Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Greenhouse gas CO2 reaches new milestone

Levels are at the highest in human history

Seth Borenstein Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday.

Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at a monitoring station in Hawaii used as the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That was during the Pleistocene Era. “It was much warmer than it is today,” Tans said. “There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 10 and 20 meters (33 to 66 feet).”

Other scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first modern humans only appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The measurement was recorded Thursday and is only a daily figure; the monthly and yearly average will be smaller. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it’s a round number – not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.

“Physically, we are no worse off at 400 ppm than we were at 399 ppm,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. “But as a symbol of the painfully slow pace of measures to avoid a dangerous level of warming, it’s somewhat unnerving.”

Carbon dioxide traps heat just like in a greenhouse, and most of it stays in the air for a century; some lasts for thousands of years, scientists say. It accounts for three-quarters of the planet’s heat-trapping gases. There are others, such as methane, which has a shorter life span but traps heat more effectively. Both trigger temperatures to rise over time, scientists say, which is causing sea levels to rise and some weather patterns to change.

When measurements of carbon dioxide were first taken in 1958, it measured 315 parts per million. Some scientists and environmental groups promote 350 parts per million as a safe level for CO2, but scientists acknowledge they don’t really know what levels would stop the effects of global warming.