Keeling Curve Website Wants You To Know When CO2 Levels Hit 400 Parts Per Million

[kristopher]

Keeling Curve Website Wants You To Know When CO2 Levels Hit 400 Parts Per Million
By Joe Romm on Apr 24, 2013 at 12:30 pm



On Monday, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory measured CO2 levels in the air of 398.36 parts per million (ppm). And that means carbon dioxide, the main gas driving climate change, will soon hit 400 ppm for the first time in human existence.

The world’s longest unbroken record of atmospheric CO2 levels is the “Keeling Curve” measured at Mauna Loa since 1958. The curve was initiated by Charles David Keeling and is maintained by his son, Ralph F. Keeling, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (where I did my Ph.D. research on the physical oceanography of the Greenland Sea).

The Scripps folks want you to know precisely when we hit 400 ppm so they have set up a website and even a twitter feed, @Keeling_curve, that will tweet out the CO2 level every day.
The 400 ppm level is another major milestone on humanity’s accelerating path to destroying a livable climate. As climatologist Chris Field told the AP, “It’s an important threshold. It is an indication that we’re in a different world.”

How different can be seen in this chart:


The 400 ppm level was passed in parts of the Arctic last May because...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/24/1911821/keeling-curve-website-co2-levels-hit-400-parts-per-million/

[Gregorian]

1. But will it affect personal responsibility? Will there be an actual connection.

Two friends of mine just made trips in planes that may very well have passed each other. One flew from California to Japan on business. The other flew from Taiwan to California for the Sea Otter mountain bike festival. I don't know if either was frivolous or necessary. But I'm pointing out that the activity of 7 billion people is at absurd levels. Again, we benefit from much of it. But at a price. A price that may kills us in not too much time.

When to people begin to make the connection AND make changes to their fuel use? After all, that is what that publicizing that graph is intended to do.

[kristopher]

2. I don't know.

But I do know that not trying to get the message out will ensure BAU.

[Viking12]

3. Current reading: 399.72 ppm (04/25/13)

Should we start an office pool?