Greenhouse Gas at Highest Level in 650,000 Years

Telegraph | News

This news story is flying all over right now, but under different titles. The New York Times is running with Rise in Gases Unmatched by a History in Ancient Ice. The LA Times? Antarctic Ice Shows Long Period of Lower Greenhouse Gas Levels. Both of these are blunting the Telegraph's title, which, judging from Google News, is the title going out on the wire story.

Along with this is the story Oceans rise at record rate as industrial age gathers momentum from The Times (UK). It's to the point that Fox News has gotten Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to develop a special on global warming, called The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming. It should have been called Maybe There Is Something to All This Global Warming Stuff After All...Heh, Heh. Because the evidence is undeniable, and this story is a button on the whole affair.

Analysis of air bubbles trapped in ice taken from east Antarctica has revealed the stark comparison and the findings will be added to evidence of human interference in the Earth's climate, which has been collected for next week's United Nations' conference on global warming in Montreal, Canada.

The latest sample, or ice core, extends previous records by 210,000 years. It was obtained by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the findings are published in the journal Science today. The scientists, working in severe weather conditions, used a four-inch wide drill bit, in 10ft sections, to bring up ice that was deposited by snows that fell up to 650,000 years ago.

The analysis showed that today's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, at 380 parts per million, is already 27 per cent greater than previous highs, said Prof Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland. "We have added another piece of information showing that the timescales on which humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere are extremely short compared to the natural time cycles of the climate system."

We must examine the results of our industry. If these results are detrimental to our goals and/or our quality of life, we need to find a safer way to conduct our businesses. This is what responsibility means.