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The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere just hit its highest level in 800,000 years

Globetrotter

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https://www.businessinsider.com.au/carbon-dioxide-record-human-health-effects-2018-5

I don't think us humans are quite getting it yet...


The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit its highest level in 800,000 years and scientists predict deadly consequences


  • The average concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere just topped 410 parts per million, according to measurements from Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
  • It's the highest CO2 level in the 800,000 years for which we have good data.
  • This is expected to have a catastrophic effect on human health and the planet itself.
We have a pretty good idea of what Earth?s atmosphere has looked like for the past 800,000 years.
Humans like us " Homo sapiens " evolved only about 200,000 years ago, but ice-core records reveal intricate details of our planet?s history from long before humans existed. By drilling more than 3 kilometers deep into the ice sheets over Greenland and Antarctica, scientists can see how temperature and atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels have changed since then.
From that record, we know the atmosphere and the air that we breathe has never had as much carbon dioxide in it as it does today.
For the first time in recorded history, the average monthly level of CO2 in the atmosphere exceeded 410 parts per million in April, according to observations at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
The record is not a coincidence ? humans have rapidly transformed the air we breathe by pumping CO2 into it over the past two centuries. In recent years, we?ve pushed those gas levels into uncharted territory.
That change has inevitable and scary consequences. Research indicates that if unchecked, increased CO2 levels could lead to tens of thousands of pollution-related deaths, reach a point at which it slows human cognition, and contribute to rising sea levels, searing heat waves, and superstorms that scientists project as effects of climate change."As a scientist, what concerns me the most is what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have," Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, said on Twitter.
NASAVast glaciers in West Antarctica seem to be locked in an irreversible thaw linked to global warming that may push up sea levels for centuries.
Breathing the air of a new world

For the 800,000 years for which we have records, average global CO2 levels fluctuated between about 170 ppm and 280 ppm. Once humans started to burn fossil fuels in the industrial era, things changed rapidly.
Only in the industrial era has the number risen above 300 ppm. The concentration first crept above 400 ppm in 2013, and it continues to climb.
There?s a debate among scientists about the last time CO2 levels were this high. It might have been during the Pliocene era, 2 million to 4.6 million years ago, when sea levels were 60 to 80 feet higher than today. Or it may have been in the Miocene, 10 million to 14 million years ago, when seas were more than 100 feet higher than now.
In our 800,000-year record, it took about 1,000 years for CO2 levels to increase by 35 ppm. We?re currently averaging an increase of more than 2 ppm a year, meaning we could hit an average of 500 ppm within the next 45 years.
Humans have never had to breathe air like this. And it does not seem to be good for us.
Global temperature tracks very closely to atmospheric levels of CO2. The potential effects of higher average temperatures include tens of thousands of deaths from heat waves, increased air pollution that leads to lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, higher rates of allergies and asthma, more extreme weather events, and the spread of diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes ? something we?re already seeing.
Global annual temperature and CO2 levels, 1959 to 2016


Higher levels of CO2 also exacerbate ozone pollution. One 2008 study found that for every degree Celsius the temperature rises because of CO2 levels, ozone pollution can be expected to kill an additional 22,000 people via respiratory illness, asthma, and emphysema. A recent study found that overall, air pollution already kills 9 million people every year.
Other research has raised even more concerns. The average CO2 level doesn't represent the air most of us breathe. Cities tend to have far more CO2 than average ? and those levels rise even higher indoors. Some research indicates that it may have a negative effect on human cognition and decision-making. (There's a full list of possible ways climate change will affect human health on an archived Environmental Protection Agency page.)
President Barack Obama?s EPA ruled in 2009 that CO2 was a pollutant that needed to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, though the Trump administration is reevaluating that ruling.
Drowning in CO2

The human-health effects of CO2 increases are just one part of the bigger story here.
The change we?ve seen in CO2 levels recently has been much more rapid than the historical trends. Some experts think we?re on track to hit 550 ppm by the end of the century, which would cause average global temperatures to rise by 6 degrees Celsius. For context, the increase in superstorms, rising sea levels, and spreading tick-borne disease that we?re already seeing comes after a 0.9-degree rise.
Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram/The ConversationData from Parrenin et al., 2013; Snyder et al., 2016; Bereiter et al., 2015.
Projections of sea-level rise will only get bigger as CO2 levels continue to climb.
Right now, carbon-dioxide emissions are still rising. The goal set in the Paris agreement on climate change is to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius or less. But as a recent feature in the journal Nature put it, we?re on track for more than 3 degrees of warming.
The latest measurements from Mauna Loa show that if we want to avoid that, we'll need to make some dramatic changes very quickly.
 
