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Uncategorized

You Betcha, Get out Those Snorkels, *Wink*

Juan Cole 10/04/2008

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The bad news is that 250 million years ago, global warming almost killed the planet.

‘Through the darkest days, the planet was a barren wasteland. Ocean circulation, so vital to our modern climate, had shut off. Huge algal blooms sucked the seas dry of oxygen. Poisonous hydrogen sulfide built up to lethal concentrations in the water and may have even been belched into the atmosphere, suffocating organisms on shore.’

The good news is that the 160 feet along the shoreline where the waves come in aerated the water and created a narrow band where crustaceans and other forms of life could survive until the planet cooled down again.

So if humans do unalterably again poison the planet by digging oil and coal up out of the ground and pumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, apparently it will be we who get boiled and the lobsters that laze about all day snapping their pincers.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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