The associated period of massive carbon injection into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted no longer than 20,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[3] The carbon dioxide was likely released in two pulses, the first lasting less than 2,000 years. Such a repeated carbon release is in line with current global warming.[2] A main difference is that during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, the planet was essentially ice-free.[4]
Today we talk about the temperature going up less than 1 degree °C in the last 1,400 years. This is talking about a period of warming that was 5-8 degrees and lasted over 20,000 years.
So when people start to talk about how rapidly things are changing over a few hundred or a thousand years, it's still a blip in the time frame of the planet's history. The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum happened over 55 million years ago and lasted more than 20,000 years. How can anybody say, "This is the warmest temps in the history of the planet!" when some of the cycles have happened over incredibly vast amounts of time and have been sustained for even longer?
And while I don't doubt some climate change is occurring, if you look at the scale in terms of millions of years, humans will be long gone before this planet really starts dying, and by then, it will reclaim, heal and move on from when we inhabited it. Truth is, the planet has been undergoing cooler and warming periods since it was born as a planet some 4 billion years ago.
So what? Its not helpful to score points off of what was the 'true' maximum temperature of the planet. Here we are, now, with coastal cities in jeopardy and Antarctica melting. It will affect us, our children and grandchildren (and 100X grandchildren if you are right and it lasts 20,000 years before recovering).
I take no solace in thinking "humans will be long gone". Not if its global catastrophe in the next decades that trigger that.
> Not if its global catastrophe in the next decades that trigger that.
People have talking about global catastrophe since the 1960's and some of the predictions from the first Earth day in 1970 were so alarmist it's funny to look back at those now:
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
- Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
- Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone."
- Paul Ehrlich
"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
But back then, Siberia hadn't melted yet. Neither had the polar ice cap. Nor every significant glacier on the planet. We hadn't entered a series of unstable record-setting years wet/dry/hot/cold without ceasing.
So yea it seems funny or harmless if you ignore what's happened since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...
The associated period of massive carbon injection into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted no longer than 20,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[3] The carbon dioxide was likely released in two pulses, the first lasting less than 2,000 years. Such a repeated carbon release is in line with current global warming.[2] A main difference is that during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, the planet was essentially ice-free.[4]
Today we talk about the temperature going up less than 1 degree °C in the last 1,400 years. This is talking about a period of warming that was 5-8 degrees and lasted over 20,000 years.
So when people start to talk about how rapidly things are changing over a few hundred or a thousand years, it's still a blip in the time frame of the planet's history. The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum happened over 55 million years ago and lasted more than 20,000 years. How can anybody say, "This is the warmest temps in the history of the planet!" when some of the cycles have happened over incredibly vast amounts of time and have been sustained for even longer?
And while I don't doubt some climate change is occurring, if you look at the scale in terms of millions of years, humans will be long gone before this planet really starts dying, and by then, it will reclaim, heal and move on from when we inhabited it. Truth is, the planet has been undergoing cooler and warming periods since it was born as a planet some 4 billion years ago.