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Global CO2 Concentration Passes Threshold of 400 ppm -- and That's Bad for the Climate (time.com)
The average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hit the symbolic level of 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 2015 and has continued to surge in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization. From a report on Time:Scientists say humans may need to take some carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. The carbon dioxide concentration is unlikely to dip below the 400 ppm mark for at least several decades, even with aggressive efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, according to the WMO report, which confirms similar findings reported last month. Carbon dioxide can last in the atmosphere for thousands of years without efforts to remove it. "The year 2015 ushered in a new era of optimism and climate action," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, referring to the landmark Paris Agreement to address climate change. "The real elephant in the room is carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years and in the oceans for even longer."
People need to realize that the effects of global warming are at this point unstoppable. No conservation effort and certainly no carbon dioxide removal program could possibly show an effect for decades. At which point the damage will already be done. Money would be much better spent preparing for sea level rise etc than trying to prevent it.
Not to be a downer but the number of people killed by famine, drought, sea level rise, etc will probably be more effective at curbing CO2 output than any policy measures.
What about not putting it there in the first place? THEN we can start thinking about removing it from the atmosphere. It takes far more energy to take CO2 out of the atmosphere than to not put it there.
Rising sea levels will be gradual and we have plenty of time to cope with them. Aside from the climate change aspect the more immediate problem is acidifcation and warming of the sea which has already killed off a quarter of the barrier reef and is having serious effects elsewhere with plankton. If the ocean food chain starts collapsing from the bottom up we're in deep deep shit and thats before you consider the reduction of fish stocks by overfishing and the destruction of the ocean floor by drag net trawling.
Here's the reality: no one cares anymore except, of course, the people whose grant funding is at risk. Most people are sick of being preached to on this subject.
We just see it as a round number because we use base 10.
So it is actually nothing special.about 400. It is all numerology crap/superstition.
If we instead of 10 fingers, only had 7 fingers, the number would be ... Oh crap ... 400 in base 7 is actually 1111.
The world will end.
I don't see the point in posting anything climate-related on slashdot. It's all one big denialist echo chamber.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Well why is that I wounder? Could it because because most of the leading authority figures and potential candidates are embroiled in scandal after scandal. Could it because by and large authority HAS screwed over the common man. Whatever your politics are at least in the USA the fact is there has been tremendous wealth consolidation over the past 40 years and it has occurred under both left wing and right wing administrations, under both left wing and right wing majority Congresses.
By any reasonably account pretty much all post WWII authorities have 'screwed us over' I don't see why they should be trusted. Technocrats were running the financial centers during the global crisis. Technocrats have overseen what has been the slowest recovery in history. I think its abundantly clear these people ARE NOT in fact any more fit to lead than the usual poster here. Fancy degrees and acronyms don't change that.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Geologic time scales? Pisshhh. If you weren't such a poser you'd go straight to universal time scales, where the earth averages out to a cloud of dust. So whats the big deal if a supervillian builds a planet vaporizing death ray? The atoms were there before, they'll be there after.
There is no "threshold" at 400ppm; it's just an arbitrary number. In terms of earth's climate history, global CO2 concentrations can go above 1000ppm and we're still fine; arguably, we'd actually be better off. None of that matters, though, because...
It's not "unlikely to dip below the 400 ppm mark", it is impossible for it to dip below the 400 ppm mark for decades even if every human on the planet killed themselves tomorrow. No amount of mitigation or climate change policy or taxes or international treaties is going to change that. And the policies that are being negotiated and proposed are utterly useless; they won't even significantly slow the increase. That's why people who advocate governmental action on climate change are liars and crooks.
Get used to it: the only option we have for dealing with climate change is that humans adapt to it. You can be an optimist about it (like myself) or a pessimist.
But you are a climate change denier if you deny that climate change is inevitable at this point.
If by that you mean that your dogma hasn't managed to silence all dissent, I consider that a good thing. If you want a place where no one ever doubts the "experts", go somewhere else and the cynics of Slashdot will not chase you down to interfere with your rituals. However, when you bring your dogma here and pretend that people who work in fields of programming, science and physics should abandon all their education and knowledge of the subject matter to join your cult, you should expect resistance.
Yup, we can't trust any reckoning of temperatures before the "instrumental" temperature record.
Oh wait, they've moved the instrument due to construction on campus and now the temperatures need to be adjusted! OMG IT'S NOT RAW DATA!!!!eleven!!!11!!1!
Now here comes satellite measurements! We can't trust any numbers before 1980-ish! Oh noes! We can't know anything about anything!
Upside to not knowing anything about anything: when Florida sinks, can we just pretend it never existed?
The flames from all the straw men makes it hard to hear you.
Nowhere did I call into question any of the data sets. I provided a link to the actual journal article no less so anyone could fact check. What I DID point out is that we have two data sets on the graph, one that is the proxy record and one for the instrumental. That's not undermining, questioning or denying anything, it's a restating of the words of the author's themselves.
The reconstructed data is going to have different accuracy, precision and sensitivity than the instrumental record. The authors of course did their best to account for that. None the less, it's pretty blasted important not to leave that out when analyzing an abrupt change in trend exactly coinciding with a change in data source.
As others have pointed out, people here are not keen on following cult like behavior.
Shouting about global warming is just noise, if you want support, tell us want you want to be done instead.
Most likely your suggestions will be shot down immediately because they are either inefficient or they make matters worse.
Some of your suggestions will likely have very little to do with global warming and rather serve some other political agenda.
If you actually manage to suggest something that would help with solving the issue they you might be surprised that several people will chime in with support or improvements.
You want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere? Preserving rain-forests doesn't help as much as hippies would like you to think since they are mostly carbon neutral.
If you want to get that carbon away you need to dig it down. Stop recycling paper and start dumping it in landfills. Plant new trees to create more paper and keep digging the used paper down.
The green political side will scream bloody murder since it goes against everything they have worked for and the recycling industry will lobby to have you stopped but it will do a lot more to reduce carbon in the atmosphere than protesting against nuclear power ever will.
Some people think it is going to be gradual but there are people who think it could be sudden for a few reasons.
I am reminded of the quote from Ernest Hemingway: "How did we go bankrupt? Two ways. Slowly, and then all of a sudden."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Uh no, AGW is a scientific and technical topic. That some people invent conspiracies or invoke magical thinking to wave away the evidence because they don't like what science has to say is irrelevant to climate change as a scientific and technical problem.
I'm going to be very clear here. There is no actual controversy about anthropomorphic climate change, and there hasn't been for a couple of decades now. The number of actual researchers who disagree about human-caused CO2 emissions altering climate are probably at the same ratio of biologists who deny evolution, geologists that deny a 4+ billion year old Earth and cosmologists who deny a 13.5 billion year old Universe. In other words, the scientific controversy does not exist in any meaningful way.
What politicians, corporate executives, religious leaders, or some guy who drives an SUV thinks about CO2's effects on climate are utterly irrelevant to the scientific question. They are relevant to how society responds to AGW, and that's where pseudo-skeptics strength is. They tell a message that's pleasing to peoples' ears, without ever having to justify themselves to the people whose fields of research they attack almost constantly.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.