Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Fire Monkey's Nuthouse Planet made into Hothouse

This just can't be good news. A study by NASA's James Hansen, climatologist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences reports Earth is approaching a million-year high in temperature. I have said since the 1980s that if we put all the carbon from the Carboniferous back into the atmosphere, we would return to the conditions of those times, making Iowa, for example, the shallow sea it once was, with excellent diving among its coral reefs. Can people stop talking about whether the heat is real and just agree to do something to slow down any further jump in CO2 levels? A carbon tax and crash program for energy independence would be a reasonable step for a start.
A million-year high is not a return to Jurassic conditions yet. The Cenozoic has gone on for 65 million years, so saying we are at a million-year high is not the end of the world or even necessarily of this geological era. On the other hand, the ongoing mass extinction and reduction of biodiversity suggests that we are leaving the garden of the Cenozoic behind.
I wouldn't gamble on it, but there is one spot of hope offworld, outside of the hope of Sapiens having the sap to save their burgeoning bottoms. That is the Sun. It could be that the present high temperatures on Eath are related to a high in sunspot activity, and that a new little ice age is around the corner with a decline in sunspot activity.
I wouldn't count on it, though. I always remember that over 97% of the species that have lived on this planet are extinct now. We seem to be more careless than most mammals in undermining our own sustainability, but could still avoid giving the planet up to squid and cockroaches, in my opinion. Yes, I'm that optimystic.

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