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Earth's Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point In 800,000 Years (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: For the first time since humans have been monitoring, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have exceeded 410 parts per million averaged across an entire month (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), a threshold that pushes the planet ever closer to warming beyond levels that scientists and the international community have deemed "safe." The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of the climate-warming gas averaged above 410 parts per million throughout April. The first time readings crossed 410 at all occurred on April 18, 2017, or just about a year ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations -- whose "greenhouse gas effect" traps heat and drives climate change -- were around 280 parts per million circa 1880, at the dawn of the industrial revolution. They're now 46 percent higher. According to Scripps Institute of Oceanography, this amount is the highest in at least the past 800,000 years. "We keep burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide keeps building up in the air," said Scripps scientist Ralph Keeling, who maintains the longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide on Earth. "It's essentially as simple as that."
Prevailing winds bring in fresh, well mixed, air from the oceans and pushes the locally generated CO2 away, whether from cities or volcanoes away from the observatory. This link has more details, and included results from other measuring stations. https://skepticalscience.com/M...
Volcanic eruptions are less than 2% of emitted CO2. That's how big the fossil fuel impact is.
It's possible that the eruption hastened this particular record, but only by the matter of days or months - you can see the graph in the linked article, it's been pretty smooth for decades.
This is bad news among good news. In general, CO2 output levels have been flat or going down in both the US and some other countries for a few years. 2018 is actually the first year in the last 4 where the total CO2 production of the US are going up, while they declined for the previous few years https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-natgas-eia-steo/update-1-u-s-carbon-emissions-seen-at-25-year-low-in-2017-idUSL1N1J311B. But we need to do a lot more. So what can you do to help?
There are three main aspects, personal, political and charitable:
In terms of personal lifestyle differences, the biggest options are to eat less meat and to use a personal car less. If you live somewhere where public transit is an option, you can massively cut down on your carbon footprint by simply using public transit. Not everyone has that option, since you may live somewhere where public transit isn't available or may have a job or family that necessitates getting a car, in which case, if you get a new car, make sure to buy an electric or hybrid. Also in terms of personal activity, one can keep the air conditioning or heating in one's house at not as extreme temperatures or one can better insulate one's house. If one is somewhere installing solar on one's home either for electricity or just for water heating then do it. All these personal changes are also things which overall cause one to save money so there's good reason to do it..
Political change is also important. Much of Europe is taking sensible approaches to these issues (although Germany's anti-nuclear kick isn't helping) but the US is very much not so. In general, the Democrats have a much better record on climate issues and other environmental issues than the current Republicans. This means voting for Democratic candidates and donating to them is important.
In terms of charity, this is a really good way of effecting direct change. Two good options for solar are donating to Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters, and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ who helps get solar panels for locations in the developing world. SELF's work is especially important because it helps to cut off the potential of rising carbon dioxide in the developing world even as it helps increase their economies. For wind power, I recommend donating to The New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund. Also, helping buy carbon offsets is important. The most efficient way of offsetting carbon in terms of tons offset per a dollar spent is Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. Every little bit helps.
Global warming isn't going to kill all life on earth. The tardigrades aren't even going to notice, given they can live in deep sea hydro-thermal vents and deep space.
Global warming is likely to cause severe water and food stress for humans, some regions are likely to become too hot & humid for humans to survive going outside. https://www.ucsusa.org/our-wor...
There are also measuring stations in antarctica to give it backup. The one in Hawaii is the oldest (and is considered very reliable) so it is the most famous.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, they're saying we don't have direct measurements from before the oldest ice core bores. 800kya is not the year they were higher.
Ezekiel 23:20
So obviously, what happened 800,000 years ago when the average CO2 levels were presumably higher than they are now?
800k is just the end of easy continuous direct CO2 observation from ice cores in their dataset.
You would have to go back a couple million years or more.
Ice ages happen on a timescale of tens of millions of years.
Actually we have had four glacial periods in the last million years.
While it doesn't address what CO2 comes from volcano's, but we can also tell what percent of CO2 is natural vs from burned fossil fuels using carbon isotope ratio from the atmosphere:
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
Zero correlation between CO2 and temperature.
