Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - BusinessWeek

By SETH BORENSTEIN

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WASHINGTON

The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years -- probably more -- since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders -- with a few honorable exceptions -- are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

------

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Global warming: Monthly average atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 400 ppm at ... - Summit County Citizens Voice

‘The path we’re on is foolish and dangerous and will lead to unacceptable changes’

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY â€"Underscoring the inexorable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported today that average monthly concentrations of CO2 in the air around Barrow, Alaska reached 400 parts per million for the first time ever.

Carbon dioxide, emitted by fossil fuel combustion and other human activities, is the most significant greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.

The record-high readings came in April and May, at a time of year when CO2 levels are highest in the northern hemisphere just before plants start to absorb the gas as part of their growing cycle, but are worrisome nonetheless as an indicator of global CO2 levels.

“The northern sites in our monitoring network tell us what is coming soon to the globe as a whole,” said Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. “We will likely see global average CO2 concentrations reach 400 ppm about 2016.”

Average global levels of CO2 were 390.4 ppm in 2011, according to NOAA measurements, and will likely reach 400 ppm about 2016. Before the Industrial Revolution of the 1880s, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm.

“It’s central evidence that the path we’re on is foolish and dangerous and will lead to unacceptable changes,” said Rocky Mountain Climate Organization director Stephen Saunders. “What’s little understood is that our current emissions are on the upper end of the spectrum,” said Saunders, whose organization assesses and publicizes potential global warming impacts in the greater Rocky Mountain Region.

Saunders said scientists usually look to the middle-of-the-road scenario when making projections about global warming impacts like sea level rise or precipitation changes. The current rate of emissions could lead to a much faster rate of warming, with significant impacts coming sooner than generally expected he said.

Together with other organizations and partners, Saunders’ organization has published reports showing how snowpack and streamflows could be affected by rising temperatures. Most recently, a report outlined how global warming may affect water supplies in key Colorado river basins.

NOAA said CO2 levels as six other remote high latitude sites also reached 400 ppm at lease once this spring, including monitoring stations in Canada, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and an island in the North Pacific.

Measurements at all those remote sites reflect background levels of CO2, influenced by long-term human emissions around the world, but not directly by emissions from a nearby population center. At other more locally influenced sites in NOAA’s network, such as Cape May, N.J., upwind cities influence CO2 concentrations, which have exceeded 400 ppm in spring for several years.

“Turning up the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is like turning up the dial on an electric blanket,” said Jim Butler, director of the ESRL Global Monitoring Division. “You know it will keep getting warmer, but you don’t know how quickly the temperature will rise, and it can take awhile for the blanket â€" or the atmosphere â€" to heat up.”

Background

Scientists with ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division keep track of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in two ways. First, the group coordinates an international cooperative flask sampling network in which scientists and volunteers at more than 60 sites around the world collect air samples weekly, shipping them back to Colorado for detailed laboratory analysis. Secondly, the group maintains six baseline observatories around the world, where staff collect flasks for analysis and also measure CO2 continuously, along with many other aspects of the atmosphere and solar radiation.

Every year since 1959, when David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography made the first accurate measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, the concentration of the greenhouse gas has increased. In the early 1960s, it rose about 0.7 ppm per year. For the last decade, it has been rising at about 2 ppm per year. That observed increase, independent of the seasonal ups and downs described above, is due to the accelerating pace of emissions from human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

This spring’s numbers are technically “preliminary,” and will not be finalized until next year, but rarely change more than 0.2 ppm, Tans said.  

Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. NOAA calculates the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index every year, which takes into account the heating effects of other gases that are emitted from human activities (e.g., methane, nitrous oxide, and chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons). When those gases are also considered, the global atmosphere reached a CO2 equivalent concentration of 400 ppm in 1985; and 450 ppm in 2003. Atmospheric

CO2 levels are currently higher than they have been at any time during the last 800,000 years. Watch a NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory animation of carbon dioxide levels for the past 800,000 years on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXHDwdd7Tf8.

39.586656 -106.092081

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Filed under: climate and weather, Colorado, Environment, global warming Tagged: | atmospheric CO2, Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

North Carolina Bill Would Require Coastal Communities To Ignore Global Warming ... - ThinkProgress

Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.

