cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/39685505
When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm).
By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm.
This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.
“This problem is not going away, and we’re moving further and further into uncharted territory, and almost certainly, very dangerous territory.”
It sounds sensationalist to say “we hit the highest CO2 levels ever recorded” when we break the record every year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future
Doesn’t make it any less true or alarming
As we watch the world burn.
They really should learn how to run their vertical axis down to zero . I see no need to risk the accusation of using graphs with a lie factor. it’ll still look a dramatic increase starting a zero. They can even add a horizontal line at lowest recorded level if they want to emphasize that difference. They’re also open to a bit of criticism on the time-axis about the difference between lowest ‘directly recorded’, and other longer term estimates of the range of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
I think it is better to acknowledge those estimates and refer to the available evidence on how different the world was and what types of life and ecosystems seem to have been most common. Otherwise they can get "Well akshually it might be ‘uncharted’ but it’s probably not ‘unprecedented’ " . . . . https://paleo-co2.org/co2pip
Based on these estimates it seems plausible that early primates experienced atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher than today. The important part is that they’d not have lived very similar lives to modern humans, maybe like small lemurs or something.
