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Global Warming isn’t just happening now?it’s happened in the past, as well. Is there anything we can learn from those times that will help us today?

In New Scientist, Fred Pearce writes, “It was the biggest climate event of the last 10,000 years and caused the most dramatic change in the weather since humans began farming. And it may yet hold important lessons about climate change in the 21st century.”

He’s referring to the fact that ice cores have revealed that 8,000 years ago, a huge glacier in Canada melted, spilling huge amounts of fresh water into the North Atlantic, which shut down the Gulf Stream and cooled parts of the northern hemisphere for more than a hundred years. The same thing is happending to the Gulf Stream today.
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Autumn’s usual red, orange and yellow leaves arrived later than usual this year and in some places, leaves didn’t change color at all. Does this have anything to do with global warming?

In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson reports that delayed fall foliage occurred not only in the US, but also in parts of Europe. The reason could be drought, but it could also be global warming. But if climate change IS the cause, it’s not because of warmer temperatures, it’s because of higher levels of carbon dioxide, since experiments where scientists exposed trees to elevated levels of carbon dioxide showed that they retained their leaves and stayed greener for a longer period of time.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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