Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Al Gore calls for a day of prayer and reflection, and bothering your neighbor:
So please, take this day and the milestone it represents to reflect on the fragility of our civilization and and the planetary ecosystem on which it depends. Rededicate yourself to the task of saving our future. Talk to your neighbors, call your legislator, let your voice be heard. We must take immediate action to solve this crisis. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now.
Scientific American laments the plants
This measurement is just the hourly average of CO2 levels high in the Hawaiian sky, but this family’s figures carry more weight than those made at other stations in the world as they have faithfully kept the longest record of atmospheric CO2. Arctic weather stations also hit the hourly 400 ppm mark last spring and this one. Regardless, the hourly levels at Mauna Loa will soon drop as spring kicks in across the northern hemisphere, trees budding forth an army of leaves hungrily sucking CO2 out of the sky.
…
In the coming year, Scientific American will run an occasional series, “400 ppm,” to examine what this invisible line in the sky means for the global climate, the planet and all the living things on it, including human civilization.
Sorry, we already beat you to it when it comes to summing up what it means:
Since the world hasn’t ended (just like what happened with Y2K) we can now go forward from here.
T-shirts saying “I survived 400 PPM” will be made available if there’s enough interest in comments.
UPDATE: T-shirts now available due to popular demand. See here:
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T-shirt I’d like to see:
400 ppm!
Great for Plants and People.
No discernable effect on climate.
What’s not to love?
I find this statement from Scientific American to be sort of, well, weird:
‘Regardless, the hourly levels at Mauna Loa will soon drop as spring kicks in across the northern hemisphere, trees budding forth an army of leaves hungrily sucking CO2 out of the sky.’
Ok, let us think about this. What kind of army is an army of leaves. Did the leaves enlist, or were they drafted in this war against the enemy CO2? Where did they sign up? Or is ‘an army of leaves’ a rather emotional and not particularly artful description. Hell if I know.
Now, it’s hard for me to imagine leaves ‘hungrily sucking CO2 out of the sky’. So I looked up the definition for the word ‘suck’. Here goes: ‘To draw (liquid) into the mouth by movements of the tongue and lips that create suction.’ Honest, that definition came from the Free Online Dictionary and not from …well, any other source you may think it came from.
Now, try to think about a leaf, let alone an army of them, wrapping its tongue and lips around the sky and sucking it dry of CO2. Try to imagine that. I can’t. I can imagine other things involved with that word but I certainly can’t imagine that. And I tend to doubt, or at least I hope, that someone writing for the Scientific American can’t really imagine it either.
ALGORES effusion is listed at realclearpolitics.com, having appeared in the Huffington Post.
Just under it, as the Feature Article for realclearscience, is “Weird things attributed to Climate Change” apparently written by staff at that operation. It is a list. The first on the list is the impact on kangaroo scrotum size.
ALGORE has competition for public attention. Which will attract more readers? Which will carry more weight?
The absurdity and insanity is going mainstream!
Yes a Tee would be good.
Perhaps on the back you could have “Only 400ppm to the next doubling!”
@Tom J says:
May 10, 2013 at 12:56 pm
“And I tend to doubt, or at least I hope, that someone writing for the Scientific American can’t really imagine it either.”
You hope in vain.
What is urgently needed is a team of anthropologists to start documenting these things.
Sign me up for the t-shirt. Just wonderful!
Crap, got to cut the grass again. Two shirts please, large and extra large
HEAD FOR THE HILLS!!!
http://youtu.be/P2qVNK6zFgE
Is there a version of the tee that says “I survived 0.04 percent”?
@John Tillman –
I assume you know what CACCA means in Italian – and yes, it’s a good characterization of the “new” catastrophist/doomsayer/Chicken Little meme.
I’ve been in a few REAL greenhouses where the CO2 content was presumably 1000 ppm or better, and didn’t have any problem breathing. So I can’t get too excited about 400 ppm. And I’d willing to bet there’s enough CO2 in the vicinity of Mauna Loa to substantially skew the measurements thereof.
