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When it reaches 407.84596432222, you will be able to say the same
exact thing. That was my point. "400" is a number that humans
can relate to, not a number that has any significance in the
science of climate change. But it is a nice excuse to "raise
fears".<br>
<br>
Thank you for your learning resource suggestion. Maybe I'll look
into it. It's something I'm sure a lot of people struggle with.<br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
On 05/12/2013 07:36 AM, Art Deco wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAB8VJX7_WJcL7SR71oEJzdcMUA2n+=eFGepJfMKT+Ofyn1kNOA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<div>"The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the
atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared
milestone, scientists reported Friday,<font size="6"><span
style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><b> reaching a concentration
not seen on the earth for millions of years</b></span></font>."<br>
<br>
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Perhaps a course in remedial reading would not be amiss.<br>
<br>
w.<br>
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<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:36 PM, Paul
Rumelhart <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com" target="_blank">godshatter@yahoo.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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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
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<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 05/11/2013 12:29 PM, Art Deco wrote:<br>
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<div> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/"
target="_blank"><img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif"
alt="The New York Times" border="0"
hspace="0" vspace="0" align="left"></a> </div>
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<div>May 10, 2013</div>
<h1>Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising
Fears </h1>
<h6>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" target="_blank"><span>JUSTIN GILLIS</span></a></span></h6>
<div>
<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/"
target="_blank">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"
target="_blank">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"
target="_blank">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/"
target="_blank">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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Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com"
target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>
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-- <br>
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>
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