Scientists at College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University have discovered one significant cause of global warming is volcanos. Who'd of thought that spewing 10 million cubic kilometers of magma into the atmosphere would warm things up. Well it did off western British Isles about 55 million years ago raising sea surface temperatures by five degrees Celsius in the tropics and more than six degrees in the Arctic.

The period of intense warming that lasted roughly 220,000 years, well more than human civilisation has been around. Perhaps humans can outlast this current bout of global warming that, pop science at least, thinks we caused ourselves, but it going to be a long wait.

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Picture courtesy of Smithsonian Institute.