The Inconvenient Skeptic: The Comprehensive Guide to the Earth's Climate

by John Kehr

55 million years ago there was the most recent which is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). In a very short period of time the temperature of the Earth increased rapidly (31). While generally the chart may slightly over-estimate the temperatures 55 million years ago, it is possible that the spike in temperature at that point was much, much larger than the chart can show. The Arctic Ocean exceeded 22 °C (32) in this period. There are many theories as to what happened, but there are problems with all of them. All that is really known is that the Earth had a period of very rapid warming and for about 200,000 years the Earth was much warmer than at any other time in the past 65 million years. It isn't a surprise the some warmists have proposed that it was caused by a rapid increase in methane (33) and CO2. I will not speculate as to what triggered the change, but I bring it up only to point out that the Earth also cooled down almost as rapidly as it warmed up. This is a fine example of the Earth staying in balance. Large changes can quickly take place, but something always balances out those changes. That balancing force will be explained later in the book.