We've all heard a lot about CO2 levels and climate change..but how many of us have carefully *looked* at it visually? Let's go back 400,000 years...
The CO2 levels through ice cores show a fairly regular, cyclic, stable, "Range" from 180ppm to 280ppm
A picture is worth a thousand words, so have a look at (the red color part of) this:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
Kind of looks reassuring, doesn't it?
It looks like the right hand side of the graph is about at 280ppm, exactly in tune with that almost sine-wave up and down pattern (about one cycle per 100,000 years) that keeps going back and forth between 180 and 280 ppm.
But take a closer look...at the at right hand extreme side of the graph...see that "Vertical" looking red mark? That's not a typo...that's for real, because, we're at about 380ppm (give or take...370ppm)
That means in the last blink of an eye, the last 200 years, that's 0.05%, one 20th of 1% of that 400,000 years, we have gone up above the TOP OF THE RANGE (above 280ppm) by about the same amount (90-100ppm) that is the difference between the bottom of the range and the top of the range (between 180 and 280ppm)
"I'm not sure how many bullets I have in my gun, and I have one question for you, 'do you feel luck?? Well, do you, PUNK!?' "
We are playing with fire. We are playing Russian roulette.
Anyone who say well, gee, mankind is so small, and the earth is so big we're not making really big differences hasn't looked at CO2 levels (or nitrogen or other things for that matter).
Tomorrow I will send a London Independent article that it is now "likely" that north Europe will be plunged into an ice age by the partial or full shutting down of the Gulf stream (due to climate change disrupting ocean salinity which drives the Gulf Stream, giving UK and the rest of northern Europe the unusually mild weather for its latitude).
Not fun to think about. Want good news? Read the "take action" and help us avert disaster. I also have a new .signature, another another one of the many possibilities that, a sane species would chose *not* to find out whether that's what happens when we "whack" the planet as hard as that graph above shows we have whacked it.. From a physicist, not oceanographer, but still from one of the top handful most brilliant scientists of the 20th century:
**************************************** DON'T MOURN, ACT! WEBSITES FOR ACTION: http://www.greenhousenet.org/ http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp ****************************************