This Antarctic coastal melting happens every year and varies from year to year and decade to decade. Hardly alarming information when the proper context is observed.
And again, hardly an alarming number when ice-gas samples, from the Antarctic shelf itself, show that CO2 levels have been high in the past, as high as 950PPM, during the middle of the last ice-age. It was shown to be due to volcanic activity of the time. The Earth's atmosphere recovered. What we have been and are doing to the environment is minor compared to the periodic volatile volcanic activity Earth experiences, which the geologic record shows we are on the leading edge of. Additionally almost all of the nations on Earth are actively participating in reducing pollutants and human impact on the environment. While there is much work still to be done over the next century, great progress has been made.
I'm sure you wouldn't post without a source and your mention of 950ppm intrigued me. But I couldn't find that info. The closest I can find to evidence on long term ice-cores relates to
Antartic Ice Sheet sensitivity, which recorded levels at 500ppm (long before the last ice age). These levels, however, had a significant impact on melting and suggest sensitivty to melting at even lower levels than 500ppm.
Moreover, significant volcanic activity is known to drive global cooling, therefore it would be expected that higher CO2 emissions were present at the onset of such periods. Even if measures were that high, they reflect a transient event (volcanic activity). Transient events do affect the global system but are normally put in check by the very systems form which they come. You say the atmosphere recovered- it did, but after a
very long time. Our lifespan would be consumed many times over by the passage of time required to naturally 'heal' such catastrophic damage.
The current measures (at 400+ppm) are part of a trend of an accelerating increase. Our recent past has seen an increase in CO2 from human influences of burning fossil fuels, after all, creating energy from burning organics does release CO2. Other significant factors, farming and methane etc are also to blame, again, all part of the human influence.
Also, to use volatile natural 'disasters' as some sort of innoculation to minimise the current trend is disingenuous. In fact, an item quoted from Forbes, on studies in volcanic CO2 emissions stated:
even if we include the rare, very large volcanic eruptions, like 1980's Mount St. Helens or 1991's Mount Pinatubo eruption, they only emitted 10 and 50 million tons of CO2 each, respectively. It would take three Mount St. Helens and one Mount Pinatubo eruption every day to equal the amount that humanity is presently emitting.
And if that happened - we'd all be dead anyway.
To add to that, the source article states volcanic CO2 emissions (all forms) contribute to a 1/4 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. Human sources of CO2 are measured at around 29 billion.
