Hothouse Earth: our planet has been here before – here’s what it looked like
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Hothouse Earth: our planet has been here before – here's what it looked like
Jan Zalasiewicz, University of Leicester; Mark Williams, University of Leicester, and Thomas Hearing, University of Leicester
Even if carbon emissions are reduced to hold temperature rises at the 2°C guardrail of the Paris Agreement, changes already afoot in the environment such as melting permafrost and forest die-back could accelerate warming well into the future, potentially pushing our planet into what is being called a “Hothouse Earth” state.
The risk of a hothouse was raised by a recent study, though the authors stressed that it is not inevitable. But what is a Hothouse Earth state, and how will it feel for humans and the rest of nature?
The Earth has been in hothouse (often called “greenhouse”) states before, and there is not one kind of Hothouse Earth, but several. A little like Dante’s circles of Hell, they progress into ever-deeper states o...
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