Pop Quiz: Pre-Industrial Carbon
by Dominic Muren, Philadelphia, USA on 04. 9.08
Answer: C) 280 parts per million
The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide--measured in parts per million (PPM)--has recently entered the mainstream as scientists debate the concentration above which we must not go if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global climate change. Before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 was around 280 parts per million. As of January 2007, the concentration was measured at 383 PPM, which is higher than it has been in the last 650,000 years.
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Source: COTF.edu
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Just out of curiosity who took the co2 reading prior to the industrial revolution and was it the same person that took it 650,000 years ago?
(Author's Note)
Great question Jon. Actually, nobody was thinking to measure CO2 levels at either of those times. Instead, we rely on estimates of atmospheric CO2 derived from measurements of gases dissolved in ice drilled from glaciers around the world. The BBC has a cool article about the most recent drilling efforts:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm
The most extreme answer seems to get the most votes on these polls.
Apparently you did not see the sarcasm.
I don't want to be an arse, but aren't these poll results (49% chose the easiest, most wrong answer) a bit of a damning indictment of the state of the environmentalist community? I mean, assuming most people who visit this site (and do the polls) are self-described environmentalists, and that climate change is cause no. 1, and that all the policy steps relating to climate change centre around stabilizing carbon levels at a specific level... Carbon ppm's are one of the most basic facts of interest to the environmentalist. How can you responsibly discuss solutions without knowing them?
What this quiz says to me, is that environmentalists are woefully illiterate about environmental issues. And many of these same people will be labelling non-environmentalists as woefully ignorant... come on. It's time we got our act together.
Wait now, if the treehugger crowd thinks that CO2 levels were at 120PPM, where do they think all the plants lived pre-1900? I may be mistaken, but won't most plant life fail if CO2 were reduced to such a dangerously low level?