When a person walked on the surface of the moon for the first time, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the Earth was 325 parts per million (part of a million).
By 9/11, 369 was part of a million, and when Covid-19 closed normal life in 2020, it could reach 414 parts of a million part.
This week, our planet has achieved the highest levels directly registered ever: 430 parts per million.
For 67 years, the observatory on the Mona Lua volcano in Hawaii was taking these measurements daily – followed the invisible gas that accumulates in Jonah and changed our lives on Earth.
The record is known as the Keeling curve. Charles David Keeling began these recordings, some of the first in the world to measure the concentration of carbon dioxide over time.
His son, Ralph Kelling, who was born one year before the opening of the Observatory, witnessed the rapid increase directly during his life.
“I was a teenager when I started estimating what my father is doing and how it might be important,” Killing told CBC News. At that time it was about 330 parts per million.
Killing, Professor of Geological Chemistry at the California Ocean Sciences Institute, San Diego, took the research once his father died in 2005.
“This problem does not disappear, and we move more and more to unknown lands, and certainly, a very dangerous area.”
Why carbon dioxide matters
The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not visible to the naked eye, but its concentration is important due to the effect of the greenhouse.
Like the glass walls that hold the heat from the sun in an actual greenhouse, Gases in Jonah Like carbon dioxide and methane also the heat trap of the sun.
At the beginning of the industrial revolution, Ice Core samples show that carbon dioxide levels were about 280 parts per million but with their height, warning It increased by about 1.3 degrees Celsius On the average before industry.
This led to high temperatures and leads to a more frequent and extreme weather, such as Heat wavesand Floodsand forest fires and Dehydration.
While many heard of goals Reducing warming to 1.5 c or 2 c Above the levels before industry, there were also efforts to return Carbon dioxide levels to less than 350 parts per millionAs a major part of reducing the damage caused by climate change.
Standard levels continued though. Only last year, carbon dioxide readings have increased more than three parts per million – that many particles besieged carbon dioxide and contribute to warming.
“We know why it rises faster than ever, it is because we burn more fossil fuels every year,” said Kelling.
A direct link for fossil fuel
Damon Matthews, climate scientist and professor at the University of Concordia in Quebec, says he is interested and is not surprised by the presence of new records every year.
“If we want to stabilize carbon dioxide levels already in the air, we will need to reduce global emissions by more than 50 percent, and we are not near to do so,” he said, adding that there are other gases in playing but carbon dioxide is the dominant effect.
“Each May, we will see a new record of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, until we make more climate -mitigating than today.”
The annual cycle, whose peak in late spring in the northern hemisphere is associated with light acting – carbon dioxide concentrations decrease in the summer as they absorb gas plants and release oxygen.
In 2021, the International Energy Agency said that if the world wants to limit global warming and access to the net network by 2050, it may be there There are no new projects for coal, oil or gas.
Matthews is part of the Net-Zero Consulting Board in Canada and says he has seen some progress in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the past few years, but not enough.
He says that the emissions of Europe were Going for decadesThis last year, carbon dioxide emissions in China It did not increase. However, he says that Canada is still behind other countries, and the United States is heading in the other direction.
He said: “There are a lot of policy options, which certainly focus on expanding the oil and gas industry in Canada at the present time, you will not get as we need to go in terms of climate.”
“We just need to stop the debate about whether it is a priority and begins doing the things we know will help solve the problem.”
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