Deep Time and Climate Change

One of the interesting things about studying Earth's past is just how tremendous the changes have been, and how much we can learn about the earth system by studying them.  In many cases they provide our only insight into what we can expect from future climate changes.  We can look at past forcings and responses in the earth system and ask what happens when the oceans become acidified, or when CO2 exceeds 400 ppm, or even more.

We spent some time talking about past climate change, but most of what we looked at was in the last 65 million years (myr).  This sounds like a long time, but it is just a hair over 1% of Earth's history. Check out this report from the National Academy of Science about climate change in deep time.  You can read it online below, or download the PDF.