Global warming taking earth back to dinosaur era

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060907/...ment_life_dc_2

"NORWICH (Reuters) - Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.

Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.

Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear."


The article goes on to state that 80% of species have already begun to respond to the climate change. I've seen it personally. I was in Michigan at the end of July, and saw a tri-colored heron, and fire ants up there. Those species were NOT there in the 70's and 80's. Folks, this is for real and it's happening now.

you are so correct, Reddy! This is happening, it's happening now, and it is also happening far faster than the nay-sayers declared it would. Global warming IS now. Did you hear about the giant sized super yellow jacket nests that have been recently discovered in Southern Ala and Georgia? One was so large it filled the entire inside of a 1955 Chevy.

People can't cope with this kind of news, they'd rather waste their attention on such trivialities as Paris Hilton getting ticketed than something of this magnitude that they do not know how to deal with. It's kinda sad, really.

I've read where the Amazonian rain forest is in dire straights and should it succumb to drought, things will get bad fast

I pray a lot :)

This fellow casts another angle on it, the urgent necessity of tackling the problem now for security reasons as well as everything else.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5323512.stm

The technologies to avoid an even more unstable climate are already available. Deploying them rapidly is well within what we can afford. What is needed is an investment internationally of political imagination backed up by public resources on the scale that publics routinely expect for the more traditional aspects of national security.

Absolutely right on Reddy!

This alters "EVERYTHING" so to speak -- forces all life on earth to very rapidly adapt (which is usually all but impossible -- we evolved by changing slowly over time not this quickly) or MIGRATE to a hopefully better clime. This is no small or cheap feat. WE MUST START CHANGING NOW to even be able to expect any kind of life habiltability in the next 20 years.

Originally Posted by Trix This fellow casts another angle on it, the urgent necessity of tackling the problem now for security reasons as well as everything else. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5323512.stm

Yup, another major reason Global Climate Change from greenhouse gasses has such far-reaching arms poised to disrupt and destroy every type of life on this planet. On EVERY LEVEL this is a threat.

The dangers from our continually increasing globally warming planet make the mid-east conflict look like a food fight.

I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer here...but the news just keeps getting worse...now, there's this:

Flow of gas from thawing permafrost alarms scientists Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and could trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb. Methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide - is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature. Scientists worry about a global warming cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs...NEWS/609070334

A little more on the methane, problem Snookers, I am almost more worried about unstable Methane gas emissions from the bottom of the ocean than CO2:

http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

"The climate is like a wild beast, and we're poking it with sticks." -- Wally Broecker Deep beneath the surface of the sea, buried in the oxygen-depleted muds that have accumulated over the ages on the underwater margins of the continents, lies a vast store of natural gas that probably well exceeds, in its carbon equivalence, the entire supply of all other oil, gas, and coal on the planet. Most of this immense store of natural gas, largely comprised of methane, lies trapped in icy cages called hydrates. Below these hydrates is a huge quantity of methane as free gas bubbles, blocked from release by the hydrate, and temperature and pressure conditions above. Still more methane, as hydrate, is found in the permanently frozen (permafrost) regions that surround the poles. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the gas which is currently warming our globe, even though methane remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter time. If released abruptly, seafloor methane has the potential to deliver a stunning jolt of heat to the planet's already increasing temperatures. Even if released more gradually, seafloor methane will inevitably compound the problem of global warming. But abruptly or gradually, as we warm the planet by our dumping of carbon dioixde into the atmosphere, the seafloor will also warm, and its methane will inevitably be released. This book is about the release of that methane, and, in particular, about the possibility of methane catastrophe. Methane catastrophes have occurred several times in Earth's history, and when they have occurred, they have sometimes caused abrupt changes in the history of life, and at least one significant extinction. That extinction, at the end of the Permian Period 250 million years ago, is the greatest in the history of life. More than 90% of the then-existing species perished, and the course of life on Earth was altered forever. If a methane catastrophe were to happen in the near future, it is likely that not only would a considerable percentage of existing plants and animals be killed off, but a large percentage of the human population as well, as a result of the climate change and significantly more hostile environmental conditions. Yet we may well be heading toward such a catastrophe, produced by our warming of the planet.

