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?
We don’t need more evidence for killing off the human population, we just need to get the left over its anxiety regarding starting in the Middle East.
Wait, I’m getting my talking points confused….
We need more of these http://tinyurl.com/s6fh9 true Electric – gas hybrid and less of gas or gas-electric cars… Spending billions on those technologies instead of war, we help a lot to reduce the CO2 level… Will also solve the problem related to our dependencies on oil. We now need politician to support those views instead of the war mongers we have now.
Electric ISNT a solution as long as we use COAL fireing..
Until we can go ALL hydro(which kills fish), Solar is expencive and isnt good on cloudy days, Wind is nice but the birds cant land on it, sea force/bouys is killer but the Rich dont want it obscurring there views and the fish may not like it, Kelp would…
But in the end,
it comes down to CORPS they distribute the power, and DONT MAKE IT, but still want their 20% on top.
Do I have to mention that battery acids are MORE dangerous then anything out there?? and getting rid of the Used up ones, ISNT easy on us or the environment.
So, what do we have left?? DIE and let the trees grow.
Wow you mean they did not drive cars 4000 years ago? More CO2, this is so shocking. Now, can anyone prove that the increase is “significant”. That seems more the point. The total amount of CO2 as a ratio is extremely small.
Ok, I’ll concede the point that CO2 concentrations have increased 35% over the last two hundred years. (I’m taking some risk here, given how poorly paleoclimatologists have performed peer review. See Ad hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hocky Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction, Wegman et al. ) But I am unconvinced that CO2 concentrations causes global warming. Even less convinced that global warming is man-caused.
To paraphrase the esteemed statistician, Dr. Edward Wegman, “Statisticians do not pretend to be paleoclimatologists, but paleoclimatologists pretend to be statisticians.”
There they go again. Those scientists and their scientific ways… Everyone knows that God put the ice there at creation to challange the faithful.
Totally agree with Syngensmyth. Now that we’ve established that there’s more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, can we establish what bad things this means (other than better crop harvests)? Please don’t knee-jerk and say “global warming.”
I’ve seen the CO2 levels mapped across global warming data, but the correlation seems to fall apart in the 1950s-60s when CO2 levels started going up and global temperatures fell. How many people remember being told in the 70s that we were headed toward a man-made ice age? I remember having nightmares about it as a kid. Now it’s global warming..
There is one correlation that nobody seems to discuss, the .97 correlation of global warming with solar activity. Could it be that the activity of the sun (the source of all the warming on planet earth) might actually impact how warm or cold the earth is?
Cripes — can’t the usual couple of dittoheads come up with better than parochial apocrypha? Aren’t there any cop-out sources out there referencing someone better than a mathematician who’s hot for sun spots or an oil company flack?
Sheesh, guys. You haven’t even blamed Al Gore, yet — this morning.
Could it be — could it be — could it be — SATAN?
Aside from the fact that many scientists concede that CO2’s role is relatively small (water vapor is the cause of well over 80% of the greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere)… what’s the answer here guys?
I see the bleeding hearts on this blog make gleeful posts like these and I’ve come to the conclusion that they are nothing more than an attempt to zing people, tweak their nose and stir the pot, all to no real end.
OK, what’s the answer? Pointing out the problem is getting REALLY old. And by the way… let’s have an answer that will work please, not some utopian fantasy that ignores human nature.
Or perhaps we need to give up and realize that people are inherently selfish and will NOT do anything to make things better. That is assuming that things CAN be made better. It’s also assuming that, as a race, we are so potent as to affect global climate changes… an arrogance I’ve yet to accept. I prefer to keep an open mind that larger trends COULD be at work that today’s arrogant scientists can’t or won’t recognize.
But I digress… how much is conserving electricity in your home worth when your local mega mart is wasting JIGA watts of electricity in their lighting department showcasing all their pretty chandeliers. That’s just one example of silly waste that I look at and wonder why I am “conserving.” Yeah, yeah… every little bit helps… it helps the people who do NOT conserve!
I’m SUBSIDISING their waste! Get with the reality of the situation people. Those who drive hybrids are SUBSIDIZING those who drive Hummers by making the demand and thus cost of gas LESS than it perhaps should be.
Where’s the point in doing some small thing that means nothing? Is the point to make ourselves feel better?
You like all that sand in your ears James?
Hey, god, can’t you contribute anything more than name calling? How about giving us any clue that your IQ is higher than 90?
>>OK, what’s the answer? Pointing out the problem
>>is getting REALLY old.
Well, apparently not old enough.
The right-wing nut jobs, oil company flacks, and mathemeticians hot for sun spots still deny that there’s a problem. And as long as the right-wing nut jobs control the country and the oil company flacks control our energy policy (say, did Dick Cheney ever ‘fess up about his Secret Energy Cabal?), it’s going to have to be pointed out over and over and over again.
11.
HAHA! ZING!
LOL!
I’m tellin ya, nookyuler power is the answer. Store the waste in the old coal mines, or put it back in the uranium mines. 15 miles down at the bottom of an ocean trench, maybe.
