Posted on 05/14/2013 5:15:51 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
According to data being gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958, the CO2 concentration in the Earths atmosphere officially exceeded the 400 parts per million mark last week, a value not attained on Earth since humans were first human.
This ominous milestone comes at a time when the evidence that human activity is resulting in unprecedented climate change is now overwhelming. More important, perhaps, even if all greenhouse gas production ceased immediately, this elevated carbon dioxide level would persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
(snip)
So in addition to undertaking dramatic global efforts to reduce present and future CO2 emissions, we need a strategy for addressing the carbon already up there. Recently, a broad group of geologists, planetary scientists, climatologists, social scientists, and physicists convened at the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which I direct, to explore such strategies. ......
Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, even with its current level of 400 ppm, is very differentand in some ways more difficultthan extracting it from flue gas, where the CO2 concentration is much greater. .... First, one removes CO2 from the air by using a sorbent, which is a material that can absorb gasses. Next, the CO2 has to be extracted from the sorbent and sequestered, presumably by pumping it deep underground at relatively high concentration or by binding it to mineralsa bit like how we handle nuclear waste. ...... At present, it is difficult to determine the cost of direct extraction.
(snip)
Given the risks of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and the difficulty of slowing current production, at the very least some modest government R&D support of this important possible alternative seems appropriate right now to help safeguard our future.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
There is no constant exponential rising CO2-concentration since preindustrial times but a variing CO2-content of air following the climate. E.G. around 1940 there was a maximum of CO2 of at least 420 ppm, before 1875 there was also a maximum. (Source)
agere_contra also posted the same thing.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not Pollution
“CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - its not a pollutant, its a product of every living creatures breathing, its the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, its a product of all industrial burning, its a product of driving I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.” - Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not pollution and Global Warming has nothing to do with pollution. The average person has been misled and is confused about what the current Global Warming debate is about, greenhouse gases. None of which has anything to do with air pollution. People are confusing Smog, Carbon Monoxide (CO) and the pollutants in car exhaust with the life supporting, essential trace gas in our atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Pollution is already regulated under the Clean Air Act and regulating Carbon Dioxide (CO2) will do absolutely nothing to make the air you breath “cleaner”. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is actually plant food. They are also misled to believe that CO2 is polluting the oceans through acidification but there is nothing unnatural or unprecedented about current measurements of ocean water pH and a future rise in pCO2 will likely yield growth benefits to corals and other sea life. Thus regulating Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions through either ‘Carbon Taxes’, ‘Cap and Trade’ or the EPA will cause energy prices (electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, propane, heating oil ect...) to skyrocket.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2008/11/carbon-dioxide-co2-is-not-pollution.html
We keep getting posts in FR using this source warning the world of doom, gloom, and calamity, and no other source getting these readings. Just where the hell is this place and is its location the reason they’re getting these results ?
Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: Thank goodness we came along & reversed 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in global atmosphere. Long live the humans
There is a point beyond which CO2 density does not contribute further to the “greenhouse effect”,
that point has long passed, and global temperatures are going down.
June 24, 2009
The regulation of essential elements of life
By Lonnie E. Schubert
The EPA is now considering designating CO2 a dangerous pollutant. The regulation of essential elements of life by our government scares me. It should scare us all. I am devastated by the notion that our own government founded on freedom would regulate and control the most fundamental aspects of life on earth. Regulation on life’s important things is certainly tyranny and certainly will destroy the world, at least the nation and supposed freedom, we leave to our children.
Please, do not regulate the essential elements of life. Freedom is too precious to take it away in such pointless ways.
Carbon dioxide is one of the three essential elements of life on our planet. Despite being arguably THE essential requirement for life, water, sometimes called dihydrogen monoxide, is extremely dangerous, killing even children every year. How much is destroyed every year by floods and rot? Water is by far the most important energy absorbing gas in our atmosphere. Without gaseous water in our air, our earth would be far too cold to support us. The other gasses that absorb energy contribute less than one-fifth of the total effect we refer to as the greenhouse effect. In short, we generally have too much water where we don’t need it and too little where we do. Are you planning to regulate water also? The potential gains are obvious. If we can reduce water waste and control it in the environment, we can eliminate most of the dangers associated with water.
Carbon Dioxide is not an environmental polluting agent because it is not detrimental or poisonous to life. Carbon dioxide cannot kill living cells by altering their structure or physiology in the same way, for example, as a snake venom will. It can only suffocate an organism when Oxygen is not present at a sufficient concentration to sustain life.
http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_CO2.html
watch thisone too
http://theolympiareport.com/wwu-scientist-debunks-lawmakers-myths-about-co2-climate-change/
Washington
The EPA wants in on the scandal barrage, too
Washington Examiner
Posted: May 14, 2013 9:31 am
Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
CEI reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPAs mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups. Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.
http://rare.us/story/the-epa-wants-in-on-the-scandal-barrage-too/
AP Video: Obama Wind Energy Agenda Leaves Trail of Dead Eagles
Obama Admin overrules own experts, gives wind energy pass on eagle killing
http://freebeacon.com/ap-video-obama-wind-energy-agenda-leaves-trail-of-dead-eagles/
Exactly right. Homo sapiens has only existed for an eyeblink of geological time.
Mauna Loa is a volcano. One of the most active on Earth.
Oh by the way, the reason they monitor CO2 on a volcano is it can give a hint of the risk of eruption. Elevated CO2 is EXPECTED.
During the period in which the Earth’s second major atmosphere was composed of more than 96 percent or 98 percent CO2 and before the advent of aerobic lifeforms, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could be described as somewhere in the order 886,000 ppm or 998,000 ppm versus 300 ppm to 400 ppm or a little more in recent ages. What is even more amazing, the Earth’s second atmosphere at that time was upwards of 100 times greater in mass than at present. So, where did all of those gigatons of CO2 go when ti was removed from the Earth’s second atmosphere to create a third atmosphere? Aerobic plant life voraciously ate the CO2 and deposited it into the Earth’s Lithosphere, biospahre or decomposed it into life giving oxygen.
Bottomline, aerobic lifeforms are still voraciously removing CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere at rates which keep the plant life perpetually on the brink of CO2 deprivation.
The chemical energy in petroleum collected from dead saltwater algae and was eventually entombed by Earth because bacteria hadn't yet evolved to eat all the dead algae. One way to reduce natural CO2 emissions is with antibacterials. About 4 ppm chlorine in the ocean water near the equator would shut down most plant food emissions.
See my post 35.
Such statements are just about as poorly based as the IPCC’s pronouncements.
We just don’t know what the effects of 500 ppm and 1000 ppm CO2 will be. There are undoubtedly feedback systems, but we don’t know what all of them are or how they might interact.
We do understand the physics of sunlight interacting with CO2 though. Only 2 wavelenghts of light interact with CO2. When that light’s energy has been absorbed by the CO2 what will cause the additional heating?
DO NOT REMOVE THE CO2!!!!!
We shouldn’t by any action reduce or eliminate CO2 in the atmosphere, even if we could, which I doubt is possible. CO2 is the foundation of life. It is the way carbon becomes the stuff algae, and all plants are made of. They become the food for all the rest of us. No CO2 no life.
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