Absent serious action on climate change, we’ll continue careening toward a climatic cliff. And modern civilization will be hard-pressed to survive the plunge.

This is the essential take-away from new research probing Earth’s climatic past to yield insights into our future. The research finds that if our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue unabated, Earth’s climate will warm by the year 2150 to levels not seen since the largely ice-free Eocene Epoch about 50 mil