Global Warming is waving at us as it comes closer

Well, here’s a distinctly chilling revelation. It’s been confirmed that the current levels of atmospheric CO₂ are actually at the highest they’ve been in – get this – 15 million years. As they might say: not good.

Now here's something to give you pause: Humans have pumped so much CO2 into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution that the last time levels were this high (about 387ppm currently) was 15 million years ago -- the miocene epoch, for those with a geologic bent. That's the word from UCLA scientist Aradhna Tripati, whose work has just published in the online edition of Science:

To reach this conclusion, Triptati analyzed the chemistry of air trapped in Antarctic ice going back some 800,000 years; and then applied their technique to study the history of carbon going back 20 million years -- they confirmed a "very close coupling between carbon dioxide levels and climate."

The notion of our air being filled with more noxious gases than in the last fifteen million years (long before the start of the last ice age, which peaked at some 20,000 years ago) is troubling in itself, but you may ask: how does this affect us any more than any other revelations of the sort? Well, put it this way: the last time CO₂ levels were this high (those 15 million years ago), temperatures were an estimated 5-10°F higher, there were no ice caps at the poles (save for some light ice covering on Antarctica and Greenland), and the sea level was approximately 75–120 feet higher than it is today on average. In other words: the world was a strongly different place, and IMO, not one I wish to find myself in anytime soon thanks to climate change.

And before anyone tries to call “correlation-vs.-causation” on these statistics and historical facts, the fact is that climate change can be directly attributed (along with a bunch of other mingling factors) to atmospheric levels of CO₂. It is most certainly not just a coincidence that at every period of climate upheaval in Earth’s history, CO₂ levels were skyrocketing.

Exactly as they are now.

(via The Daily Grail)
Technorati tags: Global Warming · climate change · science