Carbon Dioxide Might be At Highest Sustained Levels in Fifteen Million Years

February 20, 2010

According to a UCLA press release issued October 8, 2009, a study in the October 8, 2009 edition of Science suggests that the last time that CO2 levels were as high as today — and were at those levels over sustained periods of time — the earth was 5 to 10 degrees warmer Fahrenheit, there was no permanent ice at the Arctic, less ice in the Antarctic, and sea levels were around 75 to 120 feet higher than today,

The authors of the report — let by assistant professor Aradhna Tripati of UCLA’s department of Earth and space sciences and department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, in conjunction with professors from Cambridge and Cal Tech — seem to be speculating/assessing based upon best available information and methodology. Of significance, they have also been able to verify their methodology as empirically sound at least in so far as being able to measure it against otherwise known data.

“We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02 based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,” Tripati said. “This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.

“We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago,” she said.

Tripati also claims that the findings are more fact than speculation, with a low margin of error, and also notes:

“A slightly shocking finding,” Tripati said, “is that the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different.”

According to Tripati, the Arctic ice cap formed around 14 million years ago, and has been here ever since. CO2 levels, which the authors found to be correlated with temperatures going back 20 million years ( just like earlier ice core studies that found a correlation between average temperature and CO2 levels going back 800,000 years), are higher than they have been going back 14 million years. And are rising, every year.

Tags: 20 million years, arctic ice cap, CO2 levels, Science, Tripati, UCLA

Climate Change | admin February 20, 2010

9 Comments to “Carbon Dioxide Might be At Highest Sustained Levels in Fifteen Million Years”

By toaster oven reviews, March 17, 2010 @ 7:00 am

neat fantastic blog yea nice job our review website will soon be adding reviews on websites and add them to our blogs as the top best 10 websites to visit we also do reviews on Consumer Reports reviews all types of reviews
By Ruth McDevitt, March 19, 2010 @ 11:02 pm

Hi, I can’t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you Help me, please It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place
By playfish, March 20, 2010 @ 11:33 pm

although I dedicate the vast majority of of my daytime hours on the internet actively playing online games like facebook poker or restaurant city, I still like to spend some free time to peruse a few information sites occasionally and I am contented to report this newest write-up is in actual fact fairly good quality and radically more desirable than half the various worthless junk I read today , anyhow i’m going to play a couple of rounds of zynga poker
By Sharri Glumac, March 21, 2010 @ 1:12 pm

Great post, I bet a lot of work and research went into this article.
By facebook poker dude, April 4, 2010 @ 11:13 pm

i probably would not have suspected this had been remarkable quite a few years back nevertheless it’s surprising exactly how age changes the means by which you perceive unsimilar ideas, many thanks for the piece of writing it happens to be great to browse through some thing intelligent now and then instead of the normal trash mascarading as blogs and forums on the internet, i’m going to have fun with a smattering of rounds of facebook poker, adios for now
By kristen stewart, April 8, 2010 @ 7:20 am

howdy excellent little blog you have right here :) I work with the same exact web theme on my own but for whatever weird reasons it seems to load more rapidly on your site despite the fact that your own consists of a good deal more content. Are you operating any specific plugins or widgets that will quicken it up? If you could reveal the programs so I can use these in my own site so twilight eclipse followers could watch twilight eclipse online trailers and films easier I would always be thankful – cheers in advance :)