A climate scientist says his research indicates growing levels of carbon dioxide are the cause of global temperature increases.
By Jason Koebler April 4, 2012
Scientists aren’t positive why CO2 levels rose during the end of the Ice Age, but they have a few hypotheses. Their best guess is that pent up carbon dioxide at the bottom of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica somehow escaped, but Jeremy Shakun, Ph.D. (NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship Award 2010-2012; lead author of the study, Nature International Journal of Science, published April 4; a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fellow at Harvard and Columbia universities.) says that’s a “big outstanding mystery” in climate science.
Shakun says his study should open the eyes of those who say human carbon emissions don’t contribute to modern climate change.
“Back then, it was natural, but the key thing is—we found that carbon dioxide was driving global warming. The Earth doesn’t care where the carbon dioxide came from—if it caused it back then, it’s going to cause it today,” he says.
“Over the last 7,000 years of the Ice Age, the CO2 levels rose by 100 parts per million. Over the last century, we’ve run up the same amount.
You look at that, and it’s sobering.”