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CO2 Tops 400 ppm!
 Human influence on the Earth's atmosphere touched what climate scientists called a dire milestone Friday as concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide nudged up to a level unseen in about 3 million to 5 million years -- long before modern humans.Gee, I wonder if they had a climate back then? A monitoring station in Hawaii recorded carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million Friday, dramatically up from the 316 parts per million recorded when the station made its first measurements in 1958. The monitor, high atop the Mauna Loa volcano, offers the longest-running record of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured directly from the air. "[The] increase is not a surprise to scientists," said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global [carbon dioxide] emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving the acceleration." Climate scientist Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London said the particular figure reached Friday -- 400 parts per million -- holds no particular significance except as a milestone. So there is some truth in this article! "It gives us the chance to mark the ongoing increase in [carbon dioxide] concentration and talk about why it's a problem for the climate." Scientists have firmly linked rising atmospheric carbon dioxide to higher global temperatures, which have increased nearly a degree Fahrenheit, on average, since 1950. I wish they could agree on how much the climate has warmed since when. It'd make their stories so much more ... credible. Air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores show that, in the past 800,000 years, airborne concentrations remained lower than 400 parts per million. And scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and elsewhere have estimated that about 3 million to 5 million years have passed since so much carbon dioxide wafted in the Earth's atmosphere. The temperature during that period, known as the Pliocene Epoch, was 5 to 7 degrees warmer than today, with seas tens of feet higher. So why isn't it 5-7 degrees warmed with the seas tens of feet higher NOW? Can your models explain that? Airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide vary by season and location on Earth. But the measurements from the Mauna Loa monitor, which is run by Scripps, are considered the gold standard. Concentrations there are plotted on the iconic Keeling Curve, named after scientist Charles David Keeling, who initiated the measurements in 1958. At that time, the carbon dioxide level was 316 parts per million. Plotted on a curve? What is this, sixth-grade science? Why does it need to be plotted on a curve? Is that how they get the "hockey stick" curve? Actually, I suspect the writers have no idea what they are writing about, except of course, CO2 = BAD. Posted by: Bobby 2013-05-11 |
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