{"id":33711,"date":"2018-04-25T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33711"},"modified":"2018-04-25T06:00:16","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T11:00:16","slug":"the-keeling-curve-at-60-a-portrait-of-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33711","title":{"rendered":"The Keeling Curve at 60: A portrait of climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Keeling Curve at 60: A portrait of climate crisis<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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If you\u2019ve ever wondered what a scientific representation of metabolic rift might look like, check out this graph.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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We are approaching the sixtieth birthday of the Keeling Curve.<\/p>\n

It is such a stunning example of important and clearly presented science that it has been designated as a National Historic Chemical Landmark. Its creator received the highest US award for lifetime achievement in science, the National Medal of Science, \u201cfor his pioneering and fundamental research on atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide, the basis for understanding global carbon cycle and global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July 1958, Dr. Charles Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography began measuring the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>) in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Using measuring equipment and techniques he developed, he collected air samples daily from an observatory 3,000 meters above sea level, on the remote north side of the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii\u2019s Big Island.<\/p>\n

He continued doing this until his death in 2005, and his son Ralph, also a climate scientist at Scripps, has continued it since. The result is the world\u2019s longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide. A recent release is shown above.<\/p>\n

In his very first annual report, Keeling noted that the level at the end of the first year was higher than it had been 12 months earlier. That proved to be a permanent trend.\u00a0The amount of CO2<\/sub> in the air we breathe has risen from 313 parts per million to 421 \u2014 a 33% increase. Keeling\u2019s work disproved the once common view that oceans and other sinks would prevent CO2<\/sub> from fossil fuels from accumulating in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Keeling Curve at 60: A portrait of climate crisis If you\u2019ve ever wondered what a scientific representation of metabolic rift might look like, check out this graph. We are approaching the sixtieth birthday of the Keeling Curve. It is such a stunning example of important and clearly presented science that it has been designated […]<\/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":[3193,8834,141,1053,1004,18784,19912],"class_list":["post-33711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate-and-capitalism","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-co2","tag-ian-angus","tag-keeling-curve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33711","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=33711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33712,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33711\/revisions\/33712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}