The Earth may suffer irreversible damage that could last tens of thousands of years because of the rate humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere.In a new study in\u00a0Nature Climate Change, researchers at\u00a0Oregon State University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborating institutions found that the longer-term impacts of climate change go well past the 21st\u00a0century.\u201cMuch of the carbon we are putting in the air from burning fossil fuels will stay there for thousands of years \u2014 and some of it will be there for more than 100,000 years,\u201d said Peter Clark, an Oregon State University paleoclimatologist and lead author on the article. \u201cPeople need to understand that the effects of climate change on the planet won\u2019t go away, at least not for thousands of generations.\u201dLLNL\u2019s Benjamin Santer said the focus on climate change at the end of the 21st century needs to be shifted toward a much longer-term perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1997060","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n