prev next front |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17 |18 |19 |20 |21 |review

The CO2 concentration has increased by a third since 1750, predominantly due to the burning of fossil fuel, but also because of deforestation.  What is critical to absorb from this picture is not just the recent jump, but the stability of the atmospheric CO2 content over the past several hundreds of thousands of years.  The troughs, which correspond to ice ages, are at about 180 ppm and the peaks, when the Earth was warmest, is in the range of 280 ppm.   We are now in the range of 380 ppm, and depending on whether you assume the best case scenario, the worst case or the most probable, we will still experience a substantial increase in atmospheric CO2, which will make the world warmer.