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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."
There's an ongoing eruption event in the region. Could it have been pouring lots of CO2 into the air recently?
I'm sure the research scientists know what they're doing, but IIRC volcanic events are responsible for a lot of CO2. I'd like to see some data from samples collected elsewhere.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
So what you're saying is, they were higher 800,000 years ago.
I assume you breath via some mechanical assistance since I suspect you're not intelligent enough to do it on your own.
Usually the changes have been gradual such that life had time to adjust. Humans especially may be sucker-punched by relatively rapid change.
Table-ized A.I.
False dichotomy - there are people who outright think it doesn't exist, and people who think it is the impending apocalypse, then there are people who think it is serious, but are optimistic and think we are capable, and able, to find solutions, and have time to do it, as well as those who might believe climate change is real, but wonders about the nitty gritty, how those details are garnered, or conclusions are drawn - I.E ask questions in a reasonable manner, and many people who fall into choices other than those I mentioned.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
although Germany's anti-nuclear kick isn't helping Why?
Germanies percentage of nuclear power was around 22%, now it is around 10%.
Germany used to have something like 5% renewables, 30 years ago, now it is close to 40%, this year likely above 40%.
You don't need nukes to produce CO2 free energy ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Steady or declining CO2 emissions is only good news if we're in a steady state situation.
We're not.
Simply keeping anthropogenic CO2 and CH4 emissions steady is woefully insufficient. The "well below 2 degrees warming" goal of the Paris agreements is itself based on an assumption that we will be able to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, requiring a technology we have yet to make feasible at scale.
We cannot afford to burn our currently known reserves of fossil fuels. We have to decarbonise our energy production as quickly as is humanly possible. That countries such as Australia are still granting fossil fuel exploration permits is, frankly, insane.
I'd wish it were a joke but it is not.
That's the effect of denuclearization: more coal. If they're using more coal, they are doing it wrong. It's foolish to compete nuclear vs renewables until the last coal plant and mine is eliminated permanently.
Maybe someone should stop cutting down the Amazon rainforest?
It's just a suggestion; feel free to put profit above everything else.
Requiem for the American Dream
Also note, that historically CO2 follows Temps.... i.e. empirically, CO2 isn't a climate driver.
Except we know the current source of CO2 increases and it isn't temperatures. It's mostly due to human activities, burning fossil fuels, making cement, clearing land. There is no known temperature excursion in history that would account for an increase in CO2 to a level greater than it has been in at least 800,000 years and likely several millions of years.
The plant can and has been way warmer than currently. Yes. But during none of these times human tried to survive on it, that's gonna be a new one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the general population in the United States actually cared and felt this was an important issue - then the Senate, House and Oval office wouldn't be run by people who adamantly scream this is a liberal hoax.
They are busy appointing judges who will rule in favor of the corporate oligarchy doing exactly what we're seeing: disincentivizing renewable energy, disemboweling clean air/water laws, doling out tax breaks to polluters, attacking scientific processes and thought, defunding education to eliminate critical thinking skills... and they are winning. Only 1/2 of Americans believe global warming is real. http://news.gallup.com/poll/20...
And other BS/disproven ideas are on rise - like Immunizations cause autism and the growth of flat earthers... Till we value and fund education and critical thinking, we're lost.