More stupid scare tactics by the Inconvenient Liar and a once-proud periodical that has sunk to the lowest of lows. How eveil on the one hand, how sad on the other
Look guys, the more they scream and shout about 400ppm then you reply with 15+ years of temperature standstill. That should get some of them thinking.
I’ll just add a line and say that all views are worth understanding before LOLing at the sky is falling narrative.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-milestone-climate-change
If 350 ppm is regarded as the desired quantity , how is 0.005 % more deemed a catastrophe ? Co2 must be the most powerful substance known to mann .
Waal, mangle mah coral reef if CO@ur momisugly ain’t hit 4,000 PM ‘n countin’! Guess we-uns all are a-livin’ on borrowed time… hey, Cletus, break out a case o’ suds.
Heh. How about a two sided t-shirt?
CO2 graph on the front, and RSS from 1998 to now on the back.
You guys are looking at this wrong way. The atmosphere is actually 99.96% CO2 free! Take that, Algore!
BTW, Anthony, love having the spell check because I am typing challenged.
TheOtherJohninCalifornia,
Relax. The 1930’s were far warmer than the 2000s.
And this chart will help bring you back down to earth.
Nothing unusual or unprecedented is happening. Relax.
Pat says:
May 10, 2013 at 10:42 am
Not too late for Bill McKibben to lay claim to 450.org and 500.org.
—————–
450.org is already taken.
500.org can be had for the low, low price of $9,500.
http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=500.org&language=us&et_sub=164&partnerid=14456&et_cid=13&et_lid=17473&origin=parking
The Moonbat speaks of a “road of idiocy”. It’s a road that he’s intimately familiar with, having logged countless miles on it himself.
Great, that extra .01% of CO2 the past 100 or so years, might make my tomatos grow better up here in Michigan. Provided it doesn’t freeze them this weekend. They are predicting frost on Sunday morning. What ever happened to Al (Jazeera) Gore’s promise of global warming. We’re still waiting here in Michigan.
milodonharlani says:
May 10, 2013 at 12:12 pm
theOtherJohninCalif says:
May 10, 2013 at 11:23 am
————————————
“Actually the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades and coast ranges is a jungle, if that means “rain forest”. By a jungle is usually meant a tropical rain forest. The climax state of the western Pacific NW is a temperate rain forest. Without humans, even the floor of the Willamette Valley would be covered with towering, old growth western hemlock trees.”
*******************
Ummmm…not exactly. It is far too hot and dry in the Willamette Valley for hemlock. Planted hemlock can grow in the valley, but under natural conditions it would be easily out-competed by Douglas-fir, and heat and drought tolerant herbaceous plants.
LKMiller (aka treegyn1)
I’ve never really understood why CO2 is measured on or near a volcano. CO2 is abundant in and around them even when not errupting. Someone please explain?
milodonharlani says:
May 10, 2013 at 12:50 pm
“The average is estimated to have reached 300 ppm in 1910. It will take a few more years for the average to attain 400. I’ll be concerned if it got back to 1000 ppm, a true greenhouse level. Some people might get headaches after prolonged exposure to that concentration. ”
Some people get headaches all by themselves.
“CO2 levels above 1000 ppm correlate with complaints of minor health problems such as eye and throat irritation, headache and fatigue. Interestingly, it is unlikely that CO2 is causing these problems. More likely, CO2 levels are high due to poor ventilation in the building and other more toxic gases are also building up. CO2 levels above 5000 ppm are considered an occupational hazard and can cause drowsiness and other problems. Very high levels (above 10 per cent) will result in loss of consciousness.”
http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8091324_normal-co2-levels-offices.html
BTW, a higher CO2 level in your blood promotes oxygen release from hemoglobin and that’s why you let hyperventilating people breathe into a bag to rebreathe their own CO2.
Put me down for a 400ppm t-shirt or two. If you make a polo as well I can wear it to golf. I’m trying to get as many games in as possible before Agenda21 shuts down my pastime.
I’ll take 2 tees. I’d love to send my kids to school in them, just to see if there is any reaction.