For the past two years, Shell oil company has sponsored monthly talks at the Geological Society of London. These are open to the public and deal with many topics of current interest. Past titles have included:
"Icelandic volcanoes, interactions between volcanoes, ice and atmosphere"
"Challenged by carbon: geologists, the oil industry and climate change"
"A mole in London: tunnelling beneath the city for major transport and infrastructure projects"
"The Anthropocene: living in a new age"
"Returning carbon to nature: the geology of carbon capture and storage"
Wednesday's talk was on "Paleogene climate conundrums", looking at the a previous instance of rapid climate warming at the Paleocene/Eocene (PE) boundary. Dubbed the PETM (thermal maximum), the climate at that time (between 50-52 million years ago) resulted in a temperature rise of 5°C at high latitudes due to injection of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Included in the lecture were fossils of a 15-metre long snake that weighed 3 tons, which would have needed a minimum of 30°C climate to grow that large. The PETM is being studied for comparison with our current global warming, with the conclusion that the rate of carbon dioxide addition to the atmosphere is much faster today, disallowing time for the ocean to act as a buffer by absorbing extra carbon. Thus, it was implied that whatever happened then will happen faster and perhaps more extremely now.
Talks for the rest of this calendar year are:
19 October "Earth's atmosphere trapped in ice: 800,000 years of climate change"
16 November "New hydrocarbon development challenges and the impact on geoscience research"
14 December "Mineral deposits and their global strategic supply"
Reserve a seat by contacting The Geological Society
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG
Tel +44 (0)20-7434-9944
Email registration@geolsoc.org.uk
More information about The Geological Society is available at:
www.geolsoc.org.uk/shelllondonlectures11
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