According to a new study just released, the rate of carbon emissions in the world today is higher that at any other time in the past 66 million years, beginning when dinosaurs roamed the planet, according to Reuters.
That is the finding of a study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which says the pace of emissions today even surpasses the beginning of the biggest known naturally-occurring surge of emissions. That event, recorded about 56 million years ago, is believed to have been caused by the release of frozen greenhouse gasses underneath the ocean floor.
Many climate scientists compare that event to what is predicted to be seen if the current rate of emissions is not reduced. It is estimated the release of the frozen packets of gasses at that time cause a spike in world temperatures of approximately 9 degrees, and caused major damage to marine life by raising the acidity of the oceans.
The fast-warming event 56 million years ago added about 1.1 billion tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere over a period of 4,000 years. Current carbon emissions are running at a rate of about 10 billion tons per year, according to the article, mostly from burning fossil fuels. To gauge the extent of the warming event, named the Paleoeocene-Eocene thermal Maximum (PETM), the researchers examined the chemical makeup of marine organism fossils from seabeds in off the coast of New Jersey.
Richard Zeebe, lead author on the study, from the University of Hawaii, said, “Our results suggest that future ocean acidification and possible effects on marine calcifying organisms will be more severe than during the PETM.
“Future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM,” he continued. Zeebe adds the marine life around at the time of the PETM may have been able to take advantage of the more slowly occurring event to adapt to the warming of the water by evolving. Today’s marine life may not have that option available to them.
United Nations studies seem to back up the findings from this new study, in that they are projecting a 4.8 degree C temperature rise by the end of eh 21st century, if the rate of emissions remains at the same level or increases.