[Vision2020] Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears

[Paul Rumelhart]

There is nothing notable, from a scientific viewpoint, about the number 
400 as it relates to parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere.  It's 
no different, from a scientific perspective, than the numbers 398 or 
407, for example.  It's not double the earliest readings of CO2, it's 
not some threshold beyond which how it acts as a gas changes.  It didn't 
just surpass the old record of 399 sometime in our past that now makes 
it more important. It's just a number that humans see as impactful, 
because the hundreds digit just changed and it's followed by two zeros, 
all based on our choice of using base-10 for our numbering system.

It is, in fact, just another excuse to "raise fears".  So, of course, 
you'll see all sorts of articles about it.

Paul

On 05/11/2013 12:29 PM, Art Deco wrote:
> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> May 10, 2013
>
>
>   Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears
>
>
>             By JUSTIN GILLIS
>             <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/justin_gillis/index.html>
>
> The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, 
> carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists 
> reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for 
> millions of years.
>
> Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average 
> daily level above 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 <http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/> 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.
>
> Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, 
> every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and 
> relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative 
> technologies.
>
> China is now the largest emitter, but Americans have been consuming 
> fossil fuels extensively for far longer, and experts say the United 
> States is more responsible than any other nation for the high level.
>
> The new measurement came from analyzers atop Mauna Loa 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/science/earth/22carbon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>, 
> the volcano on the big island of Hawaii that has long been ground zero 
> for monitoring the worldwide trend on carbon dioxide, or CO2. Devices 
> there sample <http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html> 
> 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. The two monitoring programs use 
> slightly different protocols; NOAA reported an average for the period 
> of 400.03 parts per million, while Scripps reported 400.08.
>
> 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 scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of 
> Columbia University.
>
> >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 CO_2 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.
>
> 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."
>
> Dr. Keeling's father, Charles David Keeling, began carbon dioxide 
> measurements on Mauna Loa and at other locations in the late 1950s. 
> The elder Dr. Keeling found a level in the air then of about 315 parts 
> per million --- meaning that if a person had filled a million quart 
> jars with air, about 315 quart jars of carbon dioxide would have been 
> mixed in.
>
> His analysis revealed a relentless, long-term increase superimposed on 
> the seasonal cycle, a trend that was dubbed the Keeling Curve 
> <http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/>.
>
> Countries have adopted an official target to limit the damage from 
> global warming, with 450 parts per million seen as the maximum level 
> compatible with that goal. "Unless things slow down, we'll probably 
> get there in well under 25 years," Ralph Keeling said.
>
> Yet many countries, including China and the United States, have 
> refused to adopt binding national targets. Scientists say that unless 
> far greater efforts are made soon, the goal of limiting the warming 
> will become impossible without severe economic disruption.
>
> "If you start turning the Titanic long before you hit the iceberg, you 
> can go clear without even spilling a drink of a passenger on deck," 
> said Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State 
> University. "If you wait until you're really close, spilling a lot of 
> drinks is the best you can hope for."
>
> Climate-change contrarians, who have little scientific credibility but 
> are politically influential in Washington, point out that carbon 
> dioxide represents only a tiny fraction of the air --- as of 
> Thursday's reading, exactly 0.04 percent. "The CO_2 levels in the 
> atmosphere are rather undramatic," a Republican congressman from 
> California, Dana Rohrabacher, said in a Congressional hearing several 
> years ago.
>
> But climate scientists reject that argument, saying it is like 
> claiming that a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom cannot have much 
> effect. Research shows that even at such low levels, carbon dioxide is 
> potent at trapping heat near the surface of the earth.
>
> "If you're looking to stave off climate perturbations that I don't 
> believe our culture is ready to adapt to, then significant reductions 
> in CO_2 emissions have to occur right away," said Mark Pagani, a Yale 
> geochemist who studies climates of the past. "I feel like the time to 
> do something was yesterday."
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
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