How much has the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased?
Charles David Keeling’s work on the mountain of Mauna Loa in Hawaii established (see graph) that since 1957 the CO2 level has risen exponentially and that the industrial CO2 diffuses throughout the entire atmosphere in about 18 months. Samples from the Vostock Ice in the Antarctic have extended the Keeling curve backwards in time, showing that CO2 has risen one third since the industrial revolution, and it is higher than at any time for the past 450,000 years.
