Anthony Watts has reposted a press release from the University of Utah about a new paleoclimate study—which is something he generally does when press releases can be misconstrued to provide "evidence" against climate change.
According to the study (published in Nature Geoscience), there were two pulses of CO2 released 55 million years ago at a rate somewhat similar to the current CO2 emissions trajectory. The study found that during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) temperatures rose 5-8°C, and "it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal."
In the press release, the researchers say the study "tightens the link" between CO2 and temperatures, and that the "carbon release back then looked a lot like human fossil-fuel emissions today." Their best guess for what caused these emissions is a sudden melting of methane clathrate, something that could happen again with enough warming or may already be happening.
This might all seem confusing—why would Watts post something that shows it will take hundreds of thousands of years to undo the damage caused by emissions, and why would he promote a study that "tightens the link" between CO2 and climate?
Because he knows his audience, and by looking at the comments it quickly becomes clear: "They must have had massive coal-fired power stations 150,000 / 225,000 / 300,000 years ago!" Deniers frequently fall prey to faulty logic, and in this case they think the fact that warming happened naturally in the past means it can't be man-made today. To them, evidence indicating the path we're on could be really bad somehow translates to "it's all natural and so there's nothing to worry about."
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