Study Sheds New Light On Global Warming

"METHANE released from wetlands turned the Earth into a hothouse 55 million years ago, according to research released yesterday that could shed light on a worrying aspect of today's climate-change crisis.

Scientists have long sought to understand the triggers for an extraordinary warming episode called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 10 million years after the twilight of the dinosaurs.

Earth's surface warmed by at least five degrees Celsius in just a few hundred or a few thousand years. The Arctic Ocean was at 23 degrees Celsius _ about the same as a tepid bath _ before the planet eventually cooled." |Read more|