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CO2 Levels Likely To Stay Above 400PPM For The Rest of Our Lives, Study Shows (inhabitat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new study from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere are likely to remain above 400 parts per million (ppm) for many years. Specifically, scientists forecasted that levels would not dip below 400pm in "our lifetimes." The CO2 concentrations of "about 450ppm or lower are likely to maintain warming below 2 degrees Celsius over the 21st century relative to pre-industrial levels." However, lead author on the paper Richard Betts said we could pass that number in 20 years or less. In an article on The Guardian, he said even if we reduce emissions immediately, we might be able to delay reaching 450ppm but "it is still looking like a challenge to stay below 450ppm." El Nino has played a significant role in climbing carbon dioxide levels, but it's likely we'll see higher CO2 levels than the last large El Nino storm during 1997 and 1998 because "manmade emissions" have risen by 25 percent since that storm, according to The Guardian. Met Office experts predicted in November 2015 that in May 2016 "mean concentrations of atmospheric CO2" would hit 407.57ppm -- the actual figure was 407.7ppm. The NOAA reported during 2015 that the "annual growth rate" of CO2 in the atmosphere rose by 3.05ppm. NOAA lead scientist Pieter Tans said, "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years. It's explosive compared to the natural processes."
The science is in, the numbers are not fake, this is not a hoax. This is going to have serious global repercussions and it will never go away. We can't even yet stop contributing to the acceleration of emissions, they CONTINUE to grow year by year despite much-touted international accords. The science community agrees this will not be enough, and we are failing at this course correction necessity.
At some point, the people being paid and those paying millions to put out the unreasonable position that this all is "no big deal" or "not certain to be a problem" or "not caused by human industry" etc, those people have to be dealt with. I make no suggestions beyond that general observation, that this is untenable.
Actually the holy book would be the IPCC reports. The nice thing about anthropogenic global warming as a religion is that it has actual scientific evidence to back it up. If you want to suggest that the primary cause is something other than human activity you need to come up with some actual scientific evidence of your own that holds up under scrutiny.
Of course it has been under 1,000 ppm for the entire existence of humans.
But the real problem isn't the level of CO2 but how fast it is changing. If it slowly rose to 1,000 ppm over 10,000 years or more then life would have time to adapt. At the rate it's going it could hit 1,000 in less than 200 years and that's going to cause lots of disruption. It remains to be seen how well our civilization will cope with it.
The first post nailed it. Just take a look through the comments to see how incapable the /. crowd is at having a reasonable, intelligent discussion anymore. Off topic instantly, into political chest pounding immediately. Nothing about how burning fossil fuels is responsible for the constant rise in CO2 and the subsequent impacts on the biosphere and polar ice. Coral bleaching is reaching levels never seen before due to ocean acidification, which will get much worse as the CO2 level continues to rise. I understand it is the job of the corporate shills here to "muddy the waters" and manufacture doubt and insult everyone, but I just wish everyone else would stop taking the bait, and don't even respond to them anymore, no matter how obnoxious they are.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Nope. The Democrat nominee will be selected by the superdelegates and the superdelegates don't want any change.
Nice to see that someone hates me :) I think value is in the eye of the beholder. I guess some folks with mod points liked what I said. If you don't like what I'm saying then come up with some credible evidence to counter it.
When it comes to CO2 and its role in global warming no one has come up with any credible evidence to counter it. Lots of people try to claim it's the Sun or it's just natural cycles but the never present any solid evidence for their claims. Science is all about being able to back up your hypotheses with real evidence.
For the entirety of Human History up until the industrial revolution atmospheric CO2 level has fluctuated between 280 to 220 ppm. This planet hasn't seen 400pm of C02 in the atmosphere for millions of years. Long before the oldest Human ancestor species even existed. Our species was born of the ice ages that came about due to some of the lowest C02 levels the planet ever saw.
We are pushing C02 levels up to range that existed when dinosaurs were alive and there were tropical swamps in the arctic circle.
Targeting CO2 emissions has always had a very long-term scope and we should continue to find ways to reduce them. However, in such urgent circumstances, we need to find greenhouse gas emissions that respond quickly to reducing their output. According to a UN report, 51% of greenhouse gases comes from animal agriculture, i.e. meat and dairy production. We don't all need to go vegan but we do need to stop eating such unhealthy and unsustainable amounts of meat.
I'm not a vegetarian or vegan BTW.
Wrong. Hilary would have won if there were no superdelegates.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The medical term for what you're doing is called "projection".
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/...
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/C...
The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to “hiding the decline” isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The “decline” actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.
The "trick," which was used in a paper published in 1998 in the science journal Nature, is to combine the older tree ring data with thermometer data. Combining the two data sets can be difficult, and scientists are always interested in new ways to make temperature records more accurate.
Tree rings are a largely consistent source of data for the past 2,000 years. But since the 1960s, scientists have noticed there are a handful of tree species in certain areas that appear to indicate temperatures that are warmer or colder than we actually know they are from direct thermometer measurement at weather stations.
"Hiding the decline" in this email refers to omitting data from some Siberian trees after 1960. This omission was openly discussed in the latest climate science update in 2007 from the IPCC, so it is not "hidden" at all.
Why Siberian trees? In the Yamal region of Siberia, there is a small set of trees with rings that are thinner than expected after 1960 when compared with actual thermometer measurements there. Scientists are still trying to figure out why these trees are outliers. Some analyses have left out the data from these trees after 1960 and have used thermometer temperatures instead.
Techniques like this help scientists reconstruct past climate temperature records based on the best available data.
Much has been made about emails regarding a certain paper that some scientists did not think should have been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. These emails focus on a paper on solar variability in the climate over time. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal called Climate Research, but under unusual circumstances. Half of the editorial board of Climate Research resigned in protest against what they felt was a failure of the peer review process. The paper, which argued that current warming was unexceptional, was disputed by scientists whose work was cited in the paper. Many subsequent publications set the record straight, which demonstrates how the peer review process over time tends to correct such lapses. Scientists later discovered that the paper was funded by the American Petroleum Institute.
In a later e-mail, Phil Jones references two other papers he didn't hold in high esteem. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Yet, the papers in question made it into the IPCC report, indicating that no restrictions on their incorporation were made. The IPCC process contains hundreds of authors and reviewers, with an e
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The "hiatus" has been debunked over and over and over. That you would claim otherwise shows you either don't know what you're talking about, or that you're more than willing to lie to make a point. Neither is attractive. Pick one.