14 DAY TRIAL // This past Thursday, scientists working at a facility in Hawaii went public with the news that, according to their measurements, atmospheric CO2 levels have hit their highest average daily levels in human history.
Thus, they say that CO2 average daily levels have surpassed 400 parts per million, and that such levels have not been recorded in nearly 3 million years.
Needless to say, these record atmospheric CO2 levels will most likely bring about climate changes that human society has never experienced before.
According to several environmentalists, the figures reported by the scientists in Hawaii need also be seen as an indicator of the fact that, global efforts aside, greenhouse gas emissions are not decreasing as fast as they should.
“We are hitting the symbolic limit of 400 parts per million, showing how far we have come from the pre-industrial levels of 280 and the relative safety of 350,” Greenpeace writes on its official website.
“The planet is poised to reach the 1,000 ppm level in only 100 years if emissions continue to rise at their present level whereas an increase of just 10 parts per million might have taken 1,000 years or more during ancient climate change events,” the organization further details.
According to Inhabitat, the specialists busy recording atmospheric CO2 levels first got the chance to see them go past the 400 parts per million milestone back in 2012, during summer months.
However, it took a while for average daily levels to hit and even surpass this milestone.
Now that this has happened, specialists fear that said CO2 concentration will become the new norm and that this will foster extreme climate changes and unprecedented sea level rise.
“The hope for the planet is that the climate movement and the clean energy solutions can grow even faster than the CO2 emissions have,” Greenpeace offers as a solution to this problem.