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Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach New Monthly Record

mrflash818 writes: For the first time since we began tracking carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere, the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide gas surpassed 400 parts per million in March 2015, according to NOAA's latest results. “It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally,” said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012. In 2013 the record at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400 ppm threshold. Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone."

12 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Meh by Squiddie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess the amount of money that will be spent dealing with the coming mess, the lives that will be ruined, and ocean levels are just arbitrary numbers as well.

  2. Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" by by+(1706743) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."[53] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends: ...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

    Freeman Dyson also doesn't understand gravity (no one does). But that doesn't mean some vague claims can't be made about the two -- "heavy objects hurt when they fall on your foot" isn't a rigorous scientific statement, but it is true, as is his (vague) quote above.

  3. Re:Milestone my ass by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The proof that CO2 does not drive climate is to be found during the Ordovician-Silurian and the Jurassic-Cretaceous periods when CO2 levels were greater than 4000 ppmv (parts per million by volume) and about 2000 ppmv respectively. If the IPCC theory is correct, there should have been runaway greenhouse induced global warming during these periods but instead there was glaciation.

    You can't ignore the fact that the Sun was dimmer back then and the topology of the continents was completely different. CO2 isn't the only factor in the Earth's climate, just the most important greenhouse gas in determining it. (If you want to chime in and claim that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, it's true that WV causes the largest effect of the greenhouse gases but WV is a condensing gas under conditions in the Earth's atmosphere and the level is strictly controlled by temperature. Water vapor can not drive climate change.)

  4. Re:Milestone my ass by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Incredible how well temperature predicts changes in CO2 concentration, isn't it? (Temperature is blue, CO2 is red)

  5. Re:The Jurassic DGW, Dinosaurogenic Global Warming by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times!

    So, you're basically chiming in here to agree with the global climate models. There was more carbon dioxide in the paleozoic, and the climate was warmer. Yep. The climate was warmer, and the dinosaurs lived with it Of course, the planet didn't have any ice caps then, and a lot of what we call "farmland" they called "shallow ocean".

    We probably won't get the dinosaurs back, though.

  6. Re:Bit to belabor the obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, I'm 100% sure that they just walked up there, plopped it down, and it didn't even *occur* to anyone at NOAA to consider the volcano thing.

    Jesus fucking fuck, what the hell IS it with you people on slashdot who think that the first "insight" you have five seconds after thinking of something for the first time in your life hasn't occurred to people who do it for a living? Here's a hint: If you were *that* smart you wouldn't be talking shit on Slashdot.

  7. Re:Milestone my ass by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Every year, it seems more and more like I'm on the planet Krypton and the scientists are arguing with the politicians in a language the pols do not well understand.

    Ordovician... Jurassic... at too long an interval, we are all doomed to repeat what we have no chance to remember.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  8. Re:So when will this actually happen? by unimacs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ozone was being depleted by chlorofluorocarbons. International efforts were able to largely phase them out, and the Ozone layer has recovered.

    One of the first predictions of running out of oil was made in 1914 by the Bureau of Mines. They thought the world would run out in 10 years. There have been similar predictions since then. Why haven't they come true? Because huge sums of money have been invested in making sure we don't run out or at least to put it off as long as possible. Billions and billions have been spent on locating more oil, and figuring out how to extract the relatively small amounts of oil that are in places we already know about. Think about some the crazy stuff we do to get oil out of the ground even in the middle of the ocean.

    One of the consequences has been that the price of oil has gone up over time. It's slumped back down for now, just like it did in the 90's but it rose after that and you can bet it will again. If in the early 90's you had told somebody that gas would cost almost $4.00 a gallon in a decade, they would have thought armageddon was coming.

    In both the case of the ozone layer and oil supplies, the dire predictions didn't happen in large part because we did what was necessary to keep them from happening. Same thing with Y2K. A ton of money was spent updating computers and software.

    And we could avoid the problems being predicted as consequences of global warming if we take action and be willing to spend some money. But for some reason, we'd rather just argue about it whether it's really a problem or not and in the meantime the solutions just get more expensive and likelihood of widespread consequences increase.

  9. Re:So when will this actually happen? by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It gets harder and harder to take these claims from environmentalists, scientists and politicians seriously, when they're so wrong again and again and again.

    Someday, you'll realize that everything said by a politician, and most things said by a journalist, are misleading exaggerated gibberish. Try talking to someone with a science degree about your science-related concerns.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  10. Re: Meh by Bruha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Led lights, fuel efficient cars. We have choices to help fix things. But you fuckers get bent out of shape just trying to get you to use a different light bulb.

  11. Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with focusing on the fringe like this is that the fringe rapidly becomes a straw man argument for environmentalists. If you actually go to the Greenpeace web site and read their policies they don't suggest any of the stuff you mention, but every debate on Slashdot about environmental issues claims that they do.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  12. Re:Meh by itzly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, but the people deciding today will be long dead by then.