King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the apocryphal legend). These all-too-real lawmakers want to go one better and mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches, far below what the science now projects.

A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.

The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:

Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,

Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University and a member of the state science panel, pointed out to the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF), that this proposed law stands against the conclusions of “every major science organization on the globe.” Young notes, “Every other state in the country is planning on three-feet of sea level rise or more.” The Charlotte Observer notes:

Maine is preparing for a rise of up to 2 meters by 2100, Delaware 1.5 meters, Louisiana 1 meter and California 1.4 meters. Southeastern Florida projects up to a 2-foot rise by 2060.

In place of science, the bill would mandate that only the Division of Coastal Management can put out an estimate of the rate of sea-level rise rate â€" and they must use an arbitrary, low-ball formula:

These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.

As the National Academies report to the Navy pointed out, observations suggest SLR won’t be linear: Thanks to satellite data, “it is now possible to detect acceleration in sea-level rise over the past few decades.”

Here is NASA’s website with the data plotted showing the recent acceleration:

See also the Real Climate post, “Is Sea-Level Rise Accelerating?”

A 2011 study led by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory using satellite data concluded, “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace.” The JPL news release explains how the authors concluded we face 1 foot of sea level rise by 2050:

The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches).

Sadly, even if this inane bill never becomes law, anti-science forces are already winning the battle to block sensible adaptation to global warming in North Carolina, one of the states most threatened by sea level rise.

A coastal economic development group called NC-20 attacked the state science panel’s recommendation to the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission to plan for 1 meter of SLR. And even though the panel reconfirmed its findings again in April, the Charlotte Observer reports, “NC-20, named for the 20 coastal counties, appears to be winning its campaign to undermine them”:

The Coastal Resources Commission agreed to delete references to planning benchmarks â€" such as the 1-meter prediction â€" and new development standards for areas likely to be inundated.

The N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which is using a $5 million federal grant to analyze the impact of rising water, lowered its worst-case scenario from 1 meter to 15 inches by 2100.

Several local governments on the coast have passed resolutions against sea-level rise policies.

NC-20’s science adviser, is physicist John Droz, who Climate Progress readers know as a long-time wind opponent â€" Memo: Group Wants To Create Fake Grassroots Wind ‘Subversion’ Campaign That ‘Should Appear As A Groundswell’. He is also a senior fellow at the ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute. ATI is devoted to spreading doubt about climate change, opposing state-level renewable energy targets, and stripping away environmental regulations. The ATI is so extreme that it was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.”

One North Carolinian writing in Scientific American said the proposed bill is “exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.”

The irony is that North Carolina celebrates scientific and technological achievement on its license plate and state quarter â€" the Wright Brothers “First Flight” at Kittyhawk. Oh, and its state motto is Esse quam videri, which means “To be, rather than to seem.”

You’d think such a state would pass laws based on science and what actually is, rather than what seems to be popular with narrow economic interests.

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - 9NEWS.com

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Written by

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years - probably more - since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders - with a few honorable exceptions - are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - msnbc.com

WASHINGTON â€" The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

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Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and most of it lasts about 100 years in the air, but some of it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years â€" probably more â€" since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders â€" with a few honorable exceptions â€" are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

On Jeopardy, Global Warming Skeptics Test Better In Science Than Alarmists - Health Care News (blog)

(This piece was first published at Forbes.com.)

Jeopardy champion: “I’ll take ‘Science’ for $800, Alex.”

Alex Trebek: “The answer is, ‘Inferior scientific literacy.’ ”

Jeopardy champion: “What is one of the peer-reviewed factors distinguishing global warming alarmists from global warming realists?”

Alex Trebek: “That is correct! Pick again.”

Jeopardy champion: “I’ll take ‘Science’ for $1000, Alex.”

Alex Trebek: “The answer is, ‘Inferior technical reasoning capacity.’”

Jeopardy champion: “What is another one of the peer-reviewed factors distinguishing global warming alarmists from global warming realists?”

Alex Trebek: “You are correct again!”

