How is this our fault?


Episode of global warming predates any human industrial activity
Maybe this will start some serious debate on global warming. And by debate I do not mean anti-capitalist lectures by the global warming crowd.

An extraordinary burst of global warming that occurred around 55 million years ago dramatically reversed Earth's pattern of ocean currents, a finding that strengthens modern-day concern about climate change, a study says.

The big event, the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), saw the planet's surface temperature rise by between five and eight degrees C (nine and 16.2 F) in a very short time, unleashing climate shifts that endured tens of thousands of years.

Scientists Flavia Nunes and Richard Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California explored how these warmer temperatures might have affected ocean currents.

Just think about that for a moment. Fifty-five million years ago, there was a global warming event that was far worse than anything that we've been warned against.

Yet there was no evidence that it was unusual or caused by human activity. It wasn't evil. And nothing humans can do now would have even slowed it down, even if there had been something recognizably human on the planet then.

This tells us that when it comes to global climate, shift happens. Humans are not the end all of the planet. I happen to believe that the planet is living, but at the very least it is a very complex, chaotic self-adjusting system. We can't take credit for Earth, nor can we blame ourselves for it's "imperfections." At best, we can only take care of it while we are here. That means NOT interfering in natural cycles in the name of some unmeasured ideal.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - January 4, 2006 at 04:55 PM  Tag


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