Bumbling About

A very interesting day with two separate talks which linked up nicely. Before the first talk at the library I drove in to town and got a couple of things done at the Post Office before spending an hour at the charity shop. The library talk was about the Deep History Coast which runs round Norfolk from the Wash to the North Norfolk Coast, then down the east coast as far as Suffolk. The speaker has written a book on the subject, which I must get. The talk covered the geology of the coast, what it used to look like (linked to the continent by Doggerland), what formed it, and what has been found such as the sea henges and the oldest human footprints found fossilized at Happisburgh (850,000 to 950,000 years old). I hadn't realised that Norfolk uniquely in the UK has evidence of four distinct human species (Pioneer Man, Heidelberg Man, Neanderthals and modern humans). He also talked about their desire for a museum on the subject, which would be great. 

The second talk was a Lunch Lecture at Cley Visitor Centre on Fossils of the East of England by Matthew Staitis, a PhD student and geoscientist at the UEA. His talk focussed on how the geology of our coast, the fossil record onshore, and analysis of offshore extracted sediment cores, is being used to analyse past climate events so we can predict the future. There are three broad predictions on climate change regarding the rise in temperature according to what action we take to limit CO2 emissions. The Paris agreement was aiming for limiting the rise to 1.5C. They can tell this last happened 100,000-125000 years ago when the local geological record shows that sea levels were 5m higher and Norwich was 0.5-1.5C warmer. The 2nd 'middle of the road' scenario (and we look like we'll exceed 1.5C) last happened 3 million years ago and the fossil record implies the temperature was 3C higher locally. All of the East of England would be under sea with the east coast moving nearer to Cambridge. East Anglia's average rainfall now is 627mm and then it was almost double at 1347mm ('a warmer World is a wetter World'). The 3rd 'extreme' scenario is a temperature over 10C higher, which last happened 53 million years ago. The East coast would now be nearing Birmingham and the fossil record implies the temperature at Norwich was 14C higher. 

He told us that global warming is happening more quickly than the planet can respond to it. He said his PhD is about the biggest sudden spike in temperature we know about and the fossil record we have from that time. However, that worst spike from the past happened 10x more slowly than the change happening today. The positive point is that the three scenarios are predictions of what will happen if we take action to limit the rise to 1.5C; we don't take enough action; and we carry on as we are. There is a lag between our actions increasing CO2 and that having an effect, so we have a little bit of time to change our ways. If it rises above 1.5C and then slows / stops, it still wouldn't return to current levels and temperatures for a very long time - the caveat is that we might find a way to capture carbon and speed up that process. A brilliant, if scary talk which very nicely dovetailed with the talk in the morning.