In light of a new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Climate Change, don’t be surprised if the above scenario soon becomes a real-world Jeopardy show.

A team of researchers, led by a professor at Yale University, tested more than 1,500 U.S. adults on their scientific literacy and technical reasoning capacity, and then asked them to assign a numerical value to how concerned they are about climate change.

According to the study, published earlier this week, “Members of the public with the highest degrees of scientific literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change.”

Indeed, “As respondents’ science-literacy scores increased, concern with climate change decreased.”

It seems the media needs to reverse whom it deems “anti-science” and “science deniers.”

Not that Al Gore calling climate scientists at MIT, Harvard, Princeton, etc., “Flat Earthers” was ever a believable scenario. The same applies to minimally educated newspaper reporters/advocates referring to scientists at NASA, NOAA, Columbia, Penn, etc., as “anti-science.”

When you get right down to it, it has been painfully obvious for quite some time that one side in the global warming debate is supported by objective scientific evidence and the other side is supported by ideology, the need to keep the billions in government gravy-train dollars flowing, and speculative, ever-failing computer models that they program themselves.

Hurricane activity has been near historic lows during the past several years. Tornadoes have become less frequent and less severe as the planet has warmed. Droughts have become less frequent and global soil moisture has improved. Deserts are shrinking. Crop production sets new records nearly every year.

Alex Trebek: “Now on to Final Jeopardy. The topic is, once again, ‘Science.’ How much would you like to risk?”

Jeopardy champion: “I’ll bet it all, Alex.”

Alex Trebek: “The answer is, “Railroad engineering and astronomy.”

Jeopardy champion: “What is the training of the top ‘scientist’ overseeing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the top ‘scientist’ overseeing official U.S. government temperature compilations?”

Alex Trebek: “That is correct! Congratulations, you are our new Jeopardy champion!”

Tagged as: al gore, climate change, global warming, intelligence, manbearpig, scientific literacy, study, Yale

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - The Associated Press

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone'

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer â€" 13 hours ago 

WASHINGTON (AP) â€" The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years â€" probably more â€" since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders â€" with a few honorable exceptions â€" are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

• NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - WTNH

Updated: Thursday, 31 May 2012, 7:18 AM EDT
Published : Thursday, 31 May 2012, 7:18 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) â€" The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years â€" probably more â€" since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders â€" with a few honorable exceptions â€" are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

___

Online:

NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

Copyright Associated Press, Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Geoengineering for Global Warming: Increasing Aerosols in Atmosphere Would ... - Science Daily (press release)

ScienceDaily (May 31, 2012) â€" One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from Earth's surface. But scientists theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day. New research from Carnegie's Ben Kravitz and Ken Caldeira indicates that blocking 2% of the sun's light would make the sky three-to-five times brighter, as well as whiter.

---

See Also:

• Environmental Issues
• Global Warming
• Atmosphere
• Geomagnetic Storms
• Climate
• Energy and the Environment

• Solar radiation
• Climate model
• Consensus of scientists regarding global warming
• Volcanic ash

Their work is published June 1st in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing Earth to get hotter and hotter. Large volcanic eruptions cool the planet by creating lots of small particles in the stratosphere, but the particles fall out within a couple of years, and the planet heats back up. The idea behind solar geoengineering is to constantly replenish a layer of small particles in the stratosphere, mimicking this volcanic aftermath and scattering sunlight back to space.

Using advanced models, Kravitz and Caldeira -- along with Douglas MacMartin from the California Institute of Technology -- examined changes to sky color and brightness from using sulfate-based aerosols in this way. They found that, depending on the size of the particles, the sky would whiten during the day and sunsets would have afterglows.

Their models predict that the sky would still be blue, but it would be a lighter shade than what most people are used to looking at now. The research team's work shows that skies everywhere could look like those over urban areas in a world with this type of geoengineering taking place. In urban areas, the sky often looks hazy and white.

"These results give people one more thing to consider before deciding whether we really want to go down this road," Kravitz said. "Although our study did not address the potential psychological impact of these changes to the sky, they are important to consider as well."

