Greenhouse shmeenhouse - we can deal with it

About 180 million years ago, the BBC for February 2 reports, there was a sudden episode of severe global warming, in which average temperatures shot up by about 5 degrees Celsius.

The cause is thought to have been a sudden release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed. Methane is itself a greenhouse gas but it is short-lived.

However, it is easily oxidised to carbon dioxide (CO2) which lingers in the atmosphere for long periods of time.

Plants and animals were affected by the sudden rise in atmospheric CO2. Scientists have found evidence of a marine mass extinction during this period that killed off 84% of bivalve shellfish.

The good news, of course, is that this happened 180 million years ago.

The bad news is that

there are still vast reserves of carbon - possibly as much as 14,000 gigatons - locked up as methane ice in ocean sediments.

If global temperatures reach a critical point, it is possible they might suddenly be released into the atmosphere causing a similar event to the one that occurred during the Jurassic.

The good news is that in the earlier case, the Earth adjusted and returned to a normal temperature and life flourished.

The bad news is it took 150,000 years, rather too long for our purposes.