|
Global warming taking earth back to dinosaur era
| Alright. That does it. I'm leaving. |
 Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday. Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.
| Ummm... I don't think he's thinking of dinosaurs. 24 million or so years ago was the heyday of the monkeys, when the earth was warmer (yes) and the livin' was easy. Rather than working, we'll be able to sit around in the moist warmth that arctic ice cap's gotta go someplace scratching and eating bananas and copulating in the warm winter sun. |
Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear. "We may very well already be on the breaking edge of a wave of mass extinctions," Thomas told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
| Or we could be on a breaking wave of evolution, where existing species occupy new ecological niches, taking advantage of temperatures that are less severe than those of the present. No more mukluks in Skagway. No more winter colds. Too bad about the skiing industry, though. |
| Yummy New Jersey oranges ... |
Scientists predict average global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees centigrade by 2100, mainly as a result of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into the air from burning fossil fuels for transport and power.
| If it's warmer, then it'd stand to reason that there'd be less of a demand for burning fossil fuels, which'd to cause the temperature to stabilize, wouldn't it? |
"If the most extreme warming predicted takes place we will be going back to global temperatures not seen since the age of the dinosaur," Thomas said. "We are starting to put these things into a historical perspective. These are conditions not seen for millions of years, so none of the species will have been subjected to them before," he added.
| The figure given was 24 million years, which would be the early Miocene or late Oligocene, about 40 million years past the last of the dinosaurs. The Miocene was an age of greater species diversity than our age. |
Posted by: Fred 2006-09-08 |
