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Carbon dioxide levels reach historic high - US monitors

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has broken above 400 parts per million for the first time in human history.

THE LEVEL OF carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has broken above 400 parts per million for the first time in human history, US monitors announced today, indicating a record level for greenhouse gases.

Climate scientists say that the symbolic threshold should serve as a call for action to begin reversing the damage caused to the environment by human activities and heavy use of polluting fossil fuels.

The Earth has not seen these levels of CO2 in millions of years, long before humans existed, said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science.

“We are creating a prehistoric climate in which human societies will face huge and potentially catastrophic risks,” said Ward.

Only by urgently reducing global emissions will we be able to bring carbon dioxide levels down and avoid the full consequences of turning back the climate clock.

Data showing that the daily average CO2 over the Pacific Ocean was 400.03 ppm as of yesterday was posted online by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s monitoring center in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

A separate monitor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California initially reported its May 9 data showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide was at 399.73 ppm, but later revised that to show 400.08 ppm.

The difference came down to time zone, with NOAA using the universal time clock and Scripps reporting on Hawaii time. When Scripps adjusted its measurements to UTC time, it concurred with NOAA that 400 ppm threshold had been breached.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, said the main concern is the speed with which the concentrations of CO2 are rising.

“There is no precedent in Earth’s history for such an abrupt increase in greenhouse gas concentrations,” Mann, who has authored two books on climate change, told AFP.

While living things can adapt to slow changes that took place over tens of millions of years, there is no reason to believe that they – and we – can adapt to changes that are a million years faster than the natural background rates of change.

Mann said the last time scientists are confident that CO2 was sustained at the current levels was more than 10 million years ago, during the middle of the Miocene Period.

Back then, global temperatures were hotter, ice was sparse and sea level was dozens of meters higher than it is today.

“It took nature hundreds of millions of years to change CO2 concentrations through natural processes such as natural carbon burial and volcanic outgassing,” Mann said.

What we are doing is unburying it. But not over 100 million years. We’re unburying it and burning it over a timescale of 100 years, a million times faster.

- © AFP, 2013

Read: Shortfall in greenhouse gas emissions target may cost Ireland €300m >

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    Mute The Green Monkey
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    May 10th 2013, 7:42 PM

    5 degrees in the middle of May,I say bring back CFC aerosols ………..

    38
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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 10th 2013, 7:33 PM

    Strange that as the planet is cooling when the greens told us that we were all going to fry as CO2 levels went up.

    26
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    Mute mattoid
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    May 10th 2013, 7:59 PM

    Planet is cooling??
    You sure about that?….

    25
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    Mute Tordel Back
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    May 10th 2013, 8:01 PM

    Every time I read a comment like Uncle Mort’s, I wonder what the motivation for being so willfully stupid actually is. Tell us Mort, do they perhaps fancy themselves as Agent Mulder, seeing conspiracies that nobody else can? A lone voice like John the Baptist, maybe? Do they think picking and choosing tiny factoids to support a position that is overwhelmed by scientific consensus, by mountains of data and analysis, hell even by bloody anecdote and common sense, make them look like the smartest boy in the class?

    Because if so, they’re wrong about at least two things.

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    Mute John Sheridan
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    May 12th 2013, 3:27 AM

    The term global warming is
    Just coined to explain climate change. It comes from the fact that these gases are sitting at the top of our atmosphere and stop heat and light escaping acting like a blanket and heating our planet. Global warming does not mean everywhere the temp. will increase but rather that the climate will change,
    Precipitation, temp. ranges and other weather occurrences.
    I hate people who say when it’s snowing in April or record cold in May. ” huh so much do global warming”…. That you pillock is exactly global warming.

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    Reg
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    Mute Reg
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    May 10th 2013, 7:29 PM

    No wonder I feel knackered after my cycle home from work!

    25
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    Mute Alan Grouse
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    May 11th 2013, 1:50 AM

    Interesting comment. Could you provide a link to support your figures?