Yep, I hate it when climate change deniers try to say that we're coming out of an ice age, that this is normal. It's true we're coming out of an ice age, but the rapidity of change right now is absolutely unprecedented. We're not supposed to be able to see a change from normality in the pattern to a total lack of ice on the north pole in the summer within a human lifetime. And only an idiot would deny that carbion dioxide isn't a potent greenhouse gas that traps more heat in the atmosphere. And that burning fossil fuels releases huge amounts of carbon. And that as more and more ice melts, less and less heat is reflected back off of it and is instead absorbed by the water. We're on a runaway train.
 
Unfortunately it doesn't much matter. People are dumb, we've recognized the problem sufficiently well to justify doing something for a long time, but people's stupidity and denial has meant we haven't and won't do nearly enough to prevent it.
 
Oxygen was a poisonous gas byproduct of early life, originally deposited in rock as iron oxide. Photosynthesis from plant life later started killing off early vegetation, it was only the development of oxygen breathing life forms that restored balance as wel as volcanic activity.


Its swings and roundabouts. No we wont learn. Yes we will suffer. Other life will survive beyond us.
 
In truth, all life (besides maybe human hair lice) will benefit from the end of the human era. If the lice can survive on poodles, maybe them too.

Thanks for posting this.
 
Nope. We've ruined the entire world. Many species will succumb to extinction without our help and continued intervention at retaining the last of their natural habitats.

Some species would do well without us; others would not.

Besides, "all life" is likely just human arrogance. In all probability our planet is just one of countless planets with life on it in the universe and that no matter what happens here it makes very little difference in the grand Cosmic sense of the continuation of life, assuming you consider that continuation to be some inherent positive force.
 
Do I really need to say I am referring to all life on earth to avoid being called arrogant?

Nope. We've ruined the entire world. Many species will succumb to extinction without our help and continued intervention at retaining the last of their natural habitats.

Some species would do well without us; others would not.

I agree with your last statement but I don't agree with the first. In general, humans do not protect animals or their environment and actually make life harder and more precarious.

The massive loss of species now is a blow to future diversity and it's all caused by humans. The longer we remain to protect the environment, the greater the future loss.

We've ruined the entire world at least in the present. Life will go on but the form it evolves into is being written now. At the very least, intelligent life is probably being written out of this story.
 
Besides, "all life" is likely just human arrogance. In all probability our planet is just one of countless planets with life on it in the universe and that no matter what happens here it makes very little difference in the grand Cosmic sense of the continuation of life, assuming you consider that continuation to be some inherent positive force.

I do not believe in life outside of Earth.

In general, humans do not protect animals or their environment and actually make life harder and more precarious.

Specifically, we do for several species, though. This was my point. Likely the other large primates like mountain gorillas, etc. will remain endangered and likely succumb to extinction before or because humans do.
 
The species that are on the brink are that way because of humans but disregarding that, it is too late for most such species anyhow. All species go extinct eventually but it is generally gradual and often while leaving behind traces as a common ancestor. We are seeing it happen rapidly and totally which usually happens during cataclysms.

Climate and humans have bought animals to the brink and as neither are improving, the future is bleak for anything dependant on the human house of cards. We are not going to waste time on meaningful actions for gorillas or the like when we do not even do it for members of our own species. Once it becomes apparent that we have lost our little climatic niche, I cannot see us expending energy on other species when we already barely do. And it will require more and more energy (time/resources/etc) to do the bare minimum as things worsen.

Domesticated animals will probably die out but many other species will not. Humans exiting the picture would probably entail a greater net 'benefit' to life (on earth ;)) if you judge diversification a benefit.

Whether any of this means anything is something else entirely.
 
Do I really need to say I am referring to all life on earth to avoid being called arrogant?



I agree with your last statement but I don't agree with the first. In general, humans do not protect animals or their environment and actually make life harder and more precarious.

The massive loss of species now is a blow to future diversity and it's all caused by humans. The longer we remain to protect the environment, the greater the future loss.

We've ruined the entire world at least in the present. Life will go on but the form it evolves into is being written now. At the very least, intelligent life is probably being written out of this story.

Wasnt trying to call you specifically arrogant, just that this notion that it's remotely likely that we are the only life in the universe is an example broadly of human arrogance.

