Foretelling a major meltdown( BINGHAMTON NY -- By discovering the ...)

BINGHAMTON, NY -- By discovering the meaning of a rare mineral that can be used to track ancient climates, Binghamton University geologist Tim Lowenstein is helping climatologists and others better understand what we're probably in for over the next century or two as global warming begins to crank up the heat and, ultimately, to change life as we know it.

"I think the earth will be a very different place in the next hundred years or so, and that many species will adapt to it and many won't," Lowenstein said. "Humans are supremely good at adapting. But, rich countries will adapt much better than poor countries and other species will have far more trouble coping with environmental change. There are going to be challenges we can't even imagine right now."

Lowenstein's concerns are rooted not in speculation about unprecedented future happenings, but in the scientific discovery and analysis of mineral samples formed during the Eocene Epoch, the warmest period on earth in the last 65 million years.

What Lowenstein and his colleague Robert Demicco at Binghamton University have discovered is that nahcolite, a rare, yellowish-green or brown carbonate mineral, only forms on earth under environmental conditions marked by very high atmospheric CO2 levels. That establishes it as both a marker and a benchmark that can be used by scientists as they consider the likely climatic implications of ever-increasing CO2 levels in our atmosphere today. More specifically, nahcolite suggests that Eocene warming was concurrent with atmospheric CO2 levels of at least 1,125 parts per million (ppm), which is 3 times the current levels of 380 ppm, but not all that much higher than we can expect on earth in the next 100 years or so given generally accepted scientific projections based on fossil-fuel consumption.

Because CO2 is a forcing factor for climate change, increases in its levels can be directly tied to global warming. A greenhouse gas, CO2 absor
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