Pacific Views

More Bad News on Warming

Just how extreme *is* our rabid climate tampering experiment? Try this:

... "The changes to the atmosphere caused by humans over the past 150 years are as large as the changes that occurred naturally over the past 35 million years," MacLeod said. "You have to look back that far to find carbon dioxide levels at what we expect them to be in the next 50 years."

These findings mean that in order to obtain the average global warming that is predicted, regional variances will make some places cooler and others warmer than expected. Those especially warm areas will suffer extreme changes that could be disastrous. MacLeod said until the global cooling that began about 70 million years ago, the earth had been extremely warm for 25 million years.

"There were no glaciers, crocodilians lived in the high arctic, and palm trees grew in Canada," MacLeod said. "That's kind of warm." ...

But on the bright side, Canada might get palm trees.