CO2 Levels Highest In 650,000 Years, Antarctic Ice Cores Show - CSM

Drilling deep into Antarctic ice, scientists have extended Earth's climate history by another 210,000 years. The new results, they say, drive home two key points:

• Today's atmosphere holds concentrations of carbon dioxide significantly higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.

• The rise and fall in temperatures track the rise and fall in carbon-dioxide levels as tightly during this additional period as they have over the past 440,000 years.

The results add "another piece of information showing that the time scales on which humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere are extremely short compared to the natural time cycles of the climate system," notes Thomas Stocker, a researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland and a member of the research team reporting the results.

For ice-core scientist Edward Brook, the results are likely to generate the next icon for long-term climate change. The most telling result, he adds, is the relationship between long-term CO2 trends and long-term temperature trends. Dr. Brook, with Oregon State University in Corvallis, explains that in these latest results, the warm periods between glacial deep freezes are cooler than those over the past 440,000 years.

Yet the virtual lockstep pattern as temperatures and CO2 levels rise and fall, seen in previous ice cores, holds even for these more-modest swings in global climate. "It's really striking. The link between temperatures and greenhouse gases is tight," he says.

EDIT

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p25s01-usgn.html

We're entering a period of climate conditions unknown to our species. The modern form of homo sapiens appeared just 100,000 years ago, and we diverged from Neanderthals some 500,000 years ago.

Think about it.

So Nature must fight back and kill us.

As species go, we're incredibly destructive to the ecosystem. And although some pockets of humans have managed to live in balance, more often it's due to lack of resources rather than an inherent (ie, genetic) predisposition to conserve. Given the opportunity, we exploit our resources to the maximum, regardless of the consequences.

On a purely objective level, divorced from my personal desire to survive and a subjective partiality for my species, I'd say that our extermination would be a bonus for the planet. We're the top predator on the food chain, and our removal would be beneficial rather than not.

Sad epitaph for a species. I think only dogs would miss us.

Our demise as a species (the way we're behaving) is most probably necesary for the sake of life itself on this place. I saw that when I first came to study these (environmental) sciences back in the early seventies and I've seen no reason to modify my conclusion drawn since then.

In fact, for that reason I decided as a very young man to produce no children of my own, and I eventually found a woman I could choose to share my short life for (amongst many other reasons, of course) sharing that view.

Rather, I care not just for my own but for all sentient and/or still-evolving life.

I suspect that, more than any other species, semi-consciously (or possibly more than that) speaking, domestic cats would possibly remember and regret our eventual demise for rather longer than would dogs.

That's exactly how serious it is, folks: Extremely radical behaviour change or... very soon, oblivion.

ed: What's more, I think this subject requires recommending, so I for one will do it.

But some extremely virulent disease will probably at first cull us, sharply, but not totally, before the end.

... and, meanwhile, of course there is plenty of life elsewhere in this enormous universe...

Although I have to confess that my decision to remain childless was not influenced by my ecological beliefs, which came much later in my life.

Rather, I believe it's my lack of strong maternal instinct and my generally luke-warm feelings for humans that has enabled me to see more clearly. Without strong partisan feelings for children, family and our species in general distorting my perspective, it's difficult to excuse our explosive population growth and destruction of the ecosphere.

I just can't subscribe to this "holier than all other life" attitude that excuses our excesses. In fact, I've been soundly berated on DU for referring to humans as "vermin", which I meant in a purely descriptive term. We define rats as vermin because of their destructive behavior and overzealous reproduction. How are we any different?

As for who will miss us if we ever become extinct, perhaps you're right about cats. Dogs are pack animals and will always find other dogs with which to form families. Cats, on the other hand, exchanged a chunk of their native intelligence for a quasi-domestic relationship with humans. If we disappear, they will have received the short end of that bargain with the devil.

It's very late here in Europe.

It's been too late since a while back, and I've been drinking Spanish wine, again.


Almost last word tonight: Cats, though, in a classically Faustian as-it-were pact, may also have learned something from we (monkey) devils? As we have, of course, from them.

