BBC is reporting on a new survey of ice cores.  In fact, these are results from a “core [that] is the longest, deepest ice column yet extracted.”  The article explains (emphasis from original):

Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms.

The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.

[…]

“My point would be that there’s nothing in the ice core that gives us any cause for comfort,” said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

“There’s nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous,” he told BBC News.

While there is as yet no definitive proof of greenhouse gasses being the main catalyst of climate change, results from the core provide a staggering glimpse of significant correlation.

Earlier results from the Epica core were published in 2004 and 2005, detailing the events back to 440,000 years and 650,000 years respectively. Scientists have now gone the full way through the column, back another 150,000 years.

The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall in step.

“Ice cores reveal the Earth’s natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range,” explained Dr Wolff.

The “scary thing”, he added, was the rate of change now occurring in CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years.

“The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in the situation where we don’t have an analogue in our records,” he said.

I think it’s time to set aside whatever doubt exists regarding links between human activity and climate change.  We still are not the only variable in the equation, and we certainly can not claim to be the only stimuli prodding changes across the globe, but we now have absolutely more than enough evidence to indicate our emissions are negatively impacting the weather and Earth’s ability to recover.

The article goes on to raise concerns about how so much carbon dioxide could overwhelm the natural systems that normally clean it out of the air.  The picture is bleak indeed.  It’s long past time to take action.