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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."
when it reaches the levels it was at about 25 million years ago when it was double what it is today.
Rather than single issue vote in liberals vote with your pocketbook. If you buy things that are effectively lower or lowering in CO2 then companies will move that direction. Money votes are so much more powerful than political votes. The American process of government controlling technology has a poor record. In 1968 several cars when properly tuned met air pollution standards for the 1980 goals, without catalytic converters. But they had to start using converters by government mandate. The 1970s EPA wanted to, because it was technically possible, make room air conditioners twice as efficient, and the energy use label original spec called for a minimum 8x10 metalizied label with a mil spec permanent adhesive. Small window air conditioners couldn’t support that size label. And to make air conditioners twice as efficient while running would make them use so much more material that the refining and processing and fabrication energy costs for the additional material would never be made up in the units lifetime of running.
So, putting the government in charge of specifications for technology, not so good. Grassroots make it in demand for “greener” tech, a good deal. The reason solar costs less is that some folks put in the money and created the demand early on. It’s only recently it has become really popular.
California has taken the step of requiring solar on most new construction, hopefully they left open the problem homes, like deep valley homes, or homes that wind or low head hydro might be better. And hopefully they require where reasonable grid tie ins. But to mandate it in the first place is a mistake. They could just incentivize it and it would happen.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Actually it is the opposite way around.
The correlation factor is greatly underestimated, that is why current trends are always at the upper edge of the spectrum the IPCC is publishing.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Although there's no question that climate change in itself won't end all human life, it does lead to food stress and resource shortages leading to more mass migration, famine and war. It only takes one nuclear war triggering event to say no, human life won't go on. A more likely question is - will human civilisation survive? Maybe not a bad outcome for the planet, but not a good one for us.