There are several larger environmental implications to the group's findings, too. Because plants grow more efficiently under diffuse light conditions such as this, global photosynthetic activity could increase, pulling more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. On the other hand, the effectiveness of solar power could be diminished, as less sunlight would reach solar-power generators. "I hope that we never get to the point where people feel the need to spray aerosols in the sky to offset rampant global warming," Caldeira said. "This is one study where I am not eager to have our predictions proven right by a global stratospheric aerosol layer in the real world."

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---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Carnegie Institution.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Ben Kravitz, Douglas G MacMartin, Ken Caldeira. Geoengineering: Whiter Skies? Geophysical Research Letters, 2012; DOI: 10.1029/2012GL051652

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - CBS News

WASHINGTON â€" The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years &#8212 probably more &#8212 since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders &#8212 with a few honorable exceptions &#8212 are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - AZFamily

Associated Press

Posted on May 31, 2012 at 12:00 AM

Updated today at 6:01 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) â€" The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years â€" probably more â€" since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders â€" with a few honorable exceptions â€" are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

___

Online:

NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - The Seattle Times

WASHINGTON â€"

The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years - probably more - since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders - with a few honorable exceptions - are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

---

Online:

NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

---

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone' - Boston.com

In this image released by NOAA, Chris Carparelli, adjusts a glass flask that line the walls of an air sample processing room at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., Wednesday, May 30, 2012. Researchers at the lab measure the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in air sent in weekly from sites that are part of an international cooperative air sampling network. The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollution. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace, having years ago blown by the 350 mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. So far only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will soon follow. (AP Photo/NOAA, Will von Dauster)

By Seth Borenstein AP Science Writer / May 31, 2012

WASHINGTONâ€"The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years -- probably more -- since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders -- with a few honorable exceptions -- are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Global warming won't go away because we're ignoring it - Chico News & Review

The planet is heating up. Do we want to talk about it? Most people don’t, it seems. They’d rather ignore it, as if it will then go away.

I understand how they feel. I feel the same way sometimes. If it weren’t for my job, I probably wouldn’t think about global warming as much as I do. But every day I receive reports in my inbox reminding me that it’s realâ€"and getting worse.

This week I received an article on a report released toward the end of international climate talks held in Bonn, Germany. It revealed that the planet is heading to a temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius, and likely more, by the end of this century, despite an international agreement to keep the increase to two degrees.

A 3.5-degree increase may not seem like much, but it would create conditions not seen on the planet for millions of years. We’ve gotten glimpses of what those conditions might be like with the extreme weather eventsâ€"especially droughtsâ€"we’ve experienced lately.

The pledges countries have made to reduce carbon emissions have been inadequate. Worse, the countries haven’t fulfilled their pledges, and at Bonn they failed to reach agreement on further pledges.

It’s not as if we don’t know what to do. “It’s clear we have the technology, know-how, and ability to meet this challenge, but we’re missing the political will,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told a reporter for Inter Press Service. Too many entities are thinking “me” instead of “we.”

That lack of will is playing out in the debate over Canadian tar sands. As James Hansen, the NASA scientist who since 1988 has been warning about global warming, pointed out recently in The New York Times, “Canada’s tar sands … contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history.”

If we were to add to global carbon-dioxide production by burning this stuff, he writes, “eventually … the level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. … Civilization would be at risk.”

Near-term, he says, “things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought. … More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.”

Hansen proposes a remedy: impose a gradually rising carbon fee collected from fossil-fuel companies, then distribute the money to all Americans on a per-capita basis each month. This would increase the cost of oil but also dramatically reduce its use, unlike the current subsidies that encourage more extraction through mountaintop removal, tar sands, hydraulic fracturing and deep-ocean and Arctic drilling.

We can’t ignore global warming. The only way we’re going to turn it around is by putting pressure on our political leaders. We owe it to the future to do so.

Robert Speer is editor of the CN&R.

When hitting 400 is not good: Levels of key greenhouse gas pass milestone ... - Washington Post

WASHINGTON â€" The world’s air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn’t quite a surprise, because it’s been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

“The fact that it’s 400 is significant,” said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. “It’s just a reminder to everybody that we haven’t fixed this and we’re still in trouble.”

