For around half a century, the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis has provided a unique way of understanding how life has persisted on Earth, championing the idea that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings evolved together as a single, self-regulating system that has kept the planet habitable for life – despite threats such as a brightening Sun, volcanoes and meteorite strikes.
Jerry Brown, California’s governor, has accused Donald Trump of “gross ignorance” over climate change as he made his most sweeping actions yet to rid the world’s fifth largest economy of fossil fuels, calling for 100% of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by 2045. (more…)
As goes Yellowstone, so goes the planet: climate change will drastically alter Yellowstone in coming decades, with warmer temperatures, longer and more volatile fire seasons, shorter winters, less snowfall and visible changes in the dominant species of plants –all fundamentally altered by global warming in the coming decades.
“Up until now, we’ve had a better map of Mars than we’ve had of Antarctica. Now it is the best-mapped continent,” said Ian Howat, professor of earth sciences and director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. “If you’re someone that needs glasses to see, it’s a bit like being almost blind and putting on glasses for the first time and seeing 20/20.”
There are thresholds, non-linear evolutions that are not yet incorporated into current climate models. Fifty-six million years ago, the Earth experienced an exceptional episode of global warming. In a very short time on a geological scale, within 10 to 20,000 years, the average temperature increased by five to eight degrees, only returning to its original level a few hundred thousand years later.
