By looking at old samples of ice, scientists have determined...

By looking at old samples of ice, scientists have determined that
pre industrial CO2 levels were about 280ppm.

By 1958 it had risen to 315ppm.

Early this decade the levels were 315ppm and rising by .25% per annum.

The forecasts for the end of this century are in the order of 560ppm.

Hands up the ostriches in the room who believe these figures are
inconsequential - in respect of climate change.

To brighten up the rest of your weekend allow me to paraphrase
a little more about human environmental behaviour from Bill Bryson's book
'A Short History of Nearly Everything'.

Human aquaintance with the dodo, from beginning to end lasted around 70 years.

In the US, thirty genera of large animals disappeared soon after the arrival
of modern humans - between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

The rate of extinctions throughout biological history has been estimated at
an average of one species every four years. Human caused extinction may now
be running at 120,000 times that level.

And here's a cute story to tell the kids.

"In 1894, when a lighthouse was built on a lonely rock called Stephens
Island in the tempestuous strait between the North and South Islands of
New Zealand, the lighthouse keeper's cat kept bringing him strange little
birds that it had caught. The keeper dutifully sent some specimens to the
museum in Wellington. There a curator grew very excited because the bird
was a relic species of flightless wrens - the only example of a flightless
perching bird ever found anywhere. He set off at once for the island, but by
the time he got there the cat had killed them all. Twelve stuffed museum
species of the Stephens Island flightless wren are all that now exist".


Bottom line - humans don't seem to be the best custodians of any living things, let alone climate.

Or else I could be completely wrong, and it's all the fault of those
bloody cats.