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:
This from the NYT piece yesterday:
“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.”
Yeah. So turn over your ill-gotten gains you liberty-loving, free-market, capitalist SOB’s and pony-up to save the planet.
Yes. Sign me up for those “T’s” .
They’ll make great Christmas stocking stuffers beside the roaring fireplace fires (CO2-spewing) of everyone I know.
vukcevic says: May 11, 2013 at 3:09 am
“That is all fine, except for one thing, the change in CO2 levels doesn’t change N. Hemisphere temperature, but it could be the other way around.”
You also aren’t considering the mass balance, it seems. The recent atmospheric accumulation (over the last few decades) accounts for about half our emissions. The rest must have gone into the oceans and the terrestrial biomass. You are proposing that increased temperatures might have naturally caused the atmospheric increase (mostly through ocean outgassing, I suppose). Are you suggesting that the Southern oceans have at the same time become huge sinks and absorbed the near totality of our emissions? That would means that just as the Northern Hemisphere became a huge net source (up to 2ppm of CO2, or 16 Gt per year), the Southern Hemisphere became a sink twice as effective (32 Gt per year). And this would have occurred in such a manner as to make our emissions fail to contribute. We must also suppose that the southern ocean would have sunken most of our emissions anyway.
The funny thing is that whether or not man is responsible for the increase in C02 doesn’t really matter except to the Climatists, since the increase is entirely beneficial. I hope we are, but remain skeptical. Maybe once all this manmade climate nonsense dies down, and science can get back to doing what it’s supposed to, then perhaps we’ll know, or at least have a better idea.
Dudley Horscroft says: May 11, 2013 at 4:24 am
……………
Hi Mr. Pierre-Normand
I said …but it could be the other way around
You grafted huge tree onto a sapling. I know very little about CO2 oceanic absorption and outgassing, but it appears there are strong indications that CO2 trails temperature rise rather than the other way around.
It would have been far more productive if you considered what is said in my post
and illustrated here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-NV.htm
You may also consider
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.gif
where change in GMF a proxy of the Arctic tectonic movements
but I will leave it to you to take on someone else on the CO2 oceanic absorption and outgassing.
350.org responds! And says very little, see http://400.350.org . Or not.
At least 400.350 looks bigger than 400, especially in Europe.
Steven O’Halloran says:
May 10, 2013 at 8:41 pm
“. For example, what does 15,000 on the stock market mean? Is it irrelevant, or does it depend on who you are and where you are? ”
It is irrelevant. The 30 companies used to compute the number change from time to time.
The current number is not based on all the same companies of a few years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
“The components of the DJIA have changed 48 times in its 117-year history. General Electric has had the longest continuous presence on the index, with its latest addition being in 1907. More recent changes to the index include the following:
On February 19, 2008, Chevron and Bank of America replaced Altria Group and Honeywell. Chevron was previously a Dow component from July 18, 1930, to November 1, 1999. During Chevron’s absence, its split-adjusted price per share went from forty-four dollars to eighty-five, while the price of petroleum rose from twenty-four dollars to a hundred.
On September 22, 2008, Kraft Foods replaced the American International Group (AIG) in the index.[5]
On June 8, 2009, General Motors and Citigroup were replaced by The Travelers Companies and Cisco Systems, which became the third company traded on the NASDAQ to be part of the Dow.[6]
On September 24, 2012, UnitedHealth Group replaced Kraft Foods following Kraft’s spinning off its North American snack food business.[7]”
At 400 ppm,
– we probably really have the highest CO2 levels in 2.77 million years.
I probably have the biggest database of the reliable numbers of anyone.
But CO2 has mostly been around 280 ppm for the last 24 million years since C4 grasses evolved and changed the mix of how much Carbon is held in vegetation at any one time. Over that time period, temperatures have been 4.0C higher than today and -5.0C from today.
http://s10.postimg.org/5fz8g5a3d/CO2_Last_40_Mys.png
The sources for this chart are:
Berner GeoCarb III
Pagani 2005
Antarctic Ice Core Composite
Pagani 1999
Royer 2006 Composites
Pearson 2000
IPCC AR4 2007 – Royer 2008 Composites
Pearson 2009
Tripati 2009
Bao 2008
Hoenisch 2009
Pagani 2010
Beerling Royer 2011
Bartoli 2011
Seki 2010
400ppm!! nevermind that!!. 440GBP a ton is a figure to be concerned about.
This is the new price for spuds on the market, due to a massive shortfall in harvest from winter cold and erratic growing season temperatures.