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It’s been at least 800,000 years â€" probably more â€" since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They’ve been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

“This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high,” he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number “depressing,” and Butler said it was “a troubling milestone.”

“It’s an important threshold,” said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It is an indication that we’re in a different world.”

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and “we’re poking our heads above 400,” he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth’s atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it’s becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

“The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world’s political leaders â€" with a few honorable exceptions â€" are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis,” former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. “History will not understand or forgive them.”

But political dynamics in the United States mean there’s no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

“These milestones are always worth noting,” said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. “As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models” used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

___

Online:

NOAA’s global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Latest statistics show no evidence that global warming is taking place - Irish Times

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The Irish Times - Thursday, May 31, 2012

DICK AHLSTROM, Science Editor

AVERAGE TEMPERATURES and rainfall are up, according to the latest Met Éireann statistics. Yet there is no evidence in these figures to prove that global warming is at play.

Met Éireann yesterday released its latest long-term averages for rainfall, hours of sunshine, wind strength and temperature highs and lows.

People may seek evidence that climate change is under way but they won’t find it here.

These figures represent the latest climate averages encompassing weather statistics collected over 30 years from 1981 to 2010.

These long-term averages will replace those covering the period 1961 to 1990, which until now were used by Met Éireann forecasters every day as they presented their weather reports.

The statistics provide a 30-year average against which daily and monthly figures can be compared. They allow the forecasters to describe, for example, temperatures as being slightly above the norm or conditions as being dryer than usual in the east.

The 30-year averages allow Met Éireann to put current weather in context, according to the organisation’s senior climatologist Séamus Walsh. Using a block of 30 years allows highs and lows to be ironed out so that “typical” weather values can be derived.

But while a forecaster can say a given day, week or month is warmer or cooler than average, 30 years is far too short a period to be able to say whether a temperature trend is under way.

Having an accurate 30-year average is essential for several reasons. It provides a baseline against which current weather can be compared. It is also an important tool for researchers, the agricultural sector and policymakers, says Walsh.

So no conclusions can be drawn from the 0.75 degree rise in temperature averages between the new average data and the previous figures, nor from the 5 per cent increase in rainfall.

“This is the increase in rainfall but there is no evidence as yet of an increased number of days with a higher-than-average rainfall,” says Walsh.

It is not in the averages that a climatologist would search for an indication of climate change but in the weather peaks. These might include the exceptionally cold winters of 2007, 2008 and 2009, or a rise in the number of days with more than 10mm of rainfall.

An increase in the number of particularly severe storms would also be a matter of interest to a climatologist, but once again this depends on being able to compare the current situation against a long-term average. This will indicate whether something unusual is happening.

For this reason, it is valuable to be able to look well back into the past. This presents challenges, however, including the conversion of handwritten and collated weather data into a digitised form.

Met Éireann has highly dependable weather statistics dating to the mid-1800s from the Phoenix Park and Valentia, Co Kerry, Walsh says. But rainfall data is digitised only as far back as 1941 and temperatures to 1961.

The currently digitised statistics represent about 10 million individual data points. While Met Éireann would like all statistics digitised as far back as possible in what is known as “data rescue”, this would be a huge cost in time and labour when resources are scarce.

The latest weather stations automatically capture data, with minute-by-minute temperature sampling.

This is a far cry from the laboriously collected weather data of the 1800s from Birr Castle, Co Offaly, or Markree Castle, Co Sligo.

Irish weather: Some key records 

Met Éireann compiles its weather records from 750 or so stations, but the ones that have the most accurate records are synoptic stations, of which there were 14 for most of the periods of the current records.

The driest place in Ireland: Dublin airport, 754mm of rain annually.

The wettest place in Ireland: Valentia Observatory, 1,557mm annually.

The average annual rainfall at Shannon airport between 1981 and 2010 was 977.6mm â€" an average increase of 7.6per cent on the 1961-1990 period

The average annual rainfall at Valentia Observatory in the same period was 1557.4mm â€" an increase of 8.9 per cent.

The mean number of hours of sun a day at Rosslare was 4.3 (1,570 hours a year). At Malin Head it was 3.5 (1,278 hours a year).