Last Time CO2 Levels Were This High, There Were Trees at the South Pole (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today. Using sedimentary records and plant fossils, researchers have found that temperatures near the South Pole were about 20C higher than now in the Pliocene epoch, from 5.3m to 2.6m years ago. Many scientists use sophisticated computer models to predict the impacts of human-caused climate change, but looking back in time for real-world examples can give new insights. The Pliocene was a "proper analogy" and offered important lessons about the road ahead, said Martin Siegert, a geophysicist and climate-change scientist at Imperial College London. "The headline news is the temperatures are 3-4C higher and sea levels are 15-20 metres higher than they are today. The indication is that there is no Greenland ice sheet any more, no West Antarctic ice sheet and big chunks of East Antarctic [ice sheet] taken," he said.

Comments

Re:No denial

[lgw]

Sadly, if history is any guide you'll be modded to oblivion, but these are good points.

The very first question about global warming we need to ask is "do we want it warmer or colder?" Sorry, "stay the same" isn't an option - as far as we know, the climate hsan't been stable for the past 10 million years, excepting the odd anomaly of the last 10,000. So, is it better warmer or colder?

Better yet, by what metric do we decide? Number of people displaced? The current idea seems to be "number of rich westerners affected, especially in Europe", which I don't think is useful.

That comes even before the question of "quantitatively, how much does any realistic change in human behavior matter". How much does it hurt standards of living economically vs how much does it help standards of living ecologically. We're nowhere near the accuracy to put numbers on those answers yet, but we might be as the science matures.

But we won't. Instead, westerners will make pointless feelgood gestures while India and China determine the future of global warming, blithely unconcerned with the subject. Want to change the future here? Invent an electric vehicle that works better than gas in a poor rural area with crap infrastructure. That will be real change. Electric scooters are very promising in poor urban areas, if power is up more than it's down.