We are heading for a New Cretaceous, not for a new normal
A lazy buzz phrase – ‘Is this the new normal?’ – has been doing the rounds as extreme climate events have been piling up over the past year.
To which the riposte should be:
it’s worse than that – we’re on the road to even more frequent, more extreme events than we saw this year.
We have known since the 1980s what’s in store for us.
But nothing was done, and the welter of climate data mounting since then only confirms and refines the original predictions.
the Cretaceous ... was also very warm, with global temperatures 3-10°C hotter than preindustrial levels.
in a Cretaceous rerun, there would very likely be no ice at the poles once again, and
sea levels would be about 216 feet (66 metres) above current levels.
We would also see the creation of vast warm shallow seas with mineral deposits similar to those that produced 1,300 ft (400 metre)-thick chalk strata in the old Cretaceous;
while, in place of the larger mammals that would become extinct, reptiles might radiate across the globe and grow large in form – a fitting dinosaur revenge?
In 2010, researchers showed that
our species cannot survive for more than six hours at what’s called a ‘wet bulb’ temperature of 35°C (95°F).
Wet bulb here means 100 per cent humidity, so it’s not 35°C as we know it.
But in the great Indian agricultural belts of the Indus and Ganges, high-40s temperatures combined with 50 per cent humidity (which equates to that wet-bulb temperature of 35°C ) are going to prevail within decades.
most-likely temperature-rise prediction of 3°C would see forests growing in the Arctic, and
entail the loss of most coastal cities through irreversible sea-level rise by the end of the century.
A lesson for today is that such a sudden and lasting change to the climate has consequences lasting thousands of years.
https://aeon.co/ideas/we-are-heading-for-a-new-cretaceous-not-for-a-new-normal?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8c2 9b26d26-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_28_12_53&utm_medium=email&u tm_term=0_411a82e59d-8c29b26d26-70695677
and still, nothing is being done, except,eg, the American oligarchy, through its govt control, making climate catastrophe arrive quicker