Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milstone

[BSB]

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Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milestone
 
Jonathan Kingston/Aurora Select, for The New York Times
A view from the top of the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The site has long been ground zero for monitoring the worldwide carbon dioxide trend.
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Published: May 10, 2013 357 Comments
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The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

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Jonathan Kingston/Aurora Select, for The New York Times
A plaque adorns the building dedicated to Charles David Keeling, who started measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide at the site in 1958.
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Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

The new measurement came from analyzers high atop Mauna Loa, the volcano on the big island of Hawaii that has long been ground zero for monitoring the worldwide carbon dioxide trend.

Devices there sample clean, crisp air that has blown thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, producing a record of rising carbon dioxide levels that has been closely tracked for half a century.

Carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million was first seen in the Arctic last year, and had also spiked above that level in hourly readings at Mauna Loa. But the average reading for an entire day surpassed that level at Mauna Loa for the first time in the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday, according to data from both NOAA and Scripps.

Carbon dioxide rises and falls on a seasonal cycle and the level will dip below 400 this summer, as leaf growth in the Northern Hemisphere pulls about 10 billion tons of carbon out of the air. But experts say that will be a brief reprieve — the moment is approaching when no measurement of the ambient air anywhere on earth, in any season, will produce a reading below 400.

“It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a Columbia University earth scientist.

From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 parts per million in the depths of ice ages, to about 280 during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperatures and CO2 levels are tightly linked.

For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.

Governments have been trying since 1992 to rein in emissions, but far from slowing, emissions are rising at an accelerating pace, thanks partly to rapid economic growth in developing countries. Scientists fear the level of the gas could triple or even quadruple before being brought under control.

Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.

Experts fear that humanity may be precipitating a return to such conditions — except this time, billions of people are in harm’s way.

“It takes a long time to melt ice, but we’re doing it,” Dr. Keeling said. “It’s scary.”

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 10, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of carbon dioxide in the air as of Thursday’s reading from monitors. It is .04 percent, not .0004 percent.

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[sirs]

You do know what the by-product of our respiration system is, right?  Pretty much every mammal in fact, expels Co2.  Liberal logic....we need to all stop breathing, or at least breathe less, to bring Co2 levels down.  Perhaps we can receive government carbon caps, to compliment carbon credits, so we don't exceed the Government mandated Co2 levels

[BSB]

You do know what the by-product of  Liberal logic....we need to all stop breathing, or at least brour respiration system is, right?  Pretty much every mammal in fact, expels Co2. eathe less, to bring Co2 levels down.  Perhaps we can receive government carbon caps, to compliment carbon credits, so we don't exceed the Government mandated Co2 levels

Yeah, they're all a bunch of liberals and they're telling us to stop breathing.


BSB

[sirs]

Apparently.......or at least breathe less.  I guess we should start applying for our Oxygen credits

[sirs]

I also wonder if some folks don't realize that plants/trees require carbon dioxide to survive and for photosynthesis.  And that the cycle then leads to the oxygen, we humans need to breathe and survive.  hmmmmmmm

[Xavier_Onassis]

More carbon dioxide will not result in better harvests, The plants we have are adapted to current CO2 levels. If the percentage of Oxygen in the atmosphere increased, we would not get bigger people or more of them.After centuries or millenia, there might be some changes.

CO2 is a more dense gas, and it holds heat in the atmosphere by reflecting it back down. The science about what CO2 does is pretty well known, and there is a greenhouse gas effect. You can see how it works in any greenhouse near you.

Global Climate change is caused by humans and can be controlled by humans. Experts on this know far more than the dense sirs ever will.

[sirs]

Here's your chance to lead by example, Xo.  Stop breathing, or at least breathe less

[Xavier_Onassis]

Aren't you witty?

[Plane]

When the oceans grow warmer they will expand and cover more low land.That is famous, less famous is that the oceans hold a huge amount of CO2 gas in solution.

As the oceans warm they can hold less CO2 and Methane in solution, they will outgas more than our industrial use of fossil fuels ever did.

This is possibly the frount end of a cascadeing event that will accellerate in speed and multiply in effect..

I would be very interested in ideas that would stop or mitigate this possibility , but I have little paitence with Al Gore or others who advocate paniced and innefective austerity measures that do not have even the potential to help.

If every American entirely stopped contributing to the global warming situation , all of the surviving Americans would be living like cavemen and the march of global warming would be slowed by a few percent.

There might be good potential in making citys float and planting wheat in the arctic circle , and various ways of coping with the change, or there may be engineering methods for manipulating the greenhouse gasses or the adzorption of sunlight, this is worthy of study and effort and expense. We might start farming a large patch of algae in the middle of the Pacific where the water is nearly dead now, we might place a cloud of dust in orbit to reduce the sunlight that impacts the Earth, we might imight invent and distribute more effecient waterheaters or better power sorces, there are lots of things that could be done that I can believe would have positive effect.

I just don't want to hear about a unilateral austerity program that doesn't even promise to make much diffrence.

Last I heard , most of the signers of the Koyto treatys have failed to meet any goals.

[sirs]

Aren't you witty?

Not really.  Only that current global temperatures, haven't risen much more than what is generally seen as naturally.  Just saw some of the coldest weather touching the country, than seen for quite a while.  And how's that toretential tornado season stacking up?

[BSB]

"The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred." George Bancroft
 


BSB

[sirs]

lol.....oh, the irony