Vocal Voices

So says the latest Met Office data from the benchmark Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. In just under 60 years, when measurements were first taken (1958), it has risen from 315ppm - a 30% increase.

The current concentration is the highest for about 800,000 years, and could be the highest in the past 20 million years. Yes, there have been times when the concentration was higher, much higher, but the speed of the rise is unique in Earth's 4.6 billion year history.

And so we tinker at the edges.

I've been there

Workingman wrote:, there have been times when the concentration was higher, much higher.

Yep the Dinosaurs loved it, the earth basically had no ice caps and much of the planet was a marsh.

Excellent for hosting 8 billion humans on and keeping them fed.

The problem with using the shock figures of Mona Loa is that it has local impacts which can be called out as non representative.

However

If you take the global figure, which in April were 404.08, you are on much more solid ground.

The big one for me is that the average annual dip from the peak to the trough is only around 3ppm - 3.5ppm. We, who watch this stuff, had thought that we would see under 400ppm globally one more time, before it dropped off the radar for the next 10 to 15 thousand years. It seems we were overly optimistic and that 2016 may trough over 400ppm and 2017 will take it over 407 at a peak. Globally that is....

I wonder how people who are being flooded out, year after year, can ignore this news? The link is not even tenuous, it's absolute.

Diflower wrote:I've been there

Earth? What planet are you on now then?

Suff wrote:The link is not even tenuous, it's absolute.

Yes. And it is a big worry that the majority of those under 30-35 are so disinterested and unconcerned.

From my early teens, up to that sort of age, organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wide Fund for Nature were always in the faces of government and big business. Their protest marches attracted people from all walks of life. They engaged with us and made us listen, even when we did not agree with what they were saying.

The were not about climate change, that came later, but they were about the destruction of the environment and misuse of resources. It is sad that they appear to have lost that popular touch with the younger generations, but I guess that was inevitable once they and their members matured.

Ironic isn't it? The movement succeeded in getting the governments to make changes and protect the environment.

End reward?

People think they're crackpots.

People live in a cocoon today. For the vast majority life is more comfortable than at any time, ever, in the history of the UK. People born into that just assumes that it happens with no effort. They rarely think about what it took to get there. Take young women who don't bother to vote. My MIL walked to the voting station to the day she couldn't walk any more and then she registered for a postal vote. But when she was born women had no vote, many fewer rights and were sometimes treated like property.

Interesting isn't it. The old saying, may you reap what you sow. We reaped a cleaner more stable local environment and a more comfortable life. Those of the current generation will reap abuse of power, oppression and a loss of quality of life......

Then the cycle begins again...

Suff wrote:Then the cycle begins again...

Hopefully. One day the next cycle will be the last one, we should be making sure that it is not any time soon.

Are we?

I must admit when I think about that I just feel old and tired.

I can insulate my life, educate my family and anyone who wants to hear. Everyone else? Devil take the hindmost....

I have become the consummate European, something I dislike intensely...