Climate

120,000 years. Why 120 thousand years? Did a little digging and that turns out to be roughly coinciding with the peak of the second-to-last interglacial maximum, known as the Eemian (the current being the Holocene).

And what do we know about the Eemian interglacial period? We have found some very interesting things. These things may not happen again, they may be wildly inadequate as predictors of future consequences of this global climactic shift. Nevertheless, although history doesn’t repeat itself, it sometimes rhymes.

From Wikipedia:

The Eemian climate is believed to have been warmer than the current Holocene.[8][9] Changes in the Earth's orbital parameters from today (greater obliquity and eccentricity, and perihelion), known as Milankovitch cycles, probably led to greater seasonal temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere.[citation needed]

During the northern summer, temperatures in the Arctic region were about 2-4 °C higher than in 2011.[10] The warmest peak of the Eemian was around 125,000 years ago, when forests reached as far north as North Cape, Norway (which is now tundra) well above the Arctic Circle at 71°10′21″N 25°47′40″E. Hardwood trees such as hazel and oak grew as far north as Oulu, Finland.

At the peak of the Eemian, the Northern Hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now, though some areas were actually slightly cooler than today. The hippopotamus was distributed as far north as the rivers Rhine and Thames.[11]

Trees grew as far north as southern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: currently, the northern limit is further south at Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec. Coastal Alaska was warm enough during the summer due to reduced sea ice in the Arctic Ocean to allow Saint Lawrence Island (now tundra) to have boreal forest, although inadequate precipitation caused a reduction in the forest cover in interior Alaska and Yukon Territory despite warmer conditions.[12]

The prairie-forest boundary in the Great Plains of the United States lay further west near Lubbock, Texas, whereas the current boundary is near Dallas. The period closed as temperatures steadily fell to conditions cooler and drier than the present, with a 468-year-long aridity pulse in central Europe at about 116,000 BC,[13] and by 112,000 BC, a glacial period had returned.”

Hippopotamus… in the Thames??

Trees on the southern edge of Baffin Island??

A 468-year long aridity event?

Fuck. Buckle up, this shit could get very very interesting. Turns out ecological recessions have winners and losers too, at this point we kind of have to wait and see which species have advantageous adaptations for the approaching climate conditions.

Fifty years from now we could be faced with replacing entire ecosystems for depopulated areas that have died out and burned off because the environment hasn’t been able to keep up with the pace of change. It’s possible that one of the best things we could do for the Amazon at this point is start propagating its dirt, its microbes, and its unique fauna & flora to other areas of the globe. It’s a genetic backup hard drive, we should use it as such