Sunday, May 05, 2013

Annnnnnnndddd....no problem whatsoever

Nothing to see (or breathe) here:

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere are on the cusp of reaching 400 parts per million for the first time in 3 million years.

The daily CO2 level, measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was 399.72 parts per million last Thursday, and a few hourly readings had risen to more than 400 parts per million.
''I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,'' said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US, which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

''At this pace we'll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.''

The 450 ppm level is considered to be the point at which the world has a 50 per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Any higher and the odds of avoiding searing temperature rises of 4 or 5 degrees by the end of the century become prohibitively risky.

Of course, with the exception of cyborg-Cheney all of our political leadership will have died by then...and unlike many of us, not from starvation.

6 comments:

StonyPillow said...

That's, I say, that's degrees C, son.

Even a bit warm for a true Southern gentleman. Yer not payin attention, boy. Note the strategically placed lime slice. This heah's a family cartoon, son.

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Yastreblyansky said...

Ah, perhaps we should call Niall Ferguson, who is straight and cares about the future.

Anonymous said...

We're totally fucked, because we can't do anything until all the delusional fanatics of the GOP agree that there is a problem.

And that's about as likely to happen as Hitler making a deathbed conversion to kindness and compassion and renouncing all his previous deluded, fanatical beliefs.

We're fucked.

Anonymous said...

*in best church lady voice*
"well, in the good book it says..."

sometimes i think the endtimer anti-science tools are winning in their whining (they are heavily invested in the "signs" and "portents" and making the second coming in their lifetimes so they can be the one's to ride the short bus to heaven and get the best seats to the elmer gantry freakocreepo holy roly spirit tent revival) when every damned climate benchmark gets passed without hardly a notice much less the action required to NOT meet the next one.

we're not being tipped, me thinks sometimes we're being tilted 'apurpose!

*removes tinfoil hat*

pansypoo said...

something might happen w/ humans AFTER the tipping point.