400 PPM: Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Reaches Prehistoric Levels

Scientific American ^ | May 9, 2013 | David Biello

[Mrs. Don-o]

This year-old article isn't exactly news (although in geologic time it happened 'bout 1 second ago) -- but I just wanted to gauge FReeper's reactions to my own proposal, that I'd like to bump up average global surface temps by 2^o and try to get the CO² to about 1500 ppm, so we can open up all that prime agricultural land in northern Canada and Eurasia, feed about 7 billion more people, and have valuable tropical beachfront property in Newfoundland and Labrador.

What say ye?

[Crazieman]

Wonder how much a prehistoric SUV would sell for if I could dig one up.

[Amagi]

Would that be Ice Age prehistoric levels?

[massgopguy]

Sure, get a sample from the top of a volcano.

[Rumplemeyer]

I vote yes, this should give the “population control” crowd the vapors.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Lot of heavy breathing going on back in the day? (800,000 years ago) Or, was it the CO2 being emitted from those scary SUV’s?

[Cold Heat]

Well I say that they should have tossed the reading for the simple reason that the volcano is active.

[TXnMA]

Q. What is the largest natural source of carbon dioxide?

A. Volcanoes

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Q. What is Mauna Loa?

A. A Volcano...

[Sgt_Schultze]

[Red Badger]

So, having a sensor at the top of an active volcano is a good idea..............................

[MRadtke]

Better that than another glacier build up here in Wisconsin! :)

[Gaffer]

A nice diversion and worthy of consideration. However, my first proposal is the urge the ‘Keeling’ family to take their highly accurate and scientific CO2 readings somewhere other than on the precipice of an active volcano.

[jdsteel]

This article mixes the (fraud) concepts of AGC and AGW. This seems to be a trend. Global “change” is a more flexible con, but doesn’t sell to the public like global “warming”.

[Gaffer]

This is just the NOAA way of doing things....place your dispersed geographical temperature sensors near the exhausts of building heating systems etc.....

To believe these amateurs’ loggings requires suspension of all disbelief in reality.

[Moonman62]

[Brooklyn Attitude]

My rough interpretation of the data shown in the figures-
1. Daily CO2 conc from the 2nd to the 7th is fairly constant, on the 8th where it hits 400, the data is clearly an an artifact perhaps caused by an instrument malfunction or burp from the volcano. Check your instruments.

2. The long term data is clearly cyclical and the data from 1958 is a short term sample whereas the core data is averaged over hundreds or even thousands of years. You cannot compare the two.

3. The observatory data shows a constant rate of increase over 50 years. Since the amount of CO2 generated over those 50 years has not been increasing dramatically during that time, the rate of increase should be greater now than in the past. It is not.

[Mycroft Holmes]

The point of that graph being that temperature change leads the CO2 change.

[MNDude]

Imagine a stadium with 100,000 seats. Now imagine 40 seats are left empty while the rest have someone in them to give you an idea of how little 400 ppm is.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

Correction to my previous post. The 2nd comment should read “HAS been increasing dramatically”.

Apologies

[Mrs. Don-o]

Mid-Pliocene. The global average temperature (about 3 million years ago) was 2–3 °C higher than today, global sea level 25 m higher and the Northern hemisphere ice sheet was come-and-go --- this was before the glaciation that occurred in the late Pliocene over Greenland.

Nobody ever asks the climate alarmists, "OK, so what is the IDEAL CO² level and earth surface temperature?" As a gardener, my preferences are clear: more and more.

I'm glad my compost pile generates robust amounts of heat and CO². If everybody had a compost pile, maybe I'd reach my target climate: the pretty, pleasant, practical Pliocene.