[Renegade 13]

Read your statements again. "We don't have records beyond a few decades ago" and "There have been times when it was warmer than now" DON'T fit together.

My fault. I should have said "We don't have detailed, in depth records beyond a few decades ago". We do, however, have estimates based on ice cores, etc, that give estimates of past climates.

Some of the mass extictinctions in the past may have wiped out as many as 90% of the species. Yes life recovered, after millions of years.

The climate shift I was talking about, when temps. were a few degrees warmer than now was only about 140,000 years ago. There was no massive extinction event around that time (as far as I know), so this is why I doubt a climate 'shift' of a few degrees can wipe out many species on a global scale.

OK, another couple questions. Is there actually enough ice in glaciers, polar ice caps, icebergs, etc. to raise ocean levels beyond a few feet over what they are today, if they all melted? Lets say a meter of water was added to todays ocean levels. A meter wouldn't cause any significant damage to coastlines beyond making a few seawalls necessary. The area of the worlds oceans is ~361 Million square km. So, to raise ocean levels by a meter, you'd need an additional 361,000,000 x .001 = 361,000 cubic kilometers of water! Is there even that much ice in the polar caps/glaciers?

Another question: Is it possible to slow significantly the amount of CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere without cutting back so much that we might as well be in the stone age again?