarian/free-market-fundamentalist/republican/right-wing/conservative hobby horse forever. For the religious right section it's evolution that they deny. But the economic right has been denying science for as long as it existed. Ayn Rand required all members of her cult^H^H^H^Hsociety to smoke as "smoking proved mans dominance over fire" - and when evidence began to emerge that smoking was linked to cancer she declared that the scientists were communists and their research part of a communist plot to destroy a profit-making industry. She maintained that claim right up to death... from lung cancer.

Evidence has never matter to so-called "economic conservatives" - just like the evidence of the constant and guaranteed failure of their economic policies never stops them touting it. In Kansas it has basically the destroyed the state's economy and yet they persist in believing them. The Austrian school of economics which primarily informs them actively rejects empirical evidence as a matter of principle in fact.

That which is anti-empiricist is, more correctly, described as "pulled out of your ass" and absolutely useless in the real world. That so many people persist in believing these things is tragic. Whatever else it may be, it's the opposite of science.

Now we _have_ to believe the models ?

[fygment]

Nice.

So everyone, please stop asking for the accuracy of the models. We have now 'proven' that nothing like now has ever happened so whatever our models of climate change say, they can't be refuted. Of course the models can't accurately model past events because, hey, nothing like this has ever happened.
So there you have it. The models are completely correct:

- the climate will be very bad in future (ie. not like it is now); and
- humans are the problem

Thank you for blindly accepting these pronouncements.