On 3/13/12 11:56 AM, Leonard wrote:
The next Ice Age is HERE.

At least Leonard has a sense of humor!

On a more serious note:


Ocean acidification on track to be among the worst of the last 300 million years
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/...lion-years.ars

Finally, we come the big one—The Great Dying. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (about 252 million years ago) wiped out around 96 percent of marine species. Still, the rate of CO2 released to the atmosphere that drove the dangerous climate change was 10-100 times slower than current emissions.

Matching the modern to history

In the end, the researchers conclude that the PETM, Triassic-Jurassic boundary, and Permian-Triassic boundary are the closest analogs to the modern day, at least as far as acidification is concerned. Due to the poor ocean chemistry data for the latter two, the PETM is the best event for us to compare current conditions. It’s still not perfect—the rate of CO2 increase was slower than today.