When the army of hungry leaves finally emerge, they will need to get busy sucking up all the CO2 they can get.
I think the T-shirt should show mobs of cheering Irishmen.
There’s another scenario that could be happening. Underwater vents and volcanoes could have emitted more CO2 recently. This would change the equilibrium balance between the oceans and the atmosphere. The oceans would absorb less CO2 and since MM CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere we would still see the isotope imbalance.
In fact, anything that changed the ocean CO2 concentration would automatically start a slow march towards equilibrium. Some of those may even be man made. And, land use changes could also be involved.
While human emissions will also affect the balance, there are many possible factors that we have no way of deciphering with our current historic data.
Maybe that’s why my lawn is growing a foot a week.
Why does Armageddon always happen with a round number?
Bill Illis says:
May 11, 2013 at 5:49 am
At 400 ppm,
– we probably really have the highest CO2 levels in 2.77 million years.
Very doubtful. I no more believe in the C02 hockeystick than the temperature hockeystick. Agendas abound.
I have been commenting on this over at The Guardian, I cannot believe the Stalinist nature of the moderation. Anything that even remotely dissents from the consensus position is zapped, un believable. Anyone else experiencing the same?
Might be worth a post Anthony, it is really not on to have that level of censorship on a national newspaper website.
@Jimbo
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.
Try that at The Guardian and they simply remove your comment and add you to their pre-moderation list, i.e. ban you from posting.
Bill Illis says:
May 11, 2013 at 5:49 am
Your chart shows the CO2 self corrects at 400 +/- PPM for the last 25 million years.
See DJ 10 May 12.40 PM.
Richard M says:
May 11, 2013 at 6:20 am
Underwater vents and volcanoes could have emitted more CO2 recently. This would change the equilibrium balance between the oceans and the atmosphere.
Quite impossible, because of the 13C/12C ratio of the (deep) oceans, which is way higher than in the atmosphere and we see a huge drop in 13C/12C ratio, both in the atmosphere and in the ocean surface layer (much larger than over the glacial-interglacial transitions over the past 800 kyr). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
The current drop in 13C/12C ratio is about 1/3rd of what can be expected from fossil fuel burning. That is diluted by the continuous (deep) ocean exchanges of CO2 from the equator to the poles and back via the THC. If that was additional to the human emissions, one would expect a 4 times higher increase in the atmosphere (32 GtC/yr or ~16 ppmv/yr) than from the human emissions alone.
But that is problematic by the mass balance: if humans emit 8 GtC/yr as CO2 and the oceans emit in balance 24 GtC more than they absorb, the difference between 32 GtC extra input per year and the measured yearly increase of 4 GtC (2 ppmv) in the atmosphere must be absorbed by plants (the only other relative fast source/sink). But the oxygen balance only shows a net sink of ~1 GtC/yr by the whole biosphere:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Bruce Cobb says:
May 11, 2013 at 6:38 am
Very doubtful. I no more believe in the C02 hockeystick than the temperature hockeystick. Agendas abound.
I know, it is difficult to believe anything that comes from climate science… But in this case, the CO2 HS is real, as good as the reverse HS for the 13C/12C ratio over the same period of 160 years sinds the industrial revolution took momentum.
The difference with temperature readings is that similar values are measured everywhere from near ground to about 20 km height and from near the North Pole to the South Pole. Except over the first few hundred meters over land, where huge sources and sinks are at work. All values are within +/- 2% of full scale, including seasonal variations and a NH-SH lag.
Surely measurements taken on a volcano are as likely to be right as temperature ones taken with the thermometers in a hot air vent. Even so called extinct volcanoes are nearly certain to still be spewing out through lesser vents.
David Cage says:
May 11, 2013 at 7:07 am
Surely measurements taken on a volcano are as likely to be right as temperature ones taken with the thermometers in a hot air vent.
Sometimes it is better to read what is done to assure that measurements taken are real “background” and not from volcanic vents or vegetation before making comments:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Measurements influenced by local volcanic vents or vegetation from the valley are not used for averaging. They still are available and including or excluding them doesn’t make any difference in yearly average or trend beyond 0.1 ppmv…
Similar values as at Mauna Loa are measured at the South Pole without any vegetation or volcanoes for thousands of km in the neighbourhood:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
@ferdinand meeus; It isn’t just that it comes from a field which just so happens to need the rise to be a) primarily human-caused, and b) now at a level not seen in 3 million years (i.e. confirmation bias), but the evidence is weak. Historically, C02 levels have risen after a warm period, with a lag time of between 100 to perhaps 800 years. That is just one point, there are others. The point being, the case has not been made. Pounding the table does not make it so.
