Davidson Field Trip Travel Journal - Week 8 Entry

Five thousand years into the future, global warming had continued.  The result of Increased carbon dioxide persisted despite our best efforts.   We knew that reduced carbon dioxide had led to global cooling and were unable to make an impact.  In Geologic time, the Eocene Epoch thirty four to fifty six million years ago, was the last time the earth experienced tropical conditions across the globe.  In Geologic time, the Pleistocene Epoch was the last time the Earth experienced global cooling.  That was around sixteen thousand years ago and was the trend two million six hundred years until then.  The last global warming lasted twenty two million years.  Fossil records showed mass extinctions for both climate changes.  Although we were only sixteen thousand years into this warming trend, the introduction of humans in the Middle Paleolithic, about two hundred thousand years ago, the damage to our climate has been exponential.  The scale was greater than earlier records and resulted in rising sea levels due to the melting of polar ice caps.  To be positive, our dependence on fossil fuels, to support the growing population, is no longer necessary after the riots when the electrical grid went dark.  The population was reduced to what the land could support.  We now live independently in smaller communities supported by renewable energy and what we can produce locally.  To escape the hotter temperatures, we live at higher elevations.  It was reassuring to see the Earth return to a simpler time.  The balance seems to be in the oceans.   While the increase in global temperatures led to rising sea levels, it also warmed the water.  This led to an increase in plankton that depleted the available oxygen in the water.  That, in turn, resulted in more organic material that could not be recycled without additional carbon dioxide.  It was using more carbon dioxide than the sea could provide.  Our oceans are drawing the carbon dioxide from the air and may be the key to our survival.