Personally I don't think there's much risk of humans going extinct from climate change. Theres being too alarmist and not being alarmist enough. I find it interesting how many people either refuse to believe in climate change at all, or are so crazy alarmed by it they think it'll kill the entire planet. With relatively little middle ground.

I do not believe in life outside of Earth.

Which I find a little astounding. I mean, putting aside the absolutely crazy number of habitable worlds that can be said with statistical certainty to exist and the evidence that life springs forth wherever it can. You'd think based on just general logic that either life is so likely that there's more than just what's on earth, or so crazy unlikely that we shouldn't even exist to debate it. But this is kinda off topic.
 
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Yeah I'm interested in how you can arrive at the conclusion that there must only be life on Earth in the whole universe. Doesn't make sense considering the near-infinite vastness of the cosmos.
 
Yeah I'm interested in how you can arrive at the conclusion that there must only be life on Earth in the whole universe. Doesn't make sense considering the near-infinite vastness of the cosmos.

I think a lot of people have trouble comprehending vast numbers.

Simple fact of reality, no matter how unlikely something is, it will happen a lot if there are enough chances for it to happen.
 
Which I find a little astounding. I mean, putting aside the absolutely crazy number of habitable worlds that can be said with statistical certainty to exist and the evidence that life springs forth wherever it can. You'd think based on just general logic that either life is so likely that there's more than just what's on earth, or so crazy unlikely that we shouldn't even exist to debate it. But this is kinda off topic.

There's excellent philosophical arguments why extraterrestrial life does not exist. It's the most likely explanation to the Fermi Paradox.
 
There's excellent philosophical arguments why extraterrestrial life does not exist. It's the most likely explanation to the Fermi Paradox.

No, the most likely explanation is that either interstellar travel is infeasible, or that intelligent life is sufficiently sparse as to make overlap almost impossible, or a mix or both. Not that it doesn't exist.

With enough planets out there, added with the fact that we exist at all, means it's almost certain alien life exists. That does not require however that it is ALSO possible to travel around and meet such life.

Life is probably all over the universe, intelligent life is likely much rarer. Now, it can easily be and almost certainly is the case that there are a great many intelligent species in the universe, but that is because of the crazy number of chances for it to happen. That same crazy number of opportunities also means there is a crazy number of planets that contain absolutely no life at all. Which also makes it difficult if not impossible for such life to find each other.

There's no sensible paradox. Because the suggestion that other intelligent life exists in no way requires that it be capable of contacting each other. That's just a bullshit assumption that goes against the evidence. The evidence is that such contact is very unlikely.

But as is the case with most people, it's all or nothing. We're either alone in the universe or we should see ET on our doorstop, with no middle ground. The fact that middle ground is exactly what the evidence suggests doesn't matter because very few people use evidence in forming their opinions.
 
Hypothetical explanations for the paradox:

5.1 Great Filter Hypothesis
5.2 Extraterrestrial life is rare or non-existent
5.3 No other intelligent species have arisen
5.4 Intelligent alien species lack advanced technology
5.5 It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself
5.6 It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others
5.7 Periodic extinction by natural events
5.8 Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument
5.9 Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time
5.10 Lack of resources to spread physically throughout the galaxy
5.11 Human beings have not existed long enough
5.12 We are not listening properly
5.13 Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time
5.14 They tend to isolate themselves
5.15 They are too alien
5.16 Everyone is listening, no one is transmitting
5.17 Earth is deliberately not contacted
5.18 Earth is purposely isolated (planetarium hypothesis)
5.19 It is dangerous to communicate
5.20 The simulation theory
5.21 They are here undetected
5.22 They are here unacknowledged

There's a lot of thought that's gone into this, and if you look at representations of some of these scenarios, they seem less plausible than others. It's worthwhile to keep an open mind nonetheless.

Simulation theory is also worth acknowledging, but many people find it laughable. Additionally, people who purport it like Musk are themselves a bit off their rockers. :|

5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 seem to reinforce 5.2.
 
Predicting deadly consequences...

oooh scary, how many of their predictions have turned out to be true?

Dan Pena - GLOBAL WARMING IS THE BIGGEST FRAUD IN HISTORY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlC02NsIt0
1. They have already proven deadly.
2. I don't know. How many?
3. Dan Pena is a business man, who has no education in the field and is likely to be regurgitating information not based on fact, but, instead, for an underlying, hidden agenda.
4. YouTube movies are not reliable sources.
 
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