Maybe we can catch up with Mars.
The way the scientific community over the last 20 or so years, has repeatedly underestimated the level of damage to the environment, and when we would expect to see their predicted estimates, leads me to believe that their current estimate of a 417 PPM level of CO2 by May of this year will probably be reached sooner, and maybe even exceeded.
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OK, I’m not a climate scientist, nor do I doubt that climate change is happening, but when I read this story, the first thing that entered my mind was “Yeah, they built a climate monitoring station on top of an active volcano… what could possibly be wrong with that?”
The answer is that volcanos vent gases like carbon dioxide, that’s what’s wrong with that! So I checked Wiki and found the following statement, “Measurements are adjusted to account for local outgassing of CO2 from the volcano.” Gee that sounds like a tricky, error prone thing to do! There would necessarily be many variables. Wouldn’t it have been much simpler to build the observatory on some other mountain where outgassing of CO2 is not a problem? Don’t these people realize that the anti-climate change forces will notice this little detail and make us look stupid?
Robots? 
This NOVA could explain climate change even to a Republican:
(h)ttps://www.pbs.org/video/polar-extremes-mfaum5/
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There are a small percentage of people in the way to make the necessary changes happen quickly.
In a society that values life and our home this would have been normal practice without a conscious thought.
They are being dangerous to us all ,behaving like children playing with matches.
We are starting to feel the heat now but we can still take those matches out of their hands.
Time to Awaken The Species
You are thinking about this from a ‘once only’ perspective as if they took readings only once and then made projections based on that. Scientists from around the world corroborate their findings with measurements taken from many, many sources world wide on a daily/yearly basis. They chose the location because it rises high above the Pacific and the air is so pure. They measure any CO2 or other gases that may be emitted by the volcano, of course and they do not take their readings from within the volcano’s cone and apply it to readings of the general atmosphere.
I sincerely suggest that you consider the observation of climate change using the following analogy.
If you asked a thousand people what is the color of a red barn, nearly all would rightfully say it was red. However, if you went around asking only the people among the thousand who were color blind then they would say that it looked gray to them. What color would you then say the barn was when based on the observations of those few that you had asked?
If you ask only those who deny the evidence that is continually being collected by virtually the whole scientific community worldwide then you will get a similarly ‘color blind’ denialist view of climate change.
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The Earth’s temperatures can only be accurately measured up to about 800,000 years ago because ice core measurements can only go back that far. Fossil sea shell estimates while controversial do go back to much earlier eras. Millions of years ago the sun was cooler and though life existed, with higher ratios of CO2 than now, oxygen levels were some 5% richer in the days of the dinosaurs. Back then Antarctica had trees and dinosaurs and the Sahara was green. Plate tectonics resulted in the uplifting of mountain ranges which helped reduce CO2 through weathering etc. Going back only a couple of million years ago when Homo habilis first picked its nose, the Earth’s temperature was at or near today’s CO2 levels but the oceans were a 100ft. higher and warm beachfront property up in Scandinavia was to be had at bargain prices.
I think common sense should tell anyone that the ‘banksters’ as you call them and the corporate media of today who have done their best to deny climate change for so long are not likely to be the ones pushing climate change on anybody. Dystopia is in the eye of the beholder I suppose but take one look at Australia and see the reality of climate change for them. Moreover, are you suggesting that autocrats and dictators are trying to instill fear in us serfs …um… people by faking the reality of climate change? Um? What does that make Trump? Or the denialist Prime Minister of Australia? Or the others who have long tried to deny climate change? It is not like they have been trying to convince anyone that climate change is real that I can see.
Since humans were first human hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Earth has never seen this high a CO2 ratio. It continues to go higher and higher, so it isn’t about lifestyle changes as much as it is survival for your grandchildren. Nearly 8 billion people and their cars and planes and power plants etc. produce billions upon billions of tons of carbon each year. To suggest that has no cumulative effect over the years is an indication that you failed high school chemistry at best. I suppose you simply ignore a melting Polar Ice Cap? Do you really think that everyone in the world is just faking that? Are we all just pretending just to trick you? Our own navy has reported that we can longer hide our nuclear submarines below the ice cap in the North Pole because the ice has shrunk so much and what is left is too thin. Are they also fooling us? Just for the fun of it maybe?
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Thanks for sharing that link-----looks very good!
