Climate Disruption's New Record: Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point in 15 Million Years

[marmar]

Dahr Jamail | Climate Disruption's New Record: Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point in 15 Million Years

Monday, 29 February 2016 00:00
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report





Recently, a Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker ship took an interesting trip into the Arctic. The ship found no ice to break, despite the fact that it was the dead of winter and barely 800 miles from the North Pole.

Indeed, record-low levels of Arctic sea ice are becoming normal. The ice is disappearing before our very eyes.

Satellite data now shows we are witnessing a very rapid acceleration in global sea level rise. In the last six years, oceans have risen by five millimeters per year, which is a rate not seen since the ending of the last Ice Age - and it is accelerating.

One of the most alarming indicators of ever-accelerating anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) this writer has witnessed since beginning these dispatches is the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide, in early February, reached a level not seen on the planet in the last 15 million years.

Thanks to humans, the earth was (since the 1990s) already experiencing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in a realm not experienced on the planet since the Pliocene epoch, which was the period 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago that saw atmospheric carbon dioxide levels between 350 and 405 parts per million and average global temperatures that ranged between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the climate of the 1880s. .............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35008-climate-disruption-s-new-record-carbon-dioxide-levels-reach-highest-point-in-15-million-years

[heaven05]

1. question

With no human footprint and I'm speaking of, manufacturing emissions, transportation emissions etc, why such high carbon dioxide levels 15 million years ago? Too many extraterrestrial vehicles flying around? Joke.....or not

[rickford66]

2. There was no free oxygen on the Earth

It took many millions of years for plant life to trap the CO2 and produce O2. Look it up.

[heaven05]

3. thank you

I had planned on looking for the answer soon. Just another one added to the list to google about human beings and our impending DEMISE if we don't radically change how we coexist with our living organism, THIS PLANET.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Actually atmospheric CO₂ levels were much higher in the very distant past

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#Drivers_of_ancient-Earth_carbon_dioxide_concentration


(Remember, present day is on the left, as you move to the right, you go back in time.)



However, for the past half million years or so, CO₂ levels have generally remained between 180 and 300 ppm.

(Remember, present day is on the right, as you move to the left, you go back in time.)

[pscot]

4. No oxygen 15 million years ago?

Uh uh.

[GliderGuider]

5. There has been free oxygen on Earth for well over two billion years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation, was the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere.[1] Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggest that this major environmental change happened around 2.3 billion years ago (2.3 Ga).[2]

Cyanobacteria, which appeared about 200 million years before the GOE,[4] began producing oxygen by photosynthesis. Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter. The GOE was the point when these oxygen sinks became saturated and could not capture all of the oxygen that was produced by cyanobacterial photosynthesis. After the GOE, the excess free oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere.

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#History_of_the_atmosphere
That entire article is a good basic overview of paleoclimatology.

On timescales of millions of years, the uplift of mountain ranges and subsequently weathering processes of rocks and soils and the subduction of tectonic plates, are an important part of the carbon cycle.[20][21][22] The weathering sequesters CO2, by the reaction of minerals with chemicals (especially silicate weathering with CO2) and thereby removing CO2 from the atmosphere and reducing the radiative forcing. The opposite effect is volcanism, responsible for the natural greenhouse effect, by emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, thus affecting glaciation (Ice Age) cycles. James Hansen suggested that humans emit CO2 10,000 times faster than natural processes have done in the past

[KelleyKramer]

8. Lol !

"Look it up"

Now that's funny!

[NickB79]

6. The planet has been on a gradual decarbonization since the Late Triassic

https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate.htm

150 million years ago, we were looking at 800-1000 ppm of CO2!

Lots of carbon slowly being sequestered by geologic processes and fossil fuel deposition over millions of year.