Posted on 10/24/2007 1:48:59 PM PDT by MooseMan
WASHINGTON — Whenever the world's tropical seas rose several degrees, Earth experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, according to a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records.
And scientists fear it may be about to happen again — but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years.
Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, according to the new study published today.
"We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been," said University of York ecologist Peter Mayhew, co-author of the peer-reviewed research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal.
Earth is on track to hit that same level of extinction-connected warming in about 100 years, unless greenhouse-gas emissions are curbed, according to top scientists.
A second study, to be presented Sunday, links high carbon-dioxide levels, the chief man-made gas responsible for global warming, to past extinctions. The study was conducted by a University of Washington scientist.
In the British study, Mayhew and his colleagues looked at temperatures in 10 million-year chunks because fossil records aren't that precise in time measurements. They compared those to the number of species, the number of species families, and overall biodiversity. They found more biodiversity with lower temperatures and more species dying with higher temperatures.
The researchers examined tropical-sea temperatures — the only ones that can be determined from fossil records and go back hundreds of millions of years. They indicate a natural 60 million-year climate cycle that moves from a warmer "greenhouse" to a cooler "icehouse." The Earth is warming from its current colder period.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Time to move all the Liberals near water.
Err ... That's news?
I’m stocking up on supplies!
That would explain the 5 degrees and 2 more inches of snow this morning.
Do you think these whacko’s would settle for us getting out of Iraq instead of cutting green house gas?
Err ... That's news?
Earth is on track to hit that same level of extinction-connected warming in about 100 years,
No, THAT's news! ... fake news, but news nonetheless.
I’d imagine the seas did get A LOT WARMER when the meteor(s) hit........
Extinction-connected warming? Who says? Correlation does not prove causation...............
I’m gonna invest in gravesites then!
He figured that since the naysayers believed there wouldn't be anything left but bodies and garbage .... they'd be stocking up.
The nihilists are aready salivating-—a world without people
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=49B0CB1C-E7F2-99DF-31B25137E601E0C5
Die now or die later.
A second study, to be presented Sunday, links high carbon-dioxide levels, the chief man-made gas responsible for global warming, to past extinctions.
There it is folks, we were responsible for all extinctions for the past 520 million years.
They do heavily populate the coastal lines already.
High CO2 levels in the fossil records was a lagging indicator of actual warming trends..............
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