    15
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    Mute John Keane
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    May 11th 2013, 6:18 AM

    Was just going to ask the same. I find it hard to believe that all the emissions from cars and industry and burning of fossil fuels amounts to only 2%. But to be fair this is something I know nothing about.

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    Mute James Kilgannon
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    May 10th 2013, 8:56 PM

    The only reason that climate change is such a big issue is because our lifestyle will have to change. Yes the planet is cooling slowly but this is happening on a geological timescale that is very long. The planet undergoes natural variations in climate. We are causing the temperature to increase rapidly. But this isn’t going to destroy the earth. We will get warmer, sea levels will rise and cities will have to move to adjust. Our cities are built in bad places and we are so intercede pant on each other that we cannot face any change at all. The problem with climate change is not the climate. It’s us being to comfortable on the shit life we have now. If we didn’t have to pay for the right to live this whole climate change thing wouldn’t be a problem. It wouldn’t be there at all actually. People need to learn to accept , demand and force change but the fat cats stop us. The earth isn’t here for us. We are here for the earth

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 10th 2013, 8:41 PM

    Global temperature data shows no warming in 15 years, oceanic cycles like the PDO and AMO are turning negative,Jones and Hansen have given up on the warming scam and only Mann clings on. Meanwhile Al Gore charges 130,000 Euro for an after dinner speech. The sky is not falling.
    PS I’m sure that most people will have noticed how cold the last 5 winters have been or is this just us failing to understand the green bleating about warming?

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    Mute joe dangermouse
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    May 10th 2013, 8:49 PM

    I know ya,we are been charged carbon tax because the world is supposedly heating up,ice caps melting and all that.But here’s me freezing my bollox off.

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    Mute Teg Veece
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    May 10th 2013, 11:19 PM

    It’s worrying how many thumbs up your comment got, Mort. Any source for your statement or are you happy to just spread misinformation?

    I think the global temperature trend is fairly evidently increasing although I’m happy to look at data the contradicts this if you can provide it.
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

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    Mute joe dangermouse
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    May 10th 2013, 11:57 PM

    Teg,when can I go to the beach so?.Dont mind NASA.This is Ireland.

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    Mute Daniel Dunne
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    May 11th 2013, 12:31 AM

    GISS that shows data back to 1880… lol! What satellites were in orbit back then?

    Yeah, I know, they “reconstruct” the data to fill in for times when there was no coverage. Everybody trusts that.

    Like the way we trust the data from these boyos featured here… http://www.surfacestations.org/

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 11th 2013, 9:46 AM

    NASA /GISS under the direction of James Hansen cooked the books. Since he ‘retired’ much of the data showing this has vanished from the GISS website and all you get is some BS about technical problems when you look for the data. This one for example shows how data from Dublin Airport was altered to make the 1930′s look a lot cooler than they were but it has vanished. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/notavailable.html

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 11th 2013, 9:48 AM
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    Mute John Sheridan
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    May 12th 2013, 3:33 AM

    No what the actually do is drill through the ice in the ice caps to depts where the ice was formed at a certain time in the earths history and from analysing this they can work out the carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere at the time

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    Mute joe dangermouse
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    May 10th 2013, 7:52 PM

    Is this why the weather is crap??Walked to the shop earlier and there was condensation coming out my mouth..IN MAY

    22
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    Mute manumakemesick
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    May 10th 2013, 11:20 PM

    Just get countries to plant millions of trees to soak it all up

    19
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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 10th 2013, 11:37 PM

    Prominent senior climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson whose publication and citation record is rather formidable has said ‘The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.’
    The warming [which has reversed over the last 15-17 years] is 0.7 of a degree C. FFS wake up to the scam.

    17
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    Mute John Keane
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    May 11th 2013, 6:34 AM

    Hey, how much will the sea levels rise? My house is 200 feet above sea level and if I end up with beach front property it could push my house into the next tax bracket with the lpt. Now THAT would suck.

