Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson) Thanks to unbridled greenhouse gas emissions, our planet is stitching together a climate version of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. We still have ice from the warmer parts of the Pleistocene even as our temperature approaches the warmer Pliocene levels of 3 million years ago. Meanwhile, our CO 2 level […]
Enlarge / The ice age weather (left) gave way to one that slowly warmed until industrial times. (credit: Matthew Osman) The climate “hockey stick” refers to a reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1, 000 years. The data shows flattish temperatures over the last millennium , like the handle of a Hockey stick, ending in […]
Enlarge / The massive trunk of a kauri tree can remain intact for tens of thousands of years. (credit: W. Bulach / Wikimedia) The Earth’s magnetic field helps protect life from energetic particles that would otherwise arrive from space. Mars now lacks a strong magnetic field, and the conditions on its surface are considered so […]