Like in this graph?
Ezekiel 23:20
Here is a chart.
Data from the past 34 million years (which we have due to trapped atmosphere in bubbles formed on ice sheets)
34 million years, that's funny when oldest ice core is 2.7 million years.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
And the CO2 was still low: " the ice revealed atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels that did not exceed 300 parts per million, well below today’s levels"
recent peer-reviewed data points to 1.3 to 1.6 deg K for doubling of CO2,
The study you linked to gives a 95% confidence range of 1.1 to 4.45. That is in line with other estimates. See also this overview: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
Volcanoes are almost a measurement error these days.
I think he is referring to Kilauea, which is only 20 miles from Mauna Loa, where these CO2 measurements were taken.
But Kilauea wasn't erupting much in April. The new vents are not in Kilauea's main caldera, but are another 20 miles east in Pahoa, and the prevailing winds blow from NE to SW, which is out to sea, not up the slopes of Mauna Loa, which towers more than 9000 feet above the summit of Kilauea.
but IIRC volcanic events are responsible for a lot of CO2.
No they don't, and that is easy to google: https://www.scientificamerican...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Look at the longer trend, and you'll see no evidence of volcanic eruptions interfering with the data.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...
No, ice cores go back about a million years. Sedimentation (chemical rock formation in water) goes far back. There is a big discrepancy in resolution with rock vs ice cores. Ice cores show us small changes over short periods (years in some cases). Sedimentation shows larger trends over large time scales (thousands of years).
But you are right, in geologic time CO2 is at a low in the past 800ky. Also note, that historically CO2 follows Temps.... i.e. empirically, CO2 isn't a climate driver.
I have a degree in geology, but the climate is not my field. I do think people should be paying more attention to historical geology and atmospheric physics than to climate models. Current climatology is plagued with the mantra of modeling. These models cannot describe past climate changes, which means they are of little use for predicting the future. Why do they stick to them? Because they have nothing else.
Did you ever stop long enough to think that just maybe the rise in CO2 levels were part of a natural feedback
We know that the extra CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels. You can verify this for yourself by taking the published numbers for amounts of fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) produced over the last century, and figuring out how much CO2 each produces, and then adding it all up. You'll get a number that's roughly twice the amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere over the same time.
If you think it's a "natural feedback", then explain where this CO2 is actually coming from, and what happened to all the fossil CO2 we've produced.
Ugh no. The rise in co2 is not due to the plants. Well, not living ones. It is known how much co2 is USED by plants, and given off. In general, plants use Much more co2, than they give off. If not, then they would not have energy storage ( carbon converted to sugars ). Forest fires, volcanoes, etc give off co2, but known quantity. The problem is burning of fossil fuels esp from coal plants. Coal plants are #1 source of our burning fossil fuels and creating Co2. And as long as nations continue to build these out, it will continue to grow faster.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ice core data shows a several-hundred-year lag between rising temperatures and higher CO2.
Rising temperature and higher CO2 form a mutual causal relationship. The path from CO2 to temperature is a lot quicker (few decades max), so you don't recognize it in the graphs.
Gonna need more proof on this one. With governments pushing for carbon taxes how do we know this is legit?
Sorry I cant sign off on this bullshit.
More proof on the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere? It's something that has been measured for over 100 years and been measured continuously for over 50 years. It's currently being measured in dozens of places around the world and they're all pretty much in agreement. It's not that difficult to measure so if there were any shenanigans going on it would be quickly called out.
As far as carbon taxes go you can pay now to help mitigate the effects of global warming and the climate change it causes or you can pay later for the massive amount of adaption that will have to take place for adjusting to the effects. It's possible the effects could get bad enough to cause the collapse of our global civilization. How much would that cost you?
Another of your favourite lies Windy, I'm not surprised. Heaps of those were cancelled, like you already know.
Chinses coal has been going down, (slowly) I just showed you facts to show a very slight increase, after 3 years of decreases, yet you lie and say it's at record highs and rising over 5%.