We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says.

The level of carbon now in the atmosphere hasn't been seen in 12 million years, a Harvard scientist said in Chicago Thursday, and this pollution is rapidly pushing the climate back to its state in the Eocene Epoch, more than 33 million years ago, when there was no ice on either pole.

Carbon pollution is rapidly forcing the climate back to a
state last seen in the Eocene Epoch, when there was no
ice on the poles, warned James Anderson, the Harvard
scientist known for linking CFCs to erosion of the Ozone Layer.

"We have exquisite information about what that state is, because we have a paleo record going back millions of years, when the earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole," said James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer.

"The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today," Anderson said of this once-and-future climate, "and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapor, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems.”

Read the story from Forbes magazine by Jeff McMahon - “We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says.”