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."

Comments

Taxes and control

[Anonymous Coward]

Been said a million times before: CO2 is not a pollutant. It's needed for plants to grow. The current CO2 levels are so low it's amazing plants survive at all. We'd be much better off if CO2 levels tripled from current levels.

All this sky is falling bullshit is about raising taxes and the socialist elite controlling the rest of us.

If you're not socialist elite and worried about CO2 levels, you're just one of their sheep.

Re:Taxes and control

[q_e_t]

Been said a million times before: CO2 is not a pollutant. It's needed for plants to grow. The current CO2 levels are so low it's amazing plants survive at all. We'd be much better off if CO2 levels tripled from current levels.

All this sky is falling bullshit is about raising taxes and the socialist elite controlling the rest of us.

If you're not socialist elite and worried about CO2 levels, you're just one of their sheep.

Plants need water to grow, therefore plants cannot be overwatered.

Re: Duh

[saloomy]

What they know is that the last 800,000 years is actually quite a lul in CO2 concentrations, geologically speaking. Data from the past 34 million years (which we have due to trapped atmosphere in bubbles formed on ice sheets) suggests that there used to be much more in the atmosphere.

In fact, the earth has been unusuallly cool. Actually, it has been much colder and hotter, but that's just the natural range of the good earth.

Proof that CO2 does not cause warming

[SuperKendall]

CO2 levels are as high as they have every been... yet warming continues to be very minor. How much more does CO2 have to rise before you accept the truth that CO2 has almost nothing to do with global warming? Twice again the current level?

At least the plants are happy, even if some of humanity (well, the easily misled portion) is dour.

Re:Proof that CO2 does not cause warming

[LynnwoodRooster]

Those graphs all over-estimate climate sensitivity by a factor of 2 or 3; recent peer-reviewed data points to 1.3 to 1.6 deg K for doubling of CO2, not the 3+ deg K as used by all the IPCC models. Perhaps that's why the models don't match the data, and run quite a bit hotter than actual data.

Re: Duh

[LynnwoodRooster]

Why would humans be sucker-punched? Typical offices and classrooms are well over 1000 PPM.

Re:Bad news among good news

[mapkinase]

>This means voting for Democratic candidates and donating to them is important.

Donating to Democratics will have another, mediated, effect as well. Since they are known to be terrible at keeping good economy they will run down the economy which will result in lesser carbon footprint.