CO2 levels rising rapidly

There's news today about global warming, and it isn't good news. Ice core samples from Antartica show that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased way beyond levels normal in the past 800,000 years, and are growing rapidly as we speak:

Air samples from the world's oldest ice core confirm that human activity has dramatically increased levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere.

Bubbles of air in the 800,000-year-old ice, drilled in the Antarctic, show levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) changing with the climate. But the present levels are out of the previous range.

On Monday, Eric Wolff, leader of the science team for the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, said: "It is from air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35% in the last 200 years."

…"The most scary thing is that carbon dioxide today is not just out of the range of what happened in the last 650,000 years but already 100% out of the range."

Carbon dioxide was at levels of 280 ppmv from 1000 CE until 1800 CE, before accelerating towards its present concentration [of 380 ppmv].

If you haven't seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, you owe it to yourself to do so. Then, take some steps to reduce your own use of greenhouse gases. And, by the way, don't count on using ethanol-gasoline blends to make a contribution. I'm still planning a piece on that, but I'll tell you now, the greenhouse gas benefits of ethanol, if any, are paltry.