    13
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    Mute Daniel Dunne
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    May 10th 2013, 7:39 PM

    Farmers will be happy… more CO2 for plants to help them grow bigger.

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    Mute B Lowe
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    May 10th 2013, 7:46 PM

    Well observed Daniel.
    There are many studies which show crops experience an abundance at higher CO2 concentrations.

    The global temperature and the current cycle of the sun are unbreakably linked.

    The sun is coming to the end of its current cycle and will be entering a cycle of low activity resulting in Global cooling.

    Which of course will be the opposite of what people have been brainwashed to believe.

    27
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    Mute mattoid
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    May 10th 2013, 8:01 PM

    BLowe – that’s utter BS.

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    Mute Joseph Siddall
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    May 10th 2013, 10:34 PM

    A lot closer to the truth than some sheeple wish to acknowledge. Hence the change from Global Warming to Climate Change.

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    Mute Paul Wagner
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    May 10th 2013, 10:45 PM
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    Mute mattoid
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    May 10th 2013, 11:27 PM

    @Joseph
    If you had any knowledge whatsoever about this subject you would know that scientists have always used the term “climate change”.
    “Global warming” is a term promoted by the media.

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 11th 2013, 9:42 AM

    Real scientists may well have used the term ‘climate change but the pseudoscientists behind the warming farce [and their useful idiots] all used AGW then ‘global warming’ then ‘catastrophic climate change’ then ‘extreme weather events’ , no wonder the whole thing has become a joke.

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    Mute mattoid
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    May 11th 2013, 10:43 AM

    Well if you’re saying that the science is genuine but much of the media coverage is hyped then I couldn’t disagree with you….

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    Mute Joseph Siddall
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    May 12th 2013, 12:17 PM

    I always wonder why the pro-CC/AGW/whatever fanatics get so abusive in the light of any adverse comment.
    Can’t stand the heat – get out of the kitchen.
    Start reading more widely. It is not my place, or Uncle Mort’s, to educate you. At least approach the topic with an open mind.

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    Mute mattoid
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    May 12th 2013, 4:13 PM

    When you’re “reading more widely” it would pay to take note of whether its published peer-reviewed science you’re reading or junk science / internet blogs….

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    Mute Tony Canning
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    May 10th 2013, 7:44 PM

    I really wish that those forwarding such research would not leave it so open. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas – the fact that it has risen is an indicator, but to throw it out that we should be shocked about that without putting it in context just allows it to be put down by skeptics as scaremongering….

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    Mute Philip Farrelly
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    May 10th 2013, 11:10 PM

    Gas

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    Mute Theresa Carter
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    May 10th 2013, 9:36 PM

    Reversing the damage???????? Ha ha ha ha ha. Bit late now hunz

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    Mute Kevin Twomey
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    May 11th 2013, 7:53 AM

    If people sat back and realized the physical imprint we’ve made on the world in the past century, and the vast amount of resources we are completely pissing our way through, then perhaps it may dawn on them the completely unsustainable nature of life in the developed world.

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 11th 2013, 9:07 AM

    Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout.

    Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.

    Matt Ridley.

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    Mute David O Brien
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    May 10th 2013, 7:33 PM

    Co2 concentration is time dependent ??

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    Mute iBob101
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    May 10th 2013, 8:22 PM

    1. Yes, it is slowly rising.
    2. They were initially reporting measurements that were taken at different times.

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    Mute Uncle Mort
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    May 10th 2013, 11:41 PM

    Remember the nonsense about sea levels rising and about to drown the Maldives? They are building 7 new airports to cope with this. But then they are such nice people that you just have to love ‘em http://www.avaaz.org/en/maldives_global/?bPUVqeb&v=23291

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    Mute Ross Stewart
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    May 11th 2013, 6:28 PM
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    Mute Marcella Quail
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    May 11th 2013, 5:07 AM

    Scary ! Lets hope we all Wise- up fast !

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