The 400 t-shirt should have a 19th century date..
1) http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/9195-co2-levels-pre-industrial-revolution
“The ice core records show a smooth curve and does not include the variability. Eliminating the variability and using the smoothed curve then gives a false indication of actual CO2 atmospheric conditions. When curve smoothing is done, a lot of important information is ignored. Beck also shows that Charles Keeling, deliberately used afternoon readings when they are the lowest at 12,000 feet elevation, and the readings are only pertinent to maritime volcanoes at 12,000 feet and do not represent global actual levels. (Beck, 2008 “50 Years Of Continuous Measurements Of CO2 On Mauna Lea”, Energy and Environment Vol 19, No 7)
“Charles Keeling’s son continues to operate the Mauna Loa facility, and as Beck states “owns the monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements”. Since Keeling is a co-author of IPCC reports, the IPCC accepts that Mauna Lea is representative of global CO2 levels.”
2) http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/stomata.html
“Despite numerous 19th century air measurements showing +300 ppm CO2 levels, and despite the fact that many of the youngest ice cores showed higher than expected CO2 values and so were shifted forward 90-100 years from previously-established dates so that they would match the more elevated CO2 levels of 20th century air samples, the ice core record is today generally used to represent pre-1957 CO2 concentrations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places the pre-industrial concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at 280 ppm, based largely on the ice core record, although this has never been otherwise substantiated (7).”
3) http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-industrial-and-current-co2-levels-deliberately-corrupted/
Pre-Industrial And Current CO2 Levels Deliberately Corrupted.
by Dr. Tim Ball on May 9, 2012
in Data,Government,History,Land,Oceans,Politics,Theory
“I’ve told this story before but it requires repeating because of awareness of climate science corruption. Even skeptics realize claims of incompetence are inadequate. Official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate science was completely orchestrated for a premeditated result. T.R.Wigley’s 1983 paper “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level” was pivotal in the evolution of climate science corruption. It was a flawed paper that cherry-picked data to claim pre-industrial CO2 level was 270 ppm. G.S. Callendar did the same thing (diagram), as Zbigniew Jaworowski illustrated in a paper to a 2004 US Senate Committee.”
=====
Corruption of the data has been shown, those who think there is none can’t ignore this. It’s not the fault of those pointing out the corruption that any work done in good faith from the ‘official’ figures will have to be reconsidered.
“Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 11, 2013 at 7:01 am
Bruce Cobb says:
May 11, 2013 at 6:38 am
Very doubtful. I no more believe in the C02 hockeystick than the temperature hockeystick. Agendas abound.
I know, it is difficult to believe anything that comes from climate science… But in this case, the CO2 HS is real,…”
There is no question there re TOTAL CO2. The question is, how much of the “HS” and temp change is a direct CAUSE of emissions of CO2 from human activities? The answer is, at best not measurable, to none!
Ferdinand or anyone,
Have you ever looked at the Greenland ice core CO2 estimates. Basically, they have been abandoned and are never really talked about because of the nonsense results (or let’s say unexpected results, some plus +300ppms etc).
Why this doesn’t appear in the Antarctic ice cores hasn’t really been explained but the assumption is there is some additional chemistry going on in the Greenland ice which distorts the numbers.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/gases/co2.txt
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/grip/gases/gcco2.txt
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/grip/gases/irlsco2.txt
And at the base of the ice cores near bedrock, they were getting 100,000+ ppmv estimates
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/grip/gases/gasbas.txt
Not trying to start any controversies but that might be fun.
Bruce Cobb says:
May 11, 2013 at 7:33 am
Historically, C02 levels have risen after a warm period, with a lag time of between 100 to perhaps 800 years.
Indeed, the average increase and decrease over the past 800 kyr was about 8 ppmv/°C with a lag of ~800 +/- 600 years over glacial-interglacial tranisitions and several thousands of years for the opposite transition. But this quite good relationship (correl. 0.86) was broken some 160 years ago, by coincidence at the moment that humans started to emit ever increasing amounts of CO2. Not only in quantity, but also depleted of 13C and absent of 14C. See the change in ice cores:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
Thus there was a direct relation between CO2 levels and temperature, with CO2 lagging, but nowadays CO2 is leading, as we are about 100 ppmv above the temperature dictated equilibrium.
In how far that influences temperature is an entirely different question, where the answer is certainly not given by the current climate models…
“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. ”
Yes, 400 is such an evil number. The number 666 holds nothing to 400.
But, how much of that 400 does ALGORE’s lifestyle contribute?