How come when talking about solutions, people who think this is the biggest problem facing mankind always say things like conservation, hybrids, and solar power? Why don’t they call for nuclear power? Wouldn’t that solve the problem in about 2 years at a lower cost?
Could it be that all these “environmentalists” don’t really consider global warming to be that serious a problem?
As far as the CO2 correlations, there is about a 700 year time lag between warming and CO2 rises, suggesting that CO2 increases in response to global warming and not the other way around. That direction of causation is a scientific fact which you can see for yourself with some baking soda in water on a stove.
>>there is about a 700 year time lag between warming and CO2 rises
Where on earth did you get that figure? (Little birdies are telling me it’s from some right-wing oil-industry-sponsored revisionist source).
Every legitimate scientist who addresses this problem agrees that increasing CO2 levels lead to increases in the earth’s surface temperature.
Every legitimate political commentator agrees that liberals who make comments that start out “Every legitimate scientist..” are full of shit.
There can be differences of opinion in science. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but the cloak of your ideology doesn’t make it right.
#17, Nuclear waste is not biodegradable. This is a big problem. Nevertheless, I do concede that nuclear energy could act as a short term solution, just until we are able to use the really clean solutions. The problem is that once we’re comfortable using nuclear power, we will loose much of the motivation for looking for clean power sources, until it is too late once again.
By the way, if I rent an aeroplane and do a 4 hour flight, it will cost me about 400€. If I rent a sailplane and manage to do a 4 hour flight it will cost me about 180€, including towing costs… Sailplanes fly using thermal currents which are hot air columns that rise faster than the sailplane’s rate of descent. These hot air columns form after the soil has been heated by the sun, so sailplanes are actually sollar powered. Ok, this is academic, but it is a way of demonstrating how solar energy can be much cheaper than oil.
>>there is about a 700 year time lag between warming and CO2 rises
Where on earth did you get that figure? (Little birdies are telling me it’s from some right-wing oil-industry-sponsored revisionist source).
More and more it seems facts are right-wing. Just look at what happened to Larry Summers. Take a look at the Vostok record. Try making the graph yourself, and you should see the time lag. Or you could just search for time lag.
I’m consistently impressed that followers of Our Dear Leader and his divinely inspired policies never let facts, evidence, and truth stand in the way of their arguments.
From Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990)
Not a single paper in a large sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the National Academy of Sciences, that “most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
“To be sure, there are a handful of scientists, including MIT professor Richard Lindzen…who disagree with the rest of the scientific community. There are always some individuals who simply refuse to accept new ideas and evidence. This is especially true when the new evidence strikes at their core beliefs and values.
Do tell us James Hill, ABCD, Bill Franklin, etc. where your PhD’s in one of the sciences are from. We’ll all be much more inclined to consider the validity of wacko right wing nuttery if you were to occasionally say something that’s actually true or, God forbid, use a fact from a reputable source.
Link to the article:
[editor: pls use tinyurl]
If I understand this:
FACT:: There is reasonably high correlation across 800,000-years between polar atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures.
FACT:: There are mathematical/climate models that show, increased atmospheric (polar?) CO2 causes increased global temperatures.
FACT:: Isotropic analysis of the polar CO2 shows the carbon is industrial source.
If the study/science is 1/10 as rigorous as the current administration is with its facts then this global warming is true. And, It’s easy to understand!
Global warming really is an inconvenient truth for the lame brain administration and their jackass lackeys out there.
>>More and more it seems facts are right-wing.
No, the facts are neutral. Distortion of them is right-wing. I’m still waiting to hear where you got the 700 years figure. And the little birdies are tweeting louder and louder that it was from some right-wing oil-industry-sponsored revisionist source.
Scientists rarely confuse hypothesis with opinion. Ideologues and politicians usually do.
Science progresses by verifying facts and processes. Doesn’t have a damned thing to do with opinion. That’s why “peer-reviewed” — for example — doesn’t mean you have mathematicians [especially those heavily invested in oil] counting for a whole hell-of-a-lot about climate.
Transactional analysis is a useful skill. That makes you a technician, not a theoretician.
Here’s a thought:
Maybe global warming is happening, maybe not…
However, shouldn’t we error on the side of caution?
Analogy: you’re at a train crossing, and you hear a train coming. You may not see it, but you hear its horn blowing. Do you: A) Stop, pause, take a look and make sure the train isn’t going to hit you… or B) Blindly rush ahead, thinking it’s not going to hit you.
Maybe the train won’t hit you. My uncle, a railroad employee, has been to the collision scenes where dozens of people thought the train wouldn’t hit them. Some experts would say, “Go for it!” — others might say, stop, look, and listen.
Your call.
STILL,
WE ALL die and make more trees…
I already referred you to the Vostok records of temperatures and CO2. You could take a look at this study if you like. Or how about you just do a Google search. Again, you are calling facts right-wing.
I like the idea that Satan did it….
EXCUSES….
WE make this world into what WE WANT…
We can make it Heaven on earth, or HELL…
It has little to do with GOD or the devils…
Who cares anymore? Is this planet really going to be all that inhabitable for very much longer anyway with all the other things we’re doing to it? Like Stephen Colbert says, the sooner Armageddon, the sooner the rapture. ; )