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Thanks for your reply Wereflea. So what are these “many, many sources world wide” reporting? Unfortunately the Article does not say but rather implies by silence that this daily reading is typical. It would really be nice to know if that’s the case. As for the point of my comment it flies in the face of common sense that if it was so important to build the site in the middle of the Pacific because the air is so pure there, why then would they build it right on top of a source of CO2?
Look at Tasmania Clean air station as a source.
And as for 417ppm by May, 420ppm more likely.
You could try doing even a minimum of research yourself first. Just sayin’! They monitor CO2 emissions quite carefully especially as abrupt changes could signal upcoming volcanic activity. They do not have their monitoring equipment located by known vents (those are monitored) nor even near such minuscule sources of CO2 emissions as from green plants. The monitoring is done on huge barren lava fields that have solidified and cooled long ago. If there were to be emissions, tiny amounts would be registered and investigated. The air over the Pacific is reliably purer than anywhere else because there are no major population centers like Asia or Europe etc. nearby. Air at 11,500 ft. Is well mixed and gives a notably true reading for general gaseous proportions in the atmosphere. These findings are collated and confirmed by other observatories in the world and by thousands of small monitoring stations around the world. This is not the Victorian Age of science. Science goes to exacting pains to verify findings because that is the definition of science - verifiable facts. You may buy a home version of an atmospheric gas testing kit and do your own anecdotal tests but you would only get a personal result. By placing extremely sensitive and accurate equipment in places like Mauna Loa, Antarctica, Tibet, and elsewhere, atmospheric scientists get a long term view of changes in the atmosphere. You are making the mistake of thinking that there are unknown CO2 emissions from the volcano affecting the equipment as if the scientists wouldn’t have ever thought of that? Lava fields are land over which formerly molten lava has solidified. There are vast lava fields in Idaho for example and bare rock is bare rock there too but readings from there would register CO2 emissions from civilization. Ever been at 11,500 ft.? A mite windy to say the least but even so, the scientists want to know the facts whichever direction they lay and not to prove any one perspective.
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They need to be better at it. I think that there is a poorer quality of trolls than what existed years ago. Why back in my day there were trolls who were really trolls…! Lol. Trolls used to know the facts that they denied admitting that they knew. Now those were a better quality trolls! Many were in the fossil fuel field and felt it awkward that ‘someone’ might find our that they were disloyal to their hefty pay checks. Now we have mostly the ‘know nuthin’ and don’t wanna know nuthin’ trolls! I guess I miss the good old days when you had to know your stuff to win the argument.
Back then we had the ‘coming ice age’ type of troll, for example. No one actually believed that nonsense but the game was in trying to see if they were CIA or industry ‘paid volunteers’ lol. Even as only a few years ago there was palpable enthusiasm for just telling the lies. The field of global warming denial was growing passé and it got harder to find arguing that better educated class of trolls then you find today. Now denying global warming has gone so mainstream in troll world that it is taken for granted at Trump rallies. No enthusiasm, ya’ know? Same old same old denial. This person at least tried that what about the volcano dodge or tried to. Sigh. I grow nostalgic for those who knew better but weren’t going to admit it type of trolls. No all you encounter are the voluntarily uninformed troll - those who don’t know and know that they don’t want to know type of troll. The ‘I don’t want to know’ troll glorifies in their not ever learning the facts. If necessary, they pretend those facts are not facts. For them - denial is its own excuse.
I responded simply because I have a problem letting incorrect facts stand. I feel compelled to present the truth almost automatically. I am the kind of person who will tell you if your fly is open or that there is a booger in your nose rather than laughing behind your back or letting you walk around like that all day. I know that powerful people do not have to lie to their subordinates but it is the other way around for those subordinates. Subordinates have to lie, kiss up, kiss ass and play the game for the boss etc. I choose facts as my high ground and they do the fighting for me.
The person who knows what is true and what is false always has the home court advantage. The truth is the truth and that is that. Lies on the other hand could be anything and everything. There are those who will, of course, say that all truth is subjective. Opinions are subjective not facts. Facts are facts that have nothing to do with opinions. That cup of coffee that burns your lips is hot. A subjective opinion? Yep. It may not be as hot as molten lava but the truth that molten lava is hot is not an opinion. We can always say that everything is subjective but we have a reference point perspective. To human lips the coffee is hot but it won’t set you aflame like will lava. Verifiable science does its best to avoid subjectivity.
