Climate 101 is a Mashable series that answers provoking and salient questions about Earth's warming climate.Â
The last time CO2 levels were as high as today, ocean waters drowned the lands where metropolises like Houston, Miami, and New York City now exist.
It's a time called the Pliocene or mid-Pliocene, some 3 million years ago, when sea levels were around 30 feet higher (but possibly much more) and giant camels dwelled in a forested high Arctic. The Pliocene was a significantly warmer world, likely at some 5 degrees Fahrenheit (around 3 degrees Celsius) warmer than pre-Industrial temperatures of the late 1800s. Much of the Arctic, which today is largely clad in ice, had melted. Heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels, a major temperature lever, hovered around 400 parts per million, or ppm. Today, these levels are similar but relentlessly rising, at Read more...
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