Ken Fortenberry wrote in news:wcDJh.7140
:

I don't know, but if the historical, all-time high before the
industrial age is ~300 ppm and there is now 379 ppm (and growing)
I'd venture a wild guess and say some of it anyway. Maybe one of
these days we can talk the CO2 molecules into wearing little name
tags while we count them so we can tell "natural" from "human". ;-)


I can't find any reviews of the physics underlying the ice core data, but
the idea that we can melt ice and "know" the CO2 history of the planet
grates on me.

Can anyone in the know tell me for certain that there wouldn't be Fickian
diffusion of the gas throughout the core over the course of hundreds of
thousands of years. Even very slow diffusion adds up, and it will smooth
out the bumps in the CO2 record, flattening out highs and lows.

I honestly don't know the answer, but it certainly is one of the things I'd
ask about if I were refereeing. I'd almost guarantee that the
climatologists who wrote the original Nature paper (cited more than 1,200
times!) don't know, either, and neither would the climatologists solicited
for peer review.

--
Scott
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