{"id":22732,"date":"2017-02-10T09:56:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T14:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22732"},"modified":"2017-02-10T09:56:49","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T14:56:49","slug":"how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22732","title":{"rendered":"How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article__hero\">\n<header class=\"article__titles article__titles--overlay\">\n<div class=\"article__titles-content\">\n<h3 class=\"article__title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/features\/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters\">How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"article__authors-date\">Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth\u2019s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<article class=\"article article--has-featured-image article--layout-fullWidthImageBlackText\">\n<div class=\"article__text\">\n<section class=\"article__body\">\n<div class=\"article__block article__block--textBlock article__block--drop-cap article__block--drop-cap-l\">\n<p>Last year will go down in history as the year when the planet\u2019s atmosphere broke a startling record: 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. The last time the planet\u2019s air was so rich in CO2 was millions of years ago, back before early predecessors to humans were likely wielding stone tools; the world was a few degrees hotter back then, and melted ice put sea levels tens of meters higher.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in a new era,\u201d says Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography\u2019s CO2 Program in San Diego. \u201cAnd it\u2019s going fast. We\u2019re going to touch up against 410 pretty soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing particularly magic about the number 400. But for environmental scientists and advocates grappling with the invisible, intangible threat of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, this symbolic target has served as a clear red line into a danger zone of climate change.<\/p>\n<p>When scientists (specifically, Ralph Keeling\u2019s father) first started measuring atmospheric CO2 consistently in 1958, at the pristine Mauna Loa mountaintop observatory in Hawaii, the CO2 level stood at 316\u2009parts per million (ppm), just a little higher than the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. 400 was simply the next big, round number looming in our future.<\/p>\n<p>But as humans kept digging up carbon out of the ground and burning it for fuel, CO2 levels sped faster and faster toward that target. In May 2013, at the time of the usual annual maximum of CO2, the air briefly tipped over the 400 ppm mark for the first time in several million years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth\u2019s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4556,113,1004,13752,8506],"class_list":["post-22732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-atmosphere","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-co2","tag-nicola-jones","tag-yale-360-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22733,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732\/revisions\/22733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}