Last word: My opinion: Either we accept total responsbility for most ecosystems now and become extremely technically effective and at the same time socially unselfish and altruistic, or we're finished.

I fear (unless some very great techno-spiritual leader arises) we're finished.

(And I'm not sue I like the sound of that great leader). So, Good night.

Mankind is the most successful large-bodied species ever in terms of total population. We broke the "natural" limits for animal populations by overcoming some challenges. For example, we learned agriculture and husbandry to enlarge our food supply beyond a natural environment.

In the recent past, we faced down an immediate threat in the cold war - nuclear weapons - to our credit. A nuclear-related catastrophe was a real possibility when I was young.

Global warming, though, is much less immediate and much more insidious. It will take a 100 years before the consequences really kick in (Heat waves in Europe and Katrina are tiny effects of a <1 degree T rise - by the year 2100, our grandkids will see a 3 to 4F T rise), and by then it will be too late to reverse the process. This means we as a species are being tested in a remarkable way - First, do we trust our science? Second, do we make sacrifices on behalf of people not yet born? That requires a sophisticated and intelligent population with selfless motivation. Is mankind "good" enough to survive global warming?

Maybe that's what it comes down to. If we are smart and selfless enough to address GW, we deserve to thrive until the next challenge. If we aren't, we deserve what we get. The unfortunate part is that a large minority might be "good" enough to recognize the problem and be willing to address it, but that is useless unless that minority can convince a majority of world leaders.

We're an upstart species that has been around not even a blink of the cosmic eye, so our "success" is still to be proved over the long term. To my mind, a short-term spike in population numbers is not that proof, as illustrated by the explosive population growth of lemmings just prior to obliterating themselves over a cliff. Sheer numbers is just that -- numbers. Success is more accurately defined by longevity, such as the millions of years that certain species have enjoyed.

I'm also rather skeptical of the much heralded advantage of our high intelligence. If IQ was a reliable survival strategy, I would expect more species to have developed an equivalent level of conceptual and symbolic abilities. Instead, it is a relative rarity in the animal world, which tells me that its survival value is a little over-rated in our estimation.

Given the fact that we're so prone to overmining our resources, I suspect our cleverness is actually a failing. We're a little TOO clever for our own good, and it's going to bite us big time now that we've built a society so highly dependent on complex but fragile technology.

My own idiosyncratic view is that we are a genetic sport, an unlucky combination of genes that has created a fascinating but ultimately unstable species that cannot sustain itself in a finite ecosystem. Like a brightly burning comet, we'll speed to our doom with great fanfare.

Are we clever enough to say: NO!

ed: to impose limits on OURSELVES?

(political thought: maybe such action woulf indeed require a fascist/communist and/or authoritarian-religious regime, given human nature as it is)...

From Overshoot by William Catton.

It's really sad. Even Clinton had problems signing an accord on the environment.

Frustrating. Especially when I live in Seattle and we independently implemented Kyoto with great success. Now, 0% of our energy grid emits greenhouse gas. We did it in 3 years with no loss in revenue.

What the hell is wrong!

I heard about that on the radio this morning. It really showed Seattle in a great light. Way to go!

Namely, lots of hydroelectric power.

Washington state gets 83.5% of its power from hydroelectricity and another 4.3% from nuclear, so Washington was already 88% non-greenhouse gas in 1999 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/washington/fig1.html). Unfortunately, that's about the only state that has numbers like those. My state is 26.5% hydroelectric (and 8% nuke), which is pretty good, but then they build flat states like Texas where hydroelectricity contributes only 0.9% (6% nuke).

Really unfortunately, in no state is solar or wind a significant fraction. That may be partly political, but mostly it's economics. About the only practical way to generate electricity without global warming is nuclear, and there are some states that go a long way towards that, like Vermont (51% nuclear). (All my data is from that eia site.)

So the problem is two-fold: oil-funded politics prevents us from seeing the problem, and anti-nuke fears (and unrealistic magic-energy-solutions) prevent us from solving the problem.