Nature - Current Rate Of Anthropogenic CO2 Production 14,000 Times Faster Than 600,000-Year Average

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Before humans began burning fossil fuels, there was an eons-long balance between carbon dioxide emissions and Earth's ability to absorb them, but now the planet can't keep up, scientists said on Sunday. The finding, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, relies on ancient Antarctic ice bubbles that contain air samples going back 610,000 years.

Climate scientists for the last 25 years or so have suggested that some kind of natural mechanism regulates our planet's temperature and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those skeptical about human influence on global warming point to this as the cause for recent climate change. This research is likely the first observable evidence for this natural mechanism.

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Zeebe analyzed carbon dioxide that had been captured in Antarctic ice, and by figuring out how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere at various points in time, he and his co-author determined that it waxed and waned along with the world's temperature. "When the carbon dioxide was low, the temperature was low, and we had an ice age," he said. And while Earth's temperature fell during ice ages and rose during so-called interglacial periods between them, the planet's mean temperature has been going slowly down for about 600,000 years.

The average change in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 600,000 years has been just 22 parts per million by volume, Zeebe said, which means that 22 molecules of carbon dioxide were added to, or removed from, every million molecules of air. Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, ushering in the widespread human use of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 100 parts per million. That means human activities are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about 14,000 times as fast as natural processes do, Zeebe said.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080427/sc_nm/climate_warming_dc_1;_ylt=AnaOJsTm9m3mAPuNSiKT4AZrAlMA

[ladjf]

1. Suicide, one molecule at a time.

[GliderGuider]

2. Even compared to catastrophic natural events we're doing very well...

We are emitting CO2 at least ten times faster than the Deccan traps, an enormous flood basalt eruption that is implicated in the K/T extinction.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=129285&mesg_id=129362

[phantom power]

3. Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant!

[wtmusic]

4. The 600,000-year average of anthropogenic CO2 production?

"Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, ushering in the widespread human use of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 100 parts per million. That means human activities are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about 14,000 times as fast as natural processes do, Zeebe said."

What's wrong with this statement?

Zeebe illegitimately uses "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" to deduce that global warming is related to human activity. It is, of course. But that doesn't mean we should hand sloppy conclusions to idiot deniers who will use them to advance their cause.