Hiked past the 400 ppm CO2 marker on Mauna Loa last month and it hit different

I was up on the Big Island visiting the observatory and they had this big digital display showing current CO2 levels. It was reading 424 ppm and I just stood there staring at it. I remember learning in school that 350 was the safe upper limit and we were already past that. But seeing that number in person, knowing it's the highest it's been in millions of years... it made me feel kind of sick. The ranger said the rise is accelerating too, like 3 ppm per year now instead of 1.5. How do we even start to reverse something that huge when the numbers just keep climbing? Has anyone else seen these readings in person and felt totally helpless?

4 comments

4 Comments

keithbutler19d ago

Hate to be that guy but I think the safe upper limit thing got a little mixed up lol. It wasn't really 350 as a hard limit for safety, that number came from early climate talks as kind of a stretch goal. Like 350.org built a whole movement around it which is cool and all but scientists were already saying 400+ was basically locked in by then. That 424 reading is brutal though, I remember looking at the Keeling Curve online and it just goes up like a ski jump. Feels extra hopeless when you realize we've been burning through fossil fuels for over a century and nobody wants to actually stop.

paul28619d ago

You're totally missing the point though. That 350 number was NEVER supposed to be a "stretch goal" it was a SCIENTIFIC upper limit based on what the planet could handle without tipping into chaos. Hansen and the team picked 350 specifically because anything above that means we lose the Arctic ice and the big glaciers. The fact that politicians and activists rebranded it as a movement goal is just proof of how watered down everything has become. We don't get to just shrug and say "well 424 is locked in" because THAT is the exact defeatist attitude that got us here. Nobody is burning a trillion dollars in coal and oil because it's fun, they do it because we keep feeding the machine. If 350 was the line, we should have fought HARDER to hold it, not just given up and called it a goal. The science didn't change, our WILLINGNESS to act did.

john65018d ago

Yeah I read this study recently that said even if we stopped all emissions today the CO2 already in the atmosphere would keep warming things for decades. Like the ocean absorbs heat and then releases it slowly. So 424 isn't just a number it's basically a time bomb. @paul286 and I might not agree on everything but he's right that we failed to hold the line when it mattered. My grandpa used to tell me about the old Mauna Loa readings in the 70s and they were under 330 then. Now look at us.

kelly_craig18d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back a little on that one, @paul286. I see what you're saying about the science being clear on 350, and I don't disagree that Hansen put a lot of weight behind that number based on real data about ice sheets and all that. But the way the whole "350" thing played out in climate talks and in the public mind, it honestly did get watered down into more of a rallying cry than a hard red line you could actually hold people to. I mean, by the time 350.org became a big name, we were already past 400 ppm and nobody in power was seriously talking about reversing course, they were just arguing about how fast to slow down. So I think there's a middle ground here where Keith's right that the number got a bit mixed up in the messy world of politics and protests, but you're also right that the defeatist "well it's locked in" attitude is poison. It just feels like we're arguing over the exact shade of paint on a sinking ship sometimes.