back into the air that has been sequestered for tens—in most cases
hundreds—of millions of years. In the process, we are running geologic
history not only in reverse but at warp speed.
“It is the rate of CO 2 release that makes the current great experiment
so geologically unusual, and quite probably unprecedented in earth
history,” Lee Kump, a geologist at Penn State, and Andy Ridgwell, a
climate modeler from the University of Bristol, observed in a special issue
of the journal Oceanography devoted to acidification. Continuing along this
path for much longer, the pair continued, “is likely to leave a legacy of the
Anthropocene as one of the most notable, if not cataclysmic events in the
history of our planet.”