Goodbye cruel world: we’ve passed the carbon tipping point

[ffr]

We have passed a grim new milestone for atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, probably for good. Earlier this week Mauna Loa Observatory, a key site for keeping tabs on carbon dioxide measured 400 parts per million — a figure that some researchers have claimed would be the critical tipping point for the Earth.

Numbers higher than 400 ppm have been observed a few times in the last decade, what makes this significant is that September is usually the month when global C02 levels are at the lowest.

Ralph Keeling, a scientist at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography and lead on their CO2 monitoring program wrote that it was “almost impossible” that we will drop below 400 ppm in the coming months. “Brief excursions toward lower values are still possible, but it already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year – or ever again for the indefinite future.”


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I urge you: talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Talk to anyone who will listen. Call politicians. Send letters. Get ahold of the biggest decision makers you can and encourage them to commit to change and talk to their colleagues. There is still time, but we are running out… and fast.- Geek.com

With only 38 days left, help elect the candidate that believes in science. Your future depends upon it.

[MADem]

1. You got that right!!!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hillary-clinton-declares-i-believe-in-science/

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Who says 400 ppm is “the carbon tipping point?”

I don’t mean to imply that carbon levels above 400 ppm are acceptable, we need to try to get them down to 350 ppm (or likely lower.) However, proclaiming that we have passed a “tipping point” implies that we cannot possibly recover.

http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/684/ArtMID/1768/ArticleID/10490/Heat-trapping-gas-concentrations-top-400-ppm-two-months-earlier-than-last-year.aspx

…

Friday, March 21, 2014

…

What does it mean that carbon dioxide levels topped 400 ppm on March 16 this year at Mauna Loa Observatory, nearly two months earlier than last year?

JB: 400 ppm is essentially a milestone along the way, reminding us that carbon dioxide continues to increase in the atmosphere, and at faster rates virtually every decade. This is consistent with rising fossil fuel emissions.

…

Is there a tipping point, or carbon dioxide concentration that sets off severe consequences for human and planetary health?

JB: 400 ppm is not a tipping point. It is a milestone, marking the fact that humans have caused carbon dioxide concentrations to rise 120 ppm since pre-industrial times, with over 90 percent of that in the past century alone. We don't know where the tipping points are.

…

[Akamai]

3. You are freaking correct! I've had nightmares about these issues for years and embraced Bernie about this.

But Hilary too was concerned about these issues, and she sure is better on these matters than any of the other candidates in the race. She is very progressive, has been, and has been encouraged to be so by we progressives.

In addition to the consequences of abortion rights, citizens United, etc., we have to think about the impact of the world as a result of global climate change, and our need to clamp down on our use of fossil fuels.

Great point! The human race may well and completely if we do not do something about climate change. Even if we succeed in halting it now, our future will be difficult and we want informed options. (I'm not in favor of a nuclear war to eliminate population, or a plague that wipes out 99% of us, or…)

Hillary is focused, well-informed, empathetic, and she's certainly looks at the data honestly. She is the best hope of us in leaving a world that is not inhabited by cockroaches, as the highest life form.

[Boomer]

4. This is not a "tipping point"

It's difficult enough to make the case for the catastrophic effects of climate change without misplaced hyperbole and melodramatic misuse of scientific terms.

There may well be a tipping point for CO2 that triggers a state change in our atmosphere and/or climate, but we don't know what that level is or what the results will be. The 400ppm figure for CO2 concentrations is an arbitrary point that carries emotional and conceptual significance, but so far it isn't tied to any specific result.

Our future depends on a real understanding of the science of climate change shared by everyone, not just our president. Flinging about glib phrases from mass media isn't helpful.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. It appears to be a meme

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=carbon+tipping+point+400

It all feeds into fatalism. “Oh well! There’s nothing we can do about it now! Might as well buy that new SUV!”

[mackdaddy]

5. CO2 Reduction "technology" is Pie in the Sky.

Coal cost about $40 per ton, and makes about 2.85 tons of CO2 when that 1 ton is burned. Carbon dioxide capture is about $400 to $1000 per ton if you do have a way to sequester it forever. In reality it is much cheaper to not burn it than it is to remediate it, not even counting the damage from climate change.

As I understand it, Once in the atmosphere (and oceans), CO2 takes many thousands of years to be naturally sequestered. And it can take several decades for the effect of CO2 emitted today to fully be seen in global warming temperature increases. We have not seen the warming from coal burned in the late 1980s much less all the new CO2 since then and what we are continuing to emit.

A single (large) power plant in GA burns 11million tons of coal per year, and emits over 30million tons of new CO2 each year. There are thousands of these plants around the globe burning either coal or gas, not even counting all the vehicle and ship CO2 emissions. We would have to come up with thousands of these mythical "remediation" plants to just to offset the new emissions. How are we going to "reduce" the levels, even if we again magically stopped burning carbon fuels?

We have already committed to extreme climate disruption. But there is no way we will make any significant real reductions because we are committed to fossil fuels for years to come which will make climate disruption even worse. I think it is like human civilization has stage 4 climate cancer, and yet we are going "nope, can't be true".

I think we will know beyond any doubt in a very few years.