Human Existence Is At Risk: Fossil Leaves Indicate The Destiny

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The ultimate aim of human civilization is to invent ways to survive even in the most difficult condition. But a recent discovery on fossil leaves indicates global warming can be a crucial fact for the human civilization. It seems that the coming days will bring an inevitable destiny that can't be avoided.

Most of the times, people discuss carbon dioxide or CO₂ whenever they talk about the climate of the earth. Excessive consumption of fossil fuels increase CO₂ and develops global warming. The surprising fact is this increasing trend was available in the ancient times also.

Sources of the Science magazine unveil the actual fact.  Famous paleoclimatologist, Dana Royer of the Wesleyan University in Middletown, opined that past history is the replica of the present experiment. He even utters that it indicates the upcoming crucial situation of the atmosphere. 

A famous biogeochemist, David Beerling of the University of Sheffield in the UK helped to develop "fossil leaf gas exchange technique". This technique helps to solve the past climate puzzle and measure the CO₂. Fossilized leaves play a major role in it.

It is a known fact that the excessive presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dangerous for human civilization. Even it increases the temperature of the earth.

Recently a meeting of the American Geophysical Union was held in San Francisco. In that meeting Peter Franks, plant physiologist of the University of Sydney in Australia, and his colleagues opined that the level of the CO₂  was 350 ppm at the ending time of the dinosaur age.

But after the dinosaur age, the measured level was about 650ppm. That means it is too high which can easily increase the level of global warming. Now the question is how much ppm or parts per million can the human society bear? What is the aftermath if it exceeds the permitted limit. The truth is a danger is lurking just behind the dark destiny.

In the 1980s a method based on plant stomata revealed the minimum inclusion of CO₂ into the leaf needed for photosynthesis. Now the low number of stomata can't help much, but the collective number of stomata in various species accumulates or emits CO₂ to increase the level.

Peter Franks with his colleagues together tried the "leaf gas exchange technique" to measure the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere. First, they estimate the size and depth of the stomata in a fossil leaf to understand the volume of gas, which could pass in or out of the plant. This fact is published in 2014 in the Geophysical Research Letters.

Frank and his colleagues also measured the organic residue in the fossil to calculate the CO₂ concentration in the leaf. The real fact is it is necessary to unveil the future impact of the increasing level of global warming due to the CO₂ concentration.

From preindustrial period to the current situation even a small amount of effect increases the global warming. Even the gas exchange method indicates a climate sensitivity that is closer to 4°C. It is just an indicator of the increasing trend of the temperature in the atmosphere.

The facts and findings can easily unveil one significant fact that is the surface temperature of earth must increase within next 50 to 100 years. With the increasing temperature existence of human civilization must be on the verge of extinction.