Posted on 12/31/2009 6:51:49 PM PST by neverdem
It could take less of the greenhouse gas to reach a particular level of warming.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have been lower in warm eras of the Earth's distant past than once believed, scientists reported this week.
The finding raises concern that carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning may, in the near future, be closer to those associated with ancient hothouse climates.
More immediately, the work brings one line of palaeoclimate evidence — that deduced from ancient soils — into agreement with other techniques for studying past climate.
"It makes a major revision to one of the most popular methods for reconstructing palaeo-CO2," says Dana Royer, a palaeobotanist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, who was not involved in the work. "This increases our confidence that we have a decent understanding of palaeo-CO2 patterns."
Dirty job In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Dan Breecker, a soil chemist from the University of Texas, Austin, and colleagues report studying modern soils from Saskatchewan to New Mexico2, to determine the conditions under which the mineral calcite forms.
Calcite occurs in limestone and can be produced by the action of carbon dioxide in arid soils. Scientists trying to puzzle out ancient climate conditions often use it as an indicator of amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Previous studies had concluded that calcite formation indicates atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as high as 3,000 to 4,000 parts per million. The new study, however, lowers the calcite-formation threshold in soil to about 1,000 parts per million.
--snip--
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising today, and the new finding suggests that climate might be considerably more sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide than previously thought...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide through the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition.
Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming
Dirt can’t possibly be clean.
Actually, during the hothouse eras of prehistory, CO2 levels were often lower than they were during the pre-industrial era, so this news which is made to sound like it demonstrates global warming, actually does the opposite.
Nature was led like a poodle into AGW by Mann and his scamster cohorts, they’re still in deep.
Plant more trees.
It must mean we need cap and trade legislation to control it, and the initial drop is our curbing energy use and our experiments in carbon credits.
As for Venus and Mars, it must mean the data from the probes must be corrected for these abnormalities in temperature. Oh, and it's forbidden for the general public to look at solar data anymore. It might hurt their eyes, and this regulation is for their protection.
Really? I call BS, because today's CO2 is around 0.038% but the Earth's early atmosphere is largely agreed to have been around 10%.
And look how we didn't turn into Venus.
The scaremongers are still shoveling the Manure.
I thought it hasn’t changed in 160 years?
Good point - it is quite possible that there is NO correlation between CO2 levels and atmospheric temperatures!
AGW researcher loads gun, lifts foot high into the atmosphere and fires - OUCH!
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.
Hey! This is probably the last craptastic global warming hoax post for 2009!
Were the Chesapeake, Popigai and Toms River major meteor impact events factored into the Eocene/Oligocen transition data? Time around 35 million years ago.
Well, we do have an experiment going on where we apparently increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and wait to see what happens. 50 to 100 years should provide a good indication. After we correct for the sun and all other drivers, of course.
Math is hard.... eliminate 100% of Man (including what we exhale) and nothing changes.
I am so glad that I have fewer and fewer years left before I leave this existence and move on to the next...
Ignorance may be bliss but it sure is hard to watch.
"We've lied about everything so far...but this time, the models are different so we need less CO2 for a catastrophe!"
F.E.T.E., as The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler would say.
Cheers!
...and Happy New Year.
They will say that warming does produce CO2, but to some extent CO2 also causes warming. Al Gore doesn’t even understand what the so-called “climate scientists” are claiming.
OK, now I have read the second link regarding the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition.
It was definitely immediately subsequent to the major boloid strikes of the 34 to 35 million year ago period. The Chesapeake Meteor and Popigai both left craters 60 miles in diameter, and the Toms River meteor left a crater almost 10 miles in diameter. This was more than enough to cause a nuclear winter type event with the formation of a major Antarctic ice sheet. As to what influence this had on the state of CO2 is not addressed, but since they did not even mention these boloid events in the article it does not make sense to make any major attributions to CO2 and temperature causation.
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