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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."
As a general rule, if Freeman Dyson doesn't understand something, you don't, either.
Freeman Dyson is not a climatologist, and should not be expected to understand it. He also has a strong contrarian streak, and will oppose almost any viewpoint that he perceives as a consensus. He is not a denier, he is a skeptic. But he is a skeptic of pretty much everything.
When it comes to climate science, there are only have two types of studies: Those with an obvious agenda, and those that show that we're cooking the earth.
I was surprised but happy to see that foxnews.com had an article called "Levels of carbon dioxide in air hits milestone". (news.google.com had a link to it.) The article says pretty much what the research.noaa.gov article says. Hopefully some people reading the foxnews article will be convinced that global warming is real.
>I distinctly recall hearing about how major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard would be under water "within a decade" back in the mid 1970s. It didn't happen.
That's good to know because, right now, parts of Miami are flooding at high tide and larger areas flood during king tides. There are huge projects going on all along the coastal areas of southern Florida to raise sewer lines and lift stations so toilets will continue flushing. We are spending tens of millions to try and protect the well casings that supply freshwater to Miami.
There are trails in Palm Beach we grew up rollerblading when we were kids that flood twice a day now; the storm drains start flowing backwards. Then there are the underwater boat docks and places where the waves lap over the tide wall.
That doesn't even touch beach erosion. It's funny as hell to watch cities pump sand back up on the beach.
The next big hurricane that comes in from the wrong direction and you're going to see boats washed up on I-95. Miami's going to be dead long before the waters claim it for the last time but the water is coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's only true if you define historic average to include billions of years when we were NOT here (making your second sentence erm... dumb).
We were evolved for a temperate climate, we did not evolve in the carboniferous age, we almost certainly could not have survived then - we have no guarantee we can survive in any climate other than the one we evolved in - and this is far above the average for ANY period in that age.
We merely need to look at the recorded history of much SMALLER climate events in our history to see how badly adapted we are to significant changes in global climate. Krakatoa went off in 1883 - not that long ago and technologically VERY recent. 1884 was Europe's year without a summer - just one year where a major event disrupted the normal climate pattern hugely (dust from the volcano blocked the sun out over Europe).
Go look up the death toll of that... there previous thing to get anywhere close to that many dead bodies in Europe was the black death, more people died from that double-winter than from the Spanish Flu in 1918 and World War 1 combined.
Many killed by the cold itself, many more starved because of the resulting crop failures.
And that was relatively tiny, it only really affected one continent - and only for one year (on the upside: it directly led to the writing of Frankenstein).
Now imagine something like that, on a global scale, lasting decades or centuries... you talk of historic averages but you carefully leave out context. Massive climate changes like that have, historically, been responsible for the largest mass extinctions in the history of our planet. Indeed, far more dinosaurs were made extinct by the nuclear winter CAUSED by the asteroid than were killed by the asteroid impact itself. And COLD is a LOT easier to deal with than hot.
The largest extinction event that ever happened, the Cambrian mass extinction killed 96% of all living organisms at the time - and the most likely cause of it was significant climate change caused by living organisms altering the atmosphere.
In context your trite dismissal is not as convincing as you thought now is it. Also - there is no need for US to die for a climate event to make us extinct, technology could help us cope with a climate change perhaps... but it may not save us, because we are not an independent species, our survival depends on the eco-systems we are a part off, which is made up of ALL the other species alive today. None of which has technology... take too many of them out, and we'll go too. Technology can't provide us with food when none of our crops can grow anymore. It can't protect us when mosquitos grow 1m wingspans (which they have done before and could again in the right climate conditions).
But go ahead, fuck with something you don't understand for a bit of convenience. Since YOU don't understand it you get to dismiss the people who DO understand it without evidence and carry on regardless right ?
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