Carbon emission release rate ‘unprecedented’ in past 66m years

[sue4e3]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/carbon-emission-release-rate-unprecedented-in-pas
Humanity is pumping climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 10 times faster than at any point in the past 66m years, according to new research.

The revelation shows the world has entered “uncharted territory” and that the consequences for life on land and in the oceans may be more severe than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It comes as the World Meteorological Organisation released its Status of the Climate Report detailing a string of weather and climate records that were broken in 2015.

“The future is happening now,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas in a statement released alongside the report. “The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a result of greenhouse gas emission is unprecedented

[mindwalker_i]

1. Hillary will get Halliburton right on that...

[Ghost Dog]

2. Great money-making opportunity.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Human carbon release rate is unprecedented in the past 66 million years of Earth’s history

http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2016/03/21/human-carbon-release-rate-is-unprecedented-in-the-past-66-million-years-of-earths-history/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Human carbon release rate is unprecedented in the past 66 million years of Earth’s history[/font]

March 21, 2016 | Marcie Grabowski

[font size=3]The earliest instrumental records of Earth’s climate, as measured by thermometers and other tools, start in the 1850s. To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped in ice cores, which expands the window to less than a million years. But to study Earth’s history over tens to hundreds of millions of years, researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures of deep sea sediment archives.

New research published today in Nature Geoscience by Richard Zeebe, professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and colleagues looks at changes of Earth’s temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Their findings suggest humans are releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any event in the past 66 million years.

The research team developed a new approach and was able to determine the duration of the onset of an important past climate event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, PETM for short, 56 million years ago.

“As far as we know, the PETM has the largest carbon release during the past 66 million years,” said Zeebe.

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