Dose it concern you at all that the last time large amounts of greenhouse gasses were released there were?

Question

mass extinctions as well as large changes in the global climate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

Answer 1

have you seen that video that national geographic has out called 6 more degrees and shows what will happen if the planets temp goes up six more degrees if not check it out.

Answer 2

Yeah but warming precedes increasing CO2 not the other way around.  

CO2 has not been demonstrated to cause any significant global warming and the bulk of evidence is that it has no measurable effect.

Answer 3

Ok people, new rule.  No sourcing Wikipedia!!  If I wanted I could go in and change the article to say what I want it to say.  That means you can too, therefore it is not a reliable source.  And to the person who quoted that stupid National Geographic show, I've seen it.  It can be taken about as seriously as The Day After Tomorrow.  All that c**p they try to feed you is just alarmism, like the rest of the "save the planet from global warming" BS.  Somebody needs to call them out on all the c**p they spew. They say the poles are melting.  While the north pole is melting, the south pole is actually expanding.  We are not causing global warming like they'd have you believe.  There are too many other factors other than us that contribute to it such as the SUN!  Did you know that the other planets are warming as well?  Or did you know that not even a 1000 years ago there was an atypical warming period where vikings were growing crops in Greenland (that big mass today that is one big glacier).  Or did you know that we are actually on the butt end of an ice age?  So naturally we should be warming.  There are more than enough facts and statistics out there to disprove any of this hoax, all it takes is a little research away from CNN and your state senator who is capitalizing on a fashionable topic.  There is NO concensus on this fad.  And the fact is, the more we let this consume every facet of our lives, the less freedom and more unhappiness we will have.  It's especially sad because National Geographic used to be a respectable organization.  Too bad they're stooping to alarmism disguised as science to get those ratings.

Answer 4

What Green house gasses? You mean the trees the greedy developers and land grabbers are cutting down all over the world. (Select Sydney for example). Where ever a building is up for sale 80% will be demolished for rich only condiminiums and magnificent trees and parklands cut down and removed totally and rebuilding causes dust, polution and the smell of diesel from trucks coming and going along with road damge etc. Lots of green house gas here mate! Plus rubbish littering building sites. A Redfern Classic: Re-taking of public housing; Phillip and Elizabeth St Redevelopment. Trees were to be audited and removed to be replanted ordered by council. Developer destroyed over 200 magnificent trees, killed the lot; saved the department of housing & state Government 14 million dollars. That's how they save on green house gases in Sydney; first kill all the trees before protestors find out, under the orders of state Government and Clover Moors Coruption Council. See how Green house gasses jusyfy when it comes to prime realestate redevelopment similar to New Orleans America who too took public housing from the poor to rebuild rich condeminiums for the rich. The same deal in Sydney dispossession of public housing from aborigines and the poorest of the poor to retake for the rich. Wow what a wonderful world ooh yeh!

Answer 5

There has never been a time of rising CO2 concentrations when temperatures didn't rise as well.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum s a good demonstration of this. As for its effects:

There was a sudden rise in earth’s global temperature – up to 6°C (11°F) across all latitudes – whilst oceans were heated from the surface to the depths; this resulted in a massive disruption for life on earth.The seas became acidic with mass extinctions of phytoplankton. The fossil record shows major migrations of flora and fauna into higher latitudes, that early primates (Teilhardina) migrated across land bridges from Eurasia to North America. Mangrove and rain forest spread as far north as England and Belgium and as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand. Early turtles, hippo’s, alligators and swamp cypress colonised Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Tropical algae, Apectodinium, spread northwards as far as the North Pole, its only appearance that far north in earth’s past. In terms of rate and degree of warming this event is unprecedented in Earth's history.

As forests in high latitudes became more subtropical some animals adapted by becoming diminutive, fossils of horses the size of a Siamese cat (Hyracotherium sandrae) have been found. The struggle for life resulted in evolutionary adaptations that resulted in new mammal species appearing for the first time. So major were the changes this event generated that it is considered to have heralded a new period in earth’s history, the Eocene or dawn of the new.

One point that need to be understood is that this 'sudden rise' that caused the PETM was over a time period of 10,000 years. It took around 140,000 years before the high CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to be gradually re-absorbed into natural sinks and temperatures fall back to their original levels.

Although earth’s climate has changed many times in the past, the key factor for life on earth has been the speed or rate of change. When we talk of species migration, to get an idea of the timescales involved think how long it takes an oak forest to extend its range (migrate). If climate change means an acorn dropped at the edge of the forest can grow more easily, it survives to grow into a tree; in turn it drop an acorn a little further out from the forest, this grows into a tree and drops another acorn still further out and so on. Animals and birds transport acorns further away, but measured in terms of human lifetimes it is a very, very slow process.

The rate of warming of the past 50 years - half a degree C - may not sound much, but Earth only warmed by one degree C per thousand years when it came out of the last ice age.

The forecast for this century of between 2 - 6 degrees - may not sound like much either, but it would be a much faster rate to temperature change (around 30 times as fast) than even abrupt events such as the PETM in Earth's past.

Answer 6

Maybe nature has ways of doing things we have yet to understand?Some good some bad,it's a complex system in regards to the selection process and interactions.One discovery leads to a thousand questions.These are not readily comprehensible in  the short time frame given.It's those that think every answer has been solved, that I consider dangerous and detrimental.Whether they are proponents or skeptics.New discoveries have been made that even test Einsteins laws of relativity,some laws of physics have been question  recently.It doesn't mean we should ignore science but just leave a little room for open minds.

Answer 7

Yes, it concerns me that in general rapid climate change causes mass extinctions, that greenhouse gases are one of the factors in rapid climate change, that we're currently releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases, and that this is causing rapid climate change.

It's a recipe for disaster, no doubt about it.

Answer 8

Yes, I've studied similar mass extinctions.

Answer 9

That was from some major volcanic activity on the subcontinent of india.  You cant compare 500,000 years of constant eruption to us digging up some coal and burning it.  Most of the carbon is locked up in the form of soil and limestone, there is nothing we can do to bring co2 levels back to where they were when that happened unless we start converting soil and limestone back to co2.

You know, that mass extinction is what caused the rise of the primates.  Do you know anything about evolution?

Answer 10

ok... the hottest years ever recorded were all within 10 years of today...The 10 hottest years ever measured, are just that...the ones measured. We haven't measured **** before 1800. No one knows **** about hurricanes in America in the 1400s. How was that ice sheet doing in like 1850... Lets go to the museum of natural achieves and check… Oh yeah no one measured it.

Answer 11

Very good reason to take the opinions of the experts seriously and support actions to cut our carbon emissions.