Dude, It's Wicked Warm, Guy

WOW.

Shafts of ancient ice pulled from Antarctica's frozen depths show that for at least 650,000 years three important heat-trapping greenhouse gases never reached recent atmospheric levels caused by human activities, scientists are reporting today.

The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
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Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate.

Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory.

The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years.

"They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have," said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. "We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time."

James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, not involved with the study, said that although the ice-age evidence showed that levels of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases rose and fell in response to warming and cooling, the gases could clearly take the lead as well.

"CO2 and climate are like two people handcuffed to each other," he said. "Where one goes, the other must follow. Leadership may change, or they may march in step, but they are never far from each other. Our current CO2 levels appear to be far out of balance with climate when viewed through these results, reinforcing the idea that we have significant modern warming to go."

The new data from the ice cores also provides the first detailed portrait of conditions during ice-age cycles that occurred more than 400,000 years ago - a point in Earth's two-million-year history of cold periods and warm intervals after which some unknown influence lengthened ice ages and shortened and amplified the warm periods.

Both before and after that transition, the ice record shows, there was always a tight relationship between amounts of the greenhouse gases and air temperature.

I still have friends that insist that global warming is not real, and that we are not the cause of the Earth's rise in temperature. The scientific consensus is overwhelming but the energy industry-funded "science" is what is still getting out there muddiing the water. I hope this article clears up any doubt. Remember, the Pentagon sees global warming as more of a threat to our national security than terrorism. We started a war against terrorism, but for some reason still drive Hummers in citys with no mountains. Props to Laurie David for her open letter to scumbag Bill Ford, her incredible work on this issue and for highlighing the Times article.