Ten years ago, on this day, May 8, 2013, we went over 400ppm…
We are a society that has inadvertently chosen the double-black diamond run without having learned to ski first. It will be a bumpy ride. (Gavin Schmidt)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was, well, exactly, 400ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had been theorised since the 19th century. However accurate measures of atmospheric carbon dioxide were hard to come by. The problem was finally solved with money from the US Navy that allowed Charles David Keeling to set up an observatory at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii far away from industrial sources of carbon (factories and so on). Measurements have been taken there and elsewhere for decades. When measures started, in 1958, atmospheric concentrations were 315 parts per million. This went up at basically one part per million per year and then started to increase.
What I think we can learn from this
One big danger of this site is fetishizing giving more power and life and meaning than is warranted to atmospheric concentrations. I don’t know quite how to get around this and I am sure I have not succeeded that far. We cannot ignore that the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide is not a “natural” process. It is tied to a series of decisions humans collectively make about what kind of societies they want, that how many people doing what what and and allowing and facilitating what kind of actions vs other actions.
What happened next
Since then the atmospheric concentrations have predictably continued to climb and are now at roughly 420 million. Btw, that’s just of carbon dioxide; if you add the massive increase in in methane which is measured in parts per billion we have a real problem.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.