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."

Comments

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the people who can't tell "cue" from "queue". As usual.

Perspective

[Fire_Wraith]

Just going to note that here's what this means in terms of how the global average temperatures have been changing, and how rapidly so compared to the past:
http://xkcd.com/1732/

Taking CO2 out??

[NotInHere]

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.

Re:Taking CO2 out??

[knightghost]

That'd take nuclear - something that intelligent people understand and support, but unfortunately that's a tiny fraction of the voting population.

Re:Taking CO2 out??

[CrimsonAvenger]

Dare I say it?

Replace coal plants with nukes.

Then replace natural gas plants with nukes.

Then keep on building nukes till we have enough electricity being generated to replace all those gasoline/diesel automobiles (trucks, trains, etc) with electric versions.

And while we're doing that, replace oil-burning ship power plants with nukes.

Note that the steps after "coal plants" can be rearranged to taste. There are good arguments that we'd be better off getting the cars/trucks/trains replaced with all electric versions before we replace gas-fired power plants.

As long as the people getting worried about AGW are chanting "no nukes, no nukes", I'm going to continue ignoring the AGW problem as "not very serious, really"....

Re:Taking CO2 out??

[DarkOx]

That *was* an option, now it isn't for two reasons.

1) lots of distributed application depend on open circuit (in terms of carbon) power solutions. Its cost prohibitive to really fix that. By contrast carbon removal could be centralized at a comparative small number of points.

2) We may be already in a positive feedback loop in terms of global temperatures and so you must break the loop, conservation will not achieve that.

Re:Taking CO2 out??

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually, with excess nuclear power, we can produce eDiesel. We've got new catalysts and high-pressure processes making eDiesel highly-efficient, about 70%; that means pipelines fed from eDiesel plants placed near nuclear and geothermal power plants would come in slightly less-efficient than electric cars at 15% transmission loss and 85% charging efficiency.

We can stockpile eDiesel; we can use it for airplanes (no way to make those battery-powered); we can generate eMethane or otherwise use eDiesel to run fuel cells, creating liquid fuel electric cars (possibly airplanes, but it's a tough job for an electric motor); we can use it to drive factories which need more power than the grid provides.

Newer tweaks to battery technology are targeting high-surface-area electrodes. Lithium ion batteries grow tin whiskers internally, creating more surface area for reaction, thus higher and longer power output; current research targets new structures and new battery chemistries to maximize this, essentially attempting to create an activated-carbon-style surface as the battery consumes itself. The processes in eDiesel similarly use catalyzed hydrolysis, and it's non-consuming: if we can manufacture high-surface-area electrodes using current or improved catalysts, we can raise eDiesel efficiency. The two efforts are semi-parallel, in that efforts in one give insight to the other, yet they're distinct in significant ways and so can't directly translate.

That means more-efficient batteries and more-efficient eDiesel generation in the future. If the overall efficiency exceeds 85%, eDiesel will beat any electric vehicle: transmission loss is 15%. At the same time, low-cost eDiesel will immediately replace more-expensive petroleum, as it's compatible with current, unmodified gas turbine technology; and eDiesel can feed or be modified to feed hydrogen fuel cells, which provide electricity, giving a method of feeding electric vehicles with a liquid or heavy gas (not hydrogen, which has storage and transport issues) fuel tank rather than a battery.

At the same time, plant and atmospheric petroleum (e.g. eDiesel) products such as polyester, rayon, plastic, and lubricating oil (PAO, Group-3) will sequester oil. Recycling carries costs and complexity; cheap atmospheric petroleum, once expended, can be incinerated for power or dumped into expended oil wells. Deep well dumping provides an attractive option: the expended liquid petroleum becomes a feed stock for later mining and refining, while effectively removing the carbon content from the atmosphere.

This is all stuff that will happen naturally, eventually. eDiesel will scale; a reduction in cost of nuclear, geothermal, and solar will outcompete oil; and refining waste oil into recycled stock will be less-efficient than producing new oil at the point where atmospheric petroleum has become cheaper than oil. The only question is when.

Sea level rise isn't the main problem

[Viol8]

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.

Re:Sea level rise isn't the main problem

[ausekilis]

or the other 99%ers that live in towns that are at or below sea level. The US has plenty of cities that could disappear. Eventually the Earth will recover on it's own (assuming we don't screw it up more), but I wont be around thousands of years from now when it does.

