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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...
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...
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.
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
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
Yes?
What's with all the anti-science ACs JAQing off in this thread.
Yes CO2 has been higher in the past, no all lfe didn't die then and no humans did't have a population of 7 billion wiht hundreds of trillions of dollars of infrastructure with a few meters of sea level.
Life will go on, but it won't be comfortable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.