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Article: Atmospheric carbon dioxide greater 1.4 billion years ago.
- Article from:
- Life Science Weekly
- Article date:
- October 6, 2003
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2003 OCT 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Billions of years ago, there was a lot more greenhouse gas than today, and that was a good thing for us, because otherwise the Earth might be an icy ball.
How much greenhouse gas was there in the ancient atmosphere? A 1993 model by Jim Kasting of Pennsylvania State University estimated that carbon dioxide (CO[subscript]2) levels in the Earth's early atmosphere must have been 10 times to as much as 10,000 times today's level, in order to compensate for the young (and fainter) Sun.
Now, a measurement of the fossil record using a new instrument has confirmed a portion of the model. Atmospheric CO[subscript]2 levels ...