So, under normal circumstances the Earth is loosing about nine and a half billion kilograms of hydrogen every hundred years.

Is there any data on how much the upper atmosphere nuclear explosions increased this loss?

It also indicates that:
“Recent models indicate that stripping by solar wind accounts for less than 1/3 of total non-thermal loss processes.”

Information from:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/hane.html

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputtering

Sputtering is one of the forms of space weathering, a process that changes the physical and chemical properties of airless bodies, such as asteroids and our moon. It is also one of the possible ways that Mars has lost most of its atmosphere and that Mercury continually replenishes its tenuous surface-bounded exosphere.

I agree with: “as excess heat goes into the atmosphere and oceans, there will be changes in ecosystems and in the earth’s mechanisms for redistributing heat (weather and climate, ocean currents).”

Disagree.with “the earth can only eliminate heat by radiating it as excess thermal infrared radiation into space, or by reflecting sunlight from the cloud tops and the ice caps.”

Since outer space is a vacuum, the fast moving gas particles that exist in the thermosphere, can and do escape the Earth’s gravitational influence. See: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1997/ast09dec97_3/

The escaping gas experiences the Joule expansion effect and the upper atmosphere cools. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_expansion

Eventually the escaping gasses cause the atmospheric density to become significantly lower, allowing more radiation from the sun to impinge on the surface of the planet.

Why would this heating happen now and not before the “atomic age”?
My suspicion is that the information in the following web sites may indicate the beginning of the problem.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/hane.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1964IAUS…18…47O
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion

As I see it, there is as much carbon and oxygen on Earth as there always has been, why is carbon considered a bad guy all of a sudden?

I suspect that these global changes in the environment (including the melting of the ice) is caused by the addition of radionuclides from various sources, spread into the environment they cause heating, among other bad effects..

Applying Le Chatelier to thermodynamics, a body reaches thermal equilbrium with its environment by shedding excess heat, through radiation, conduction and convection. Since outer space is a vacuum, the earth can only eliminate heat by radiating it as excess thermal infrared radiation into space, or by reflecting sunlight from the cloud tops and the ice caps. The radiative energy emitted by the earth must eventually exactly equal, on the average, to that being received from the sun (geological or man-made sources of energy are insignificant, sorry Johannes). Otherwise, the earth would not be in thermal equilibrium, i.e., it would be heating up or cooling off. As the amount of summer ice at the N pole decreases, less sunlight gets reflected, more gets absorbed, and the earth system departs from thermal equilibrium: it heats up. It will continue to do so until the increased emission of infrared at the top of the atmosphere makes up for the continuous spectrum sunlight now absorbed by the seas. This will happen at a higher temperature than it does now.

The S pole ice is insensitive to melting because it is thousands of feet thick, no matter how much melts it will still reflect roughly the same amount of sunlight. Even the small growth of sea ice in the Antarctic Ocean will make little difference. Indeed, Antarctic winter sea ice has been rising at a rate of +0.9% per decade over the last 30 years–from 18.5 to 19.0 million km sq.

In contrast, at the N pole, the ice in winter has been dropping at a rate of -2.6% per decade–from 16.2 to 14.9 million km over the last 30 years. This more than makes up for the Antarctic gain. The earth is heating up, and the Arctic is shrinking faster, in both absolute and relative terms, than the Antarctic can make up for it. There are heat sinks like the deep seas, to be sure, but as excess heat goes into the atmosphere and oceans, there will be changes in ecosystems and in the earth’s mechanisms for redistributing heat (weather and climate, ocean currents).

Eventually, the temperature will go up a few degrees, the thermal IR flux at the top of the atmosphere will rise, and the earth will stabilize a few degrees warmer than it is now. But it will have readjusted its internal heat budget in order to do so. What effect that has on us remains to be seen. But I’d rather not stick around and find out.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires–and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings–the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire–but hour by hour
They fell and faded–and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash–and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless–they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;–a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought–and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails–men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress–he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects–saw, and shriek’d, and died–
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful–was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless–
A lump of death–a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge–
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir’d before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them–She was the Universe.