Facts are my friends not my enemies like it is for trolls. Trolls know and know that they don’t want to know. I can’t be like that. I personally liked the better informed troll of yore myself (the fossil fuel geologist and what have you) but these days there has been a noticeable decline in overall ability among the current crop of trolls. You almost never find any that still don’t know the truth already. The newer trolls actually have more of a kiss up/kiss ass mentality. They know global warming exists. They aren’t really that stupid. They just want to identify with what they think their betters feel about things. The ‘I am just like the rich guy except for all that money’ person who doesn’t want to think of themself as being among the losers (as defined as not being rich or at least well off)!True believer trolls are afraid to find out that they were wrong all this time. They realize then that their fly was open or they had a booger in their nose all this time. Some people can’t handle that much reality. They work two jobs, have no benefits and no pension to retire on but nevertheless they identify with the rich and try to be what they think rich people are like. Most rich people already know about global warming as they are usually educated for the most part but they don’t care (or they want somebody else to pay to fix it just not them. Oil is still profitable!
Mostly I couldn’t sleep earlier lol and so now I felt that I had to re-answer them.
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It was Louis XV who said that. He died before the 1789 French Revolution. You may be thinking that it was said by Louis XVI-----who was indeed guillotined.
Gosh!
Yes, I agree with your thrust: !0 years ago it was ‘the little ice age’, ‘the warming period’, ‘it hasn’t warmed since 1998’ etc with some attempt at evidence, the good old days!
Now it’s become rhetoric- the last refuge of the scoundral or scoundrals so to speak. Witness Boris Johnson in UK and Donald Trump speech after his ‘aquital’ last week.
The problem is that rhetoric appeals, and those who use it instead of evidence know it, for long enough, and then do it again.
You should know that back in the early seventies, the idea of a coming ice age was floated by a fringe (ancient aliens ate my homework types) media story line but it went nowhere. Nevertheless, decades later, it was claimed that the story had been believed ‘by everybody’ and that proved that ‘nobody’ should believe in global warming now.
Back in the 70’s this was a story first planted by select journalists believed to be working for the CIA. When you look at global warming today, you can see just how long it has been known about global warming. If you google coming ice age stories that were back in the 70’s you get nothing. It was just another crank story that no one took seriously back then. At least they didn’t until decades later when denialists insisted that everyone had believed it. They didn’t.
When you take all the disinformation/misinformation stories then and now, they add up to … 69.3F in Antarctica today by a math that everyone can understand.
There are some who think that the fossil fuel industry wouldn’t buy a journalist or editor to hype a little believed claim like a coming ice age but scientific journals and elsewhere were already pointing out the inevitability of global warming. Moreover, people read ‘coming ice age’ but fail to consider that the phrase meant in would occur another 20,000 years in the future.
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Gopherit ,what happens to your body when your temperature changes by a few degrees ?
So what about the planet ,is it not alive ,life itself ! .Lets call it the big self and us the little self .
It’s absurd and extraordinary arrogant that humans can keep doing to nature what we are doing and there be no consequences .
We have a conscience no , we have the ability to end life on this planet in one afternoon.
Do we not have a responsibility to keep life in balance ,being good stewards over what we have been given stewardship. To pass on to the next generation what we hold dear and wish to be sustained .
If humans do not make the adaption that life is asking us to make . Life will adapt for us ,and we may not like the outcome . It could become Hell on Earth for humans .
The mistake we make is we think (us) the little self is bigger than the big self. We are a part ,no more ,no less .
Can we not follow the Precautionary Principle as our scientists ( the finest minds on the planet ) are telling us Nay…Yelling at us to do.
We have reached conscious evolution a very important time for our species . I have read some call it our birthing moment .
As a fine metaphysician once said …” to be or not to be .”
Does the human race wish to Be ?
You just can’t continue to change the atmosphere without any consequences . It’s all connected .
It’s good to converse and discuss here at CD .
In the end All is One
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One non manipulated fact is the amount of increase of carbon that has been burned on this planet since about 1800.
In 1960, 10 GTs, 1990 or so, 20GTs and 2019, 38GTs. I.e 2% growth equals doubling every 2/3 years or so.IE exponential growth (I’m not sure if one can be more factual than mathematics).
From carbon burning comes CO2, you probably know the rest, as you do the latter. After all, these facts are freely available.
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Correction, doubling every 32 years or so
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