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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.<br>
<br>
It is, in fact, just another excuse to "raise fears". So, of
course, you'll see all sorts of articles about it.<br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
On 05/11/2013 12:29 PM, Art Deco wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAB8VJX6O-sZ5e8cR33Jnjfi8pvp+-HhMNvfTqgw_fxxQ4fpHTQ@mail.gmail.com"
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<div class="">
<div class=""> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif"
alt="The New York Times" border="0" hspace="0"
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<div class="">May 10, 2013</div>
<h1>Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears </h1>
<h6 class="">By <span>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/justin_gillis/index.html"
rel="author" title="More Articles by JUSTIN GILLIS"><span>JUSTIN
GILLIS</span></a></span></h6>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
“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. </p>
<p>
Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/">Scripps
Institution of Oceanography</a> 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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
The new measurement came from <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Times article"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/science/earth/22carbon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">analyzers
atop Mauna Loa</a>, the volcano on the big island of
Hawaii that has long been ground zero for monitoring the
worldwide trend on carbon dioxide, or CO2. <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html">Devices
there sample</a> 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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
“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. </p>
<p>
>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<sub>2</sub> levels are tightly
linked. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
Experts fear that humanity may be precipitating a return to
such conditions — except this time, billions of people are
in harm’s way. </p>
<p>
“It takes a long time to melt ice, but we’re doing it,” Dr.
Keeling said. “It’s scary.” </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
His analysis revealed a relentless, long-term increase
superimposed on the seasonal cycle, a trend that was dubbed
the <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="Background on the
Keeling Curve" href="http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/">Keeling
Curve</a>. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
“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.” </p>
<p>
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<sub>2</sub> levels in the atmosphere are
rather undramatic,” a Republican congressman from
California, Dana Rohrabacher, said in a Congressional
hearing several years ago. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
“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<sub>2</sub> 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.” </p>
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-- <br>
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
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