A recent BBC article, based on work published in the journal Nature Geoscience recently, has put the current rate of carbon emissions is a historical context.

Based on ocean sediments, a dramatic warming event around 56 million years ago called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) put about four billion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere per year. Today’s figure is around 10 times that number.

The PETM event has been used as a comparison for what might happen to the earth currently (where temperatures rose by about 5 degrees), but it is though now that it may have limited relevance given the difference in scale.

To read the full article, follow the link here BBC News – Rate of carbon emissions put in context