Blair's Science Advisor - CO2 Levels Now Highest Since Eocene (55 MYA)

[hatrack]

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than for 55m years, enough to melt all the ice on the planet and submerge cities like London, New York and New Orleans, Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser has warned. Speaking on his return from Moscow, where he has been acting as the prime minister's "unofficial envoy" to persuade the Russians to ratify the Kyoto protocol to fight climate change, Sir David said the most recent science bore out the worst predictions.

An ice core 3km deep from the Antarctic had a record of the climate for 800,000 years and showed the direct relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warm and cold periods for the planet.

Critical in climate records is the quantity of ice at the poles and in glaciers. Records show that at the peak of the ice age 12,000 years ago, the sea was 150 metres below where it is now. "You might think it is not wise, since we are currently melting ice so fast, to have built our big cities on the edge of the sea where it is now obvious they cannot remain.

EDIT

Records of the 3km deep Antarctic ice core showed that during ice ages the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during warm periods reached around 270 ppm, before sinking back down again for another ice age. That pattern had been repeated many times in that period but had now been broken because of the intervention of man. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 360 ppm in the 1990s and now was up to 379 ppm and increasing at the rate of 3 ppm a year - reaching a level not seen for 55m years when there was no ice on the planet because the atmosphere was too warm."

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1260750,00.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. good grief

move along.... no global warming, it's just a "theory"


/sarcasm off


chit :mad:

[Dogmudgeon]

2. 55 or 250?

I recall reading several news clips -- and at least one peer-reviewed paper -- in the last year that stated the level of atmospheric CO₂ is the highest since the Permian extinction event a quarter of a billion years ago.

Can anyone corroborate or elaborate?

--bkl

[glitch]

3. found an interesting article - this is from the end

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/dayearthdied.shtml

Carbon copious

The Greenland rock told a very different story to that Michael Rampino had found in the Alps. Instead of a rapid event of under 10,000 years, the extinction beds Wignall examined lasted 80,000 years and showed three distinctive phases in the plant and animal fossils they contained. The extinction appeared to kill land and marine life selectively at different times. Such a long process contradicted the catastrophic meteorite theory but Wignall couldn't explain what had come close to killing all life on Earth. His best clue was the carbon isotope balance in the rock, which showed an increase in carbon-12 over time. The standard explanation - rotting vegetation - could not have caused such a marked effect. Wignall was curious what this could mean.

An answer came from geologist Gerry Dickens, who knew just how to get large amounts of carbon-12 rapidly, thanks to his work with offshore drilling companies in the USA. He had spent time helping them try to tap reserves of frozen methane hydrate from the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico. He knew methane hydrate is found around many of the world's coasts. Dickens wondered how large a rise in sea temperature was necessary to cause the solid chemical to gasify and ascend to the atmosphere. Experiments suggested a rise of 5°C would be sufficient. And he was amazed to see how much gas came from pieces of solid methane hydrate that were placed in water.
"The south of England would turn into the Sahara Desert"
Michael Benton, University of Bristol

When Paul Wignall learned of Dickens' findings, he used his carbon-12 data to estimate how much methane hydrate would have to be released to affect the isotope balance. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases and he deduced that unlocking frozen methane hydrate would have caused a temperature rise of 4-5°C over time. Not enough to kill off 95% of life on Earth but he realised this was a compounded effect. A rise of about 5°C must already have occurred to prompt the frozen methane to melt. The combined temperature rise of 10°C is generally accepted as a figure able to cause truly mass extinction.

So it seems likely there were two Permian killers. The Siberian Traps did erupt, contributing first to a nuclear winter cooling effect (caused by dust) and and then to global warming (due to greenhouse gases). Over 40,000 years, some land animals gradually died out while life in the seas lived relatively calmly on, as the water temperature gently rose. Then the seas gave up their frozen methane. In just 5,000 years, there was massive loss of species from the world's oceans. In a third and final phase of the extinction, the Permian killer returned to stalk the land for another 35,000 years. By the end of that process, 95% of the Earth's species were extinct.