PETM Shocker: When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Earth May Have Warmed 9°F In 13 Years

By Joe Romm      on October 8, 2013 at 5:32 pm




The Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) and associated carbon pulse “are often touted as the best geologic analog for the current” manmade rise in CO2 levels, as a new study notes.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, “Evidence for a rapid release of carbon at the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum,” concludes that sediment data indicates the carbon was released in the geologic blink of an eye. As the news release explains, Rutgers geologists Morgan Schaller and James Wright argue that: Quote:

Note that if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, we are headed for a tripling or quadrupling of CO2 concentrations from preindustrial levels.

The nature of the PETM carbon burst has been a puzzle to scientists for a long time, but “Wright and Schaller’s contention that it happened so rapidly is radically different from conventional thinking, and bound to be a source of controversy, Schaller believes.”

Still, any study offering new answers on the PETM merits attention, given the prospect that we might be doing something similar today.

The PETM’s climate would be quite inhospitable to human civilization (see “The Garden of Eden had a 40-foot, 1-ton snake plus 90°F average temperatures“). A 2009 study Naturearticle concluded : Quote:

A 2006 Nature analysis of deep marine sediments beneath the Arctic found Artic temperatures during the PETM almost beyond imagination-above 23°C (74°F)–temperatures more than 18°F warmer than current climate models had predicted (see “A methane feedback from the past strikes again“). The three dozen authors of the 2006 paper concluded that existing climate models are missing crucial feedbacks that can significantly amplify polar warming.

Significantly, the editor of this new study is none other than the “dean of climate scientists,” Wallace Broecker who popularized the term “global warming.”

Two decades ago, Broecker said, “The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks.” He stood by that warning in a 2012 interview: Quote:

At the rate we are spewing carbon pollution into the atmosphere, one might even say we are punching the climate beast in the nose. Paleoclimate studies, including this new one, suggests that is a very, very bad move.

Ajax wrote on Oct 15^th, 2013 at 9:47am:

Dunning–Kruger effect

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# wrote on Oct 14^th, 2013 at 8:18pm:


Yeah..And it may NOT have, too

gizmo_2655 wrote on Oct 15^th, 2013 at 1:39pm:

All things are possible. Just avoid relying on the less probable.

Is this thread really about 1 proxy and the word 'may'

On a winner here AGW'rs

# wrote on Oct 17^th, 2013 at 6:46am:


This video says it all.



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What would you say, if the elite moguls that actually want to tax us on the air we breath, get their carbon credit derivatives market up and running and THEN are not one bit interested in curbing manmade CO2 emissions.

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Are you kidding me, when do you see and end to this cost it will be forever.

The amount of CO2 that is manmade on its own cannot account for the CO2 increase in our atmosphere over the last 100 years.

This means that a good chunk of the increase is natural from the ecosystems do you honestly think we can control nature in this way.

If our sun gets a few measles (sunspots) and heats the Earth up, the ecosystems may release more CO2 into the atmosphere, it maybe so much more it will eclipse anything man has sent up.

There is a real possibility that this could happen...!!!!

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Look into our history, mammals survived when we had 3000ppm in the atmosphere and thrived.

More CO2 will be good for plant food production starting with the herbivores through to the carnivores.

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Why will quality of life be poor if CO2 increases....????

We have had 7000ppm of CO2 in our atmosphere in the past.

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Why wouldn't we survive......???????

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There are two sides to this argument, I suggest you look closer at the other side.

Pseudo science form computer circulation models vs Real world observations.

# wrote on Oct 15^th, 2013 at 3:36pm:


I don't...which is why I'm a AGW skeptic.

It seems to me that this is just another argument about how we pay.

So, it would seem that there might be some consensus that we are putting out environment at jeopardy, regardless of whether that is and abundance of CO2 to the point of being a pollutant or any number of other pollutants.

So, I am not too sure how it is gonna work out though, in short to make any kind of changes will have a financial cost, this will always be gravity fed to the lowest on the economic scale of things, that is how it goes. It would seem the longer the debate goes on though, the more will be the cost both financially and in other more serious and long term ways. That is regardless of what "may or may not" have occurred in the long distant or relatively recent past, hockey sticks, models that have been used, abused, misused and confused (wow, I might be a poet one day...) or any other "data" provided.