I know what you mean about being a debbie downer, snookers - but in all reality, i think this planet is going to be a much less hospitable place to live within a very short period of time. Summer temps were miserable this year - they're going to get much worse. We'll be seeing weeks of 110+ in much of the US. This could very well be a factor in resolving the social security issue, because the elderly are going to start dying in large numbers. Vast areas of coastal property are going to be flooded - entire cities are going to be abandoned. I'm moving north as soon as I can.

Originally Posted by toaD Absolutely right on Reddy! This alters "EVERYTHING" so to speak -- forces all life on earth to very rapidly adapt (which is usually all but impossible -- we evolved by changing slowly over time not this quickly) or MIGRATE to a hopefully better clime. This is no small or cheap feat. WE MUST START CHANGING NOW to even be able to expect any kind of life habiltability in the next 20 years.

Exactly. I saw something on one of the science channels the other day about polar bears. They're going extinct as we speak. The commentator said they just don't have time to evolve into anything else. And I watched the Tom Brokaw special on Global Warming again. He said something about how many species will "just vanish." Well, no, they won't just vanish. What they'll do is starve to death, drown, or die from the heat until the last one remaining is in a zoo someplace, and we all watch as yet another species disappears forever. This will be remembered as a very dismal period of human history.

well i for one wont make it. whenever it gets to be hotter than 90 my feet start to swell.

Anyone remember that old, original Twilight Zone episode with Lois Nettleton...'The Midnight Sun'? Earth's orbit shifts, taking it on a deadly course closer and closer to the Sun. Lois, along with everyone else on Earth, is dying from heat. She passes out and awakens relieved to discover it was only a fever-induced dream...in fact, it's snowing and cold outside because, in actuality, Earth is orbiting away from the Sun and everyone is doomed to freeze to death.

Though not what's going on here, exactly...I can't help but be reminded of that show I watched on TV, as a child, some 45 years ago.

i know the answer.
it was discussed here at ols.
stop having babies.
the whole planet keeping to 1 baby per adult.
with disease,famine,car accidents,war etc. etc.
no more big familys growing into adults who drive and use all the many thing that pollute and/or require factorys that pollute.
there are sterilization techniques that would aid in this.
possibly within a 100 years or less we would be down to a number of humans that would no longer significantly affect the global climate of the earth.

On the one hand, scientists have been saying that according to the cyclic traces found in ice cores (100s, 1000s, 10000s of years old), we really should be in an ice age right about now. Essentially, humans burning trees (and progressing to burning coal and then oil, etc) have helped DELAY a climate transition that we would consider a disaster.

On the other hand, some studies indicate that the sheer amount of methane gases sequested on the floor of the polar oceans would, if released all at once, suffocate most air-breathing life in those latitudes fairly quickly -- and then be distributed around the globe by weather systems and cause a general shortness of breath everywhere (although not necessarily fatal -- according to estimates that not everyone agrees with)...

So -- while staying in Florida would not necessarily be a good idea, heading north might be even worse.

Find someplace with mountains, in the tropics.

Originally Posted by reddy Global warming taking earth back to dinosaur era

So how soon until i can ride a triceratops?

On the one hand, scientists have been saying that according to the cyclic traces found in ice cores (100s, 1000s, 10000s of years old), we really should be in an ice age right about now. Essentially, humans burning trees (and progressing to burning coal and then oil, etc) have helped DELAY a climate transition that we would consider a disaster.

My son is a history major among other things. According to what he has learned at college--we are still in the ice age and this is supposed to be happening. Maybe we are making it happen a bit faster but it is going to happen.