Of course clathrates could well be a second domino and top it off.
Then again, can you give me (are you aware of) any comparisons between the immediate pre-cataclysm climatic conditions before the 55 mio BP and Permian events and those today? (At least modellists seem to say we are still far from the tipping point today.)
But back to the article quoted: do you think that they are over-interpreting the scale of what they observed? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Models, don't mention models to me... *snort *
In short, that's a diary. And I really shouldn't make any promises, too much promises left unfulfilled with respect to diaries this year... I'd say that the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary is the more interesting for comparisons with the contemporary climate. The problem: even while ocean seds can provide some climate proxies, correlation with modern-day values (and hence temperatures) is tenuous at best. The temperature reconstruction of the past 2000 years is still messy, let alone reconstructions that go back 55 million years.
do you think that they are over-interpreting the scale of what they observed?
Likely. The Independent had it wrong on hurricanes, wrong on sea level rise and they had it spectacularly wrong on the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation. Every time a science report comes out, they seem to take the worst possible scenario and write it up fostering a nice big cuppa Doom. I'm not holding my breath on this one either. I'll wait for the actual science publication.
