Air from the oldest ice core confirms human activity has increased the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to levels not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, scientists said on Monday.

Bubbles of air in the 800,000-year-old ice, drilled in the Antarctic, show levels of CO2 changing with the climate. But the present levels are out of the previous range.

“It is from air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 percent in the last 200 years,” said Dr Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey and the leader of the science team for the 10-nation European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica.

“Before the last 200 years, which man has been influencing, it was pretty steady,” he added.

The ice core record showed it used to take about 1,000 years for a CO2 increase of 30 ppmv. It has risen by that much in the last 17 years alone.

Though studies like this seem to astound True Believers, the discipline of Ice Geology has been around for a half-century. The 50th Anniversary of the International Geophysical Year starts — next year.

New analytic tools provide understanding their science wasn’t capable of back at the beginning. The question remains — will their conclusions get past the politicians?