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164 points bikenaga | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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TSiege ◴[] No.45399683[source]
Something to keep in mind in the comments when talking about climate change and CO2 levels is that it’s not the level so much as the rate. We’re on the path to doubling (or have doubled if you look at CO2 equivalents) global CO2 levels faster than likely any other time in earths entire history. We have the CO2 levels equivalent to a time period when the earths poles didn’t have ice caps and instead forests in the span of about 200 years.

Every organism and ecosystem you’ve ever encountered in your life is adapted to an Ice Age climate, but we’ve recreated the conditions of a Hot House earth. Species and ecosystems adapt on much slower time scales. They cannot adapt to changes this abrupt, which means they will necessarily collapse if we do nothing and allow emit CO2. Every other time in earths history that the CO2 levels have rapidly risen it’s lead to a mass extinction. Yes it’s been hotter before but that change happened gradually. It’s like the joke about poison vs medicine, it’s the dose that kills you.

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1. hammock ◴[] No.45399731[source]
What is the temporal resolution of the ice cores or whatever else is being used to measure when the last “hot house” periods were? Because today we are measuring CO2 with minute-level resolution. But I feel like an ice core might be a year at best, probably much worse. Which if I’m right would mean we really don’t know how fast or slow we entered into the last hot period (the rate)