Saturday, December 25, 2010

Keeling: Almost 60 years of constant research on world Carbon Dioxide levels

A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning

To read news article on Keeling click "A Scientist" above. to read quotes from above article see below.
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii — Two gray machines sit inside a pair of utilitarian buildings here, sniffing the fresh breezes that blow across thousands of miles of ocean.

Temperature Rising

Tracking the Numbers
Articles in this series are focusing on the central arguments in the climate debate and examining the evidence for global warming and its consequences.
Green
A blog about energy and the environment.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography; U.C. San Diego
THE KEELINGS Charles D. Keeling with his son Ralph in 1989. More Photos »

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They make no noise. But once an hour, they spit out a number, and for decades, it has been rising relentlessly.
The first machine of this type was installed on Mauna Loa in the 1950s at the behest of Charles David Keeling, a scientist from San Diego. His resulting discovery, of the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, transformed the scientific understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth. A graph of his findings is inscribed on a wall in Washington as one of the great achievements of modern science.end quote.

next quote.

When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide.
By 2005, the year he died, the number had risen to 380 parts per million. Sometime in the next few years it is expected to pass 400. Without stronger action to limit emissions, the number could pass 560 before the end of the century, double what it was before the Industrial Revolution.end quote.

One of the few ways to reduce world temperatures even with high carbon dioxide appears to be to increase volcanic glass dust particles above 20,000 feet in the air. However, everyone knows this is but a temporary fix to keep the ice caps from melting. And even with this fix can it be done in such a way as to prevent what is happening right now to Europe's Airports?  They have been  closed because of extremely low temperatures with snow.   Their main problem seems to be not enough Deicing fluid for getting the ice off of the planes wings so they can take off. However, reduced crop output because of less sun and other climatic problems  can usually result from several years of volcanic ash in the atmosphere above 20,000 feet.

However, it could be seen as at least a temporary fix of having artificially deposited volcanic glass dust in the upper atmosphere which could at least theoretically reduce increasing temperatures in that hemisphere for several years at a time. However, if nations or corporations secretly do this or publicly through the United Nations do this it might buy us more time. However, if it is secretly done Republicans and worldwide conservatives might  claim global warming is a myth. This I can see might be a real problem with doing this secretly which might allow carbon dioxide to become such a problem that no one could solve the problem worldwide and then humans(at least on earth) might go extinct.

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