An amazing new study on how the climate has changed over the past 485 million years provides even more reason to be worried about the ways humans are contributing to the current warming: www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Suspect that article will be fodder for the deniers, who will gladly point out that life flourished in the past with much higher temps than today. That article has great propagandistic value for those who want to minimize the issues around climate change.

What gets me about extreme warming events over Earth's history (e.g., PETM) isn't just their magnitude, but that a period of thousands of years is considered "abrupt." But our minds' struggle with deep time is a real problem when trying to use analogues to convey the seriousness of our situation.