NSF Paleoclimate Team - Earlier Climate Shifts Jarring & Sudden, Not Linear - LA Times

[hatrack]

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday. The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."

The provocative insight into planetary climate change counters the traditional view that global warming could be gradual and its regional effects easily anticipated. Over several million years, carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere increased from about 280 parts per million to 2,000 ppm, the same increase that experts expect by the end of this century as remaining reserves of fossil fuels are burned.

No one knows the reason for so much variation in carbon dioxide levels 300 million years ago, but as modern industrial activity continues to pump greenhouse gases into the air at rapid rates, the unpredictable climate changes that took millions of years to unfold naturally could be compressed into a few centuries or less today, several experts said.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci-climate5jan05,1,4828203.story

[Peace Patriot]

1. Although the warnings are similar to Gore's in "Inconvenient Truth"--that

sudden drastic change is imminent, and man-made--the graphs (i.e., the data) seems dissimilar. Gore shows a graph over 600,000 years in which CO2 and heat fluctuate up and down, together, at regular intervals, for about 10 feet of chart, then suddenly--in our era--zoom up, way up (about 10 feet up), off the chart. And THAT is what is causing all the hurricanes, the much rougher and more extreme weather, the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers everywhere, drought in one area with 36 inches of rain in a day next door, the lack of snow on the east coast this winter, the disruptions of wildlife migration and habitat, the rise in sea temperatures, floodings of coastal areas, loss of islands and all the rest. It is ALREADY a disaster. And it's going to get worse--while our infantile killer president sucks his thumb and designs death for Iranians.

But, anyway, I don't quite understand the data referred to in this OP vs. Gore's data. The article is unclear. It speaks of "wild swings in temperature" whereas Gore's chart showed more regular fluctuations until we get to our era. And the UC Davis geochemist's ambiguous statement--"One has to question whether that is where we are headed"--doesn't help. What a muddle-headed piece this is--perhaps a reflection of the muddle-headed state of corporate monopoly journalism deliberately fostered by Exxon-Mobile. And what is this "traditional view" that "global warming could be gradual"? No reputable scientists have said that about CURRENT global warming. Except for Exxon-Mobile "scientists." The article is unclear what period(s) that this "traditional view" were applied to. Gore's data shows EXTREMELY dramatic change in our era, with extremely dramatic impacts already evident. What I'm getting from the article--between the lines of the muddy writing--is that some extremity of the past is about to re-visit us, by our own doing--but at an accelerated pace. Perhaps the geochemist meant to say, "One has to POSIT..."--not "question"--"One has to POSIT that we may be headed that way."

Gore is looking at ALL the climate change data and ALL the reports--the overwhelming consensus. I don't know if this UC Davis group is looking at more than what they have in front of them--a part of the ancient record. Later in the article, a different scientist says that these findings from the Paleozoic period foretell what we are facing--that is, that scientists didn't know how extreme the impacts were--with devastating consequences to animal life and vegetation--of that transition from ice age to greenhouse conditions.

These quotes help (not from the Davis team):

"Just as during the modern era, however, the Earth of the late Paleozoic was shifting from an ice age to a warmer greenhouse world — the only other era in the planet's history to experience such a transition, said Yale University geochemist Robert Berner, an expert on climate and evolution who was not involved in the research.

"'This is the closest thing we have to a direct analogue to the future,' said geoscientist Lee Kump at Pennsylvania State University, who also was not a member of the research team. 'If we want to better understand the climate response, we have to go back to this late Paleozoic period.'

The article gets a little clearer toward the end:

"Instead of a relatively gradual transition from a cold world to a warm one, as many scientists had believed occurred, Montanez and her colleagues found fever spikes of climate change correlated with fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide, like a seismometer graph of the myriad tremors before and after a major earthquake.

"'CO2 goes up and temperature goes up. It drops and temperature drops,' Montanez said. (UC Davis team)

"'It suggests,' she said, 'that the normal behavior in major climate transitions is instability, erratic temperature behavior and carbon dioxide changes.'"

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I certainly applaud this work of the UC Davis team--and also that the LAT reported it. I just don't applaud the LAT writing (Times staff writer Robert Lee Holtz). I am a lay person, not a scientist--a typical member of the public in that regard. It was a struggle to understand it. Or, maybe I'm just so angry and pissed off at our government today, that I had no patience at all. Yet another report, and still the Oil Cartel is running things, trying to corner the market on the last fossil fuels, through death and destruction.

[kestrel91316]

2. Well I'm sure that jarring and sudden effects on our economy

from utter collapse of the earth's ecosystems will be easily compensated for by letting free market economics handle things. Just quit taxing the rich and corporations and they will fix everything.

:sarcasm: