Monday, June 20, 2011

What Will Happen If It's All Burned

What will happen if all of the fossilized carbon remaining buried in the ground gets burned? Do atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane return to the levels that they were before the carbon got sequestered by minute organisms? Will the climate stabilize at a much hotter level? Do we know what the climate was like in (pre-Cambrian?) times? Will inland seas re-develop? How much coastline will be inundated worldwide? Will every coastal city be gone? Will Chicago become the U.S. Capitol, because Boston, NYC, D.C., Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans, L.A., San Francisco and Seattle, among many others, will be gone?