Current CO2 Releases Are 10 Times Higher Than in Past Era, Study Says

Carbon is being released into the atmosphere 10 times faster today than during a previous geological era when the Earth experienced significant warming, a new study says. In the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists used rock and sediment samples from a coal mining operation in Norway to do a detailed analysis of the planet’s CO2 emissions during a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when the Earth’s temperature rose by at least 9 degrees F over a 20,000-year period. Their analysis, the most thorough to date of the PETM, showed that carbon emissions during that era were nearly 10 times less than the 8 billion metric tons of CO2 being emitted today.

Source: Yale Environment 360