You read some really dumb stuff on denier blogs. Today there's one article that really takes the cake.
Anthony Watts is claiming that if Earth heats up by four degrees or more, it won't matter a damn because - dinosaurs! (Archived here).I don't know if Anthony really believes what he writes or if he is dumb ignorant. Here is some of what he wrote:
...According to Wikipedia, the mean global temperature during the Cretaceous was 18c, 4c higher than today’s global temperature. The CO2 level in the Cretaceous was around 1700ppm, over 4x higher than today’s 400ppm.
...What can we learn from the the Cretaceous? In my opinion, the lesson from the Cretaceous is – we have nothing to fear from CO2.
You can read his full article in the archive here.
When the rate of extinction vastly exceeds the rate of speciation, then its described as an extinction event. This usually happens when something changes on Earth and the change is so great that plants and animals and microbes cannot adapt. And there isn't time for there to evolve life forms that are suited to the changed conditions.
What we're doing now is causing very, very rapid change.
