Hot Earth
My Current Series of Paintings I call ‘Hot Earths’. How Hot Could Earth Get?
Like almost everyone else on the planet, I am aware of living on this earth at a time of great changes in the climate, much of it due to recent human activity. While there is much uncertainty, we know that the earth is getting hotter each year and going to get hotter rapidly. Myself, I live in the tropics. This is the inspiration behind my paintings called ‘Hot Earth, an ongoing series based of predictions of how the earth may change. Earth has gone through cyclic periods of extreme warming more than once. The poles have frozen and thawed and frozen again. if you lived 56 million years ago, you would of been in something called the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, where even the poles reached nearly tropical temperatures. So the Earth's climate does naturally oscillate — over tens of thousands of years.
But to create the rapid warming of the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, it takes more than a change in the tilt of Earth's axis, or the shape of its path around the sun. It takes a massive dose of carbon dioxide, or CO2. In the past that would of come from volcanoes and escaping methane.
To create this runaway greenhouse effect took years, as many as 150,000 years in fact. During the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, considered an extremely rapid case of warming, temperatures took 10,000 to 20,000 years to reach their height.. Today's warming has taken only 150 years. That is the biggest difference between today's climate change and past climatic highs. The concern isn't just "but the planet is warming." The concern for us all, is that we don't know how rapid is too rapid for life to adjust, Will humans be able to adjust fast and well enough ?, will animals be able to adjust, ? we don’t know.
Parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable. The equator would be cooked and barren and palm trees would be as far north as the arctic circle. What about all our agriculture that we have tended and manipulated over thousands of years to suit us, will it survive the heat and other attacks?. Climate change facilitates the spread and establishment of many alien species and creates new opportunities for them to become invasive. climate change reduces the resilience of habitats to biological invasions.
Hi!, I am Stephanie Tihanyi, an artist-painter and illustrator. Welcome to my blog. This is where I write about my work, influences, exhibitions and latest news.
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