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Earth Science

Ancient Climate Change Triggered Warming That Lasted Thousands of Years (phys.org) 198

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A rapid rise in temperature on ancient Earth triggered a climate response that may have prolonged the warming for many thousands of years, according to scientists. Their study, published online in Nature Geoscience, provides new evidence of a climate feedback that could explain the long duration of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which is considered the best analogue for modern climate change. The findings also suggest that climate change today could have long-lasting impacts on global temperature even if humans are able to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Increased erosion during the PETM, approximately 56 million years ago, freed large amounts of fossil carbon stored in rocks and released enough carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere to impact temperatures long term, researchers said. Scientists found evidence for the massive carbon release in coastal sediment fossil cores. They analyzed the samples using an innovative molecular technique that enabled them to trace how processes like erosion moved carbon in deep time. Global temperatures increased by about 9 to 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit during the PETM, radically changing conditions on Earth. Severe storms and flooding became more common, and the warm, wet weather led to increased erosion of rocks. As erosion wore down mountains over thousands of years, carbon was released from rocks and transported by rivers to oceans, where some was reburied in coastal sediments. Along the way, some of the carbon entered the atmosphere as greenhouse gas.

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Ancient Climate Change Triggered Warming That Lasted Thousands of Years

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:34PM (#57999872)

    No wonder they slaughtered mammoths, it was to decrease methane emissions!

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      This not funny, you take thing like environments better than this seriously with rational conscience minds. For without rationality we have no way to continue forward as civiliation. Do it require the carbon credit? Reduce? Reuse? Recycle? There is many option here, joke is not way to make thing better.

      Please for humanity rethink what thought brain your tried with the regards of not only human survival but survival to the world and continuing with science & progress- we make contact with aliens? We nev
      • by Anonymous Coward

        As a sanctimonious do gooder that has no clue about what's going on.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        "you take thing like environments better than this seriously with rational conscience minds."

        One of us just had a stroke, I think.

      • This not funny, you take thing like environments better than this seriously with rational conscience minds. For without rationality we have no way to continue forward as civiliation. Do it require the carbon credit? Reduce? Reuse? Recycle? There is many option here, joke is not way to make thing better.

        Mash no like joke, mash make people serious, serious people better.

        Or was that the joke?

        It can be tough to tell these days.

        • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

          Mash no like joke, mash make people serious, serious people better. Or was that the joke? It can be tough to tell these days.

          I think you've just been had by a troll account. There are about 40 variants on the msmash userid. This is one of them.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday January 21, 2019 @11:44PM (#58000088)

      There were no Neanderthals 56 million years ago.

      Our direct ancestors from that epoch were lemurs.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Speak for yourself Lemur Boy

      • If only those lemurs didn't drive around in gas-guzzling SUVs, then the PETM might have been avoided!
      • The aliens that designed us in their image were around. It's just the stock primates they used as a canvas that weren't quite here yet.
      • by anegg ( 1390659 )
        It is obvious that this is the story behind the lost continent of Atlantis... the first self-conscious species to arise on earth were the Atlanteans. But they poisoned themselves with carbon releases 56 million years ago. Now all that is left is the geological record and some trace memories that must have been passed down, somehow, throughout the ages.
    • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @12:32AM (#58000208)

      Preying upon the Dinosaurs and forcing them to evolve into birds. They saw their fate coming so implanted the designs for their resurrection into promising mamals so that in the distant future they could be resurrected and begin the cycle anew.

      Have you looked closely at the pictures of Henry Ford he's at least three quarters metal.

      Of course it doesn't take much to cause warming, there's only a few vehicles on mars and they are solar electric yet that planet is warming.

    • The raised too many methane-dispensing brontosaurs for excavation work.
      Damn baby-neanderthal boomer Flintstones ruined it for everyone.

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:39PM (#57999896)

    Man, those Chinese climate hoaxers just don't know when to quit do they?

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:49PM (#57999922)

    The title should be...

    Ancient Climate Change Caused Mass Extinction Less Severe Than Projected Future

    If we don't do take action soon then in a billion years some creature may be digging up fossils trying to figure out what caused our present mass extinction event.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      You prefer your science headlines with wild speculation, simply because it's more alarmist? You understand that this will just erode trust in climate science right?

    • The title should be...

      No, they title should NOT be.

    • The question is, what action can stop this? It seems that 58M years ago, with human emissions non-existent, the climate still changed. What could have prevented this 58M million years ago?

      • better yet, what caused it? and is that really what's causing it now?
        and no matter what anyone says, i'll take the extra 14 degrees. it's better than 2 mile deep glaciers down to mid USA.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      In a billion years, the sun will expand and reach closer to the Earth. THAT will be your source of global warming as the oceans are slowly boiled off into outer space!

      • This is why we need to ban solar power immediately: the more of the sun’s energy we use, the sooner it becomes a red giant.
  • by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@@@jwsmythe...com> on Monday January 21, 2019 @10:49PM (#57999924) Homepage Journal

    That sounds reasonable. A 200,000 year long process now takes 100 years. I hope geological changes speed up the same way. That'd move the next Yellowstone caldera eruption from sometime in the next 600,000 years, to possibly next Thursday. Just enough time to plan an apocalypse party!

  • We can live anywhere.
    • That's not saying much because we currently lack the technology to live on Mars. It's a goal but we're not there yet.

      • Actually, we do have the tech required to allow us to live on Mars.

        Unfortunately, we lack the tech to get enough of that other tech to Mars to support even a small population...

        • Actually, we do have the tech required to allow us to live on Mars.

          Not in a self-sustaining way, really.

        • So your actual answer is, "No, but I'm going to insist on yes even though I have enough information to explain why I'm wrong."

  • by Anonymous Coward

    So-- the world was hotter 55 million years ago, which brings up questions before we get into a complex feedback loop theory:

    1. Do we know where the Earth's orbit was 55 million years ago? (or do we assume it has been stable/constant?)
    2. Do we know the Sun's output 55 million years ago? (or do we assume it was constant, or worse-- model it because we have a theory of the sun's behavior).

    • We model it, sorry. But I don't know if that model comes from derived historical observations of some kind. Anyway, 1% increase in lumenence every 100 million years, so about 0.5% less than today.
  • Not only that...white man LOL. Gee, "global warming" happened before the industrial revolution...go figure.
    • Of course it did, you fucking moron...for well-understood reasons. But right now it is humans who are causing it.

      Check back with us when you graduate from Grade 8 science, if that ever happens.

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