Re:Sea level rise isn't the main problem

[kwiecmmm]

Some people think it is going to be gradual but there are people who think it could be sudden for a few reasons.

Antartic ice sheets are melting at this time, but it is currently trapped by the ice there.

Most people don't think these sorts of things happen regularly, but glacial floods have been seen in the earth's history (as long as you believe the earth older than 6000 years).

Also, the reason that ocean sea level rise has not been seen everywhere up to this point is because the Arctic ice was over water, which meant that no water was added to the ocean. Antarctica and Greenland's ice are not currently a part of the ocean, so when this makes it to the ocean, things are going to go bad around the world.

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.

And this is the other point, we have no idea what effects we are having on plankton populations. But then again, why do we need plankton, it isn't like we need to breathe.

Re:horse has left the barn

[DarkOx]

I agree with you the time for conservation is past. We are at least if we want to continue to enjoy the standard of living we do beyond the natural carrying capacity of the globe. The answer is geo-engineering. I don't agree with your assessment we can remove carbon in sufficient quantities from the atmosphere. Do you have any evidence to site? I would argue the opposite, given we have been able to put a sufficient amount of carbon into the atmosphere to account for at least some of the temperature and ocean acidification changes we are seeing, it stands to reason we should be capable of removing it as well.

Technologies exist to efficiently (in terms of volume) remove carbon from air today. It just requires lots of input energy. There are a sources that could provide such energy at hand. Fission as well as that big fusion ball we call the sun could provide a enough power. We just need to get serious about doing it. We should reallocate the resources currently being used on carbon reduction to carbon removal efforts. It would go a long way.

is 400 a special value in nature.

[Mysund]

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.

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[Maritz]

I don't see the point in posting anything climate-related on slashdot. It's all one big denialist echo chamber.

The math

[nycsubway]

The math of climate change is fairly straightforward. CO2 and methane in the atmosphere cause more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. There's a certain amount of carbon that was stored underground over millions of years in the form of oil and coal. That carbon was slowly extracted from the atmosphere by plants over the course of 500 million years and stored underground. During that time, the planet's temperature went up and down for various reasons 1) Earth's orbit and distance from the sun 2) volcanic activity releasing CO2 3) aerosols reflecting light back into space 4) the reflectivity of the surface of the earth from accumulation of snow or melting of snow during those other changes 5) sudden die off or surge of plant life 6) other reasons.

The rate of change for temperature and CO2 levels during all of those changes was gradual, with the changes taking place over thousands or millions of years. When CO2 was released in previous times, it was gradual. What's different about the current climate is that humans have raised the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 140% in 200 years (280ppm to 400pm). That rate is way faster than any natural change in the history of the planet. That rate is what is so significant about human caused release of CO2 into the atmosphere. There are simply no natural factors to compare the methodical migration of carbon from the ground into the atmosphere.

So, yes this is significant.

Re:REAL elephant in the room

[DarkOx]

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.

Re:horse has left the barn

[DarkOx]

Oh I am fully aware the 'earth' will 'fix' the problem. I am also aware the "earth's solution" will mean the mass death of humanity though starvation and war. No thank you, I consider myself a misanthrope and I still think people deserve better than that!

I'd like to see us at least try.

Good for the climate

[johanw]

It's getting way too cold here - I like the (sub) tropical climate that is natural for this planet most of its life and I really hate this aftermath of the destructive ice age we are slowly leaving.

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:horse has left the barn

[MightyMartian]

Oh for fuck's sake. We can still maintain a good standard of living and wean ourselves off of oil.

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:horse has left the barn

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Much better to be thinking about buying an iron lung than to stop smoking.

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[Sique]

Preserving rain-forests doesn't help as much as hippies would like you to think since they are mostly carbon neutral.

See? That's one of those misconceptions floating around. Yes, rain-forests are mostly carbon neutral. But your conclusion is wrong nevertheless. Because while rain-forests are mostly carbon neutral, cutting them down isn't. Each piece of organic matter that is destroyed adds to the carbon foot print, as long as it is not replaced by a piece of organic matter of the same size.

Re:Queue the world ending in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

[MightyMartian]

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.