Originally Posted by
73qanda
It is misleading to me the way any CO2 graphic displayed in the media only ever goes back far enough to make the current level of around 430 look disastrous compared to the oscillations around the 200 mark for the last 800,000years or so.
It is much more informative if the graph goes back enough to see that CO2 levels have been significantly higher than they are today in the earths history. There is clearly a desire to create alarm rather than present the facts as they are, and that in turn creates mistrust.
I think you will find that periods with significantly higher or lower CO2 levels have featured vastly different flora and fauna. The changes from one to the other are usually associated with mass extinction of species. Considering a timeframe longer than the history of homo sapiens does not really seem outrageous to me.