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400 Parts Per Million

Former Vice President Al Gore. (photo: Mario Anzuoni)

Image: Former Vice President Al Gore. (photo: Mario Anzuoni)

readersupportednews.org - May 11th, 2013 - Al Gore

Yesterday, for the first time in human history, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, hit 400 parts per million in our planet's atmosphere. This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years -- and especially over the last several decades -- we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization. We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.

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Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears

      

The average carbon dioxide reading surpassed 400 parts per million at the research facility atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii for the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. on Thursday.  Chris Stewart/Associated Press

nytimes.com - by Justin Gillis - May 10, 2013

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitoring program
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

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Global Warming Over Land Is Real: CU-Boulder, NOAA Study

huffingtonpost.com - by Charlie Brennan - April 12, 2013

(SEE LINK TO STUDY BELOW)

The thermometers got it right. The Earth is warming, another study is reporting.

Climate scientists recognize that changes in weather observation stations' immediate surroundings -- such as neighboring trees being replaced by heat-absorbing concrete -- can eventually throw data from such stations into question.

But now, a new study directed by a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that recreates climate history without the use of land-based observation systems shows the same thing that thermometers have been reporting.

"This shows that global warming over land is real," said Gilbert Compo, a scientist at NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.

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GRL - Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures

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Millions Face Starvation as World Warms, Say Scientists

      

Corn in the hands of a farmworker in South Africa. Photograph: Greatstock Photographic Library/Alamy

guardian.co.uk - by John Vidal - April 13, 2013

Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms.

As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor.

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US National Climate Assessment
http://assessment.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/draft-report-information

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Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming Global Explosion

tomdispatch.com - by Michael Klare - April 21, 2013

In his pathbreaking 2001 book Resource Wars, Michael Klare wrote: “Natural resources are the building blocks of civilization and an essential requirement of daily existence.  The inhabitants of planet Earth have been blessed with a vast supply of most basic materials.  But we are placing increased pressure on those supplies, and in some cases we face, in our lifetimes, or those of our children, the prospect of severe resource depletion.”

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Solving Global Warming: A Silent Revolution

csi.gsb.stanford.edu - April 5th, 2013 - Bernadette

It’s a fact: global temperatures are warmer than at any time in the past 4,000 years –– the result of human activities releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given existing technology to reduce our carbon footprint, why aren’t we seeing bolder action to remedy the issue at home and abroad?

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National Climate Assessment Series

      

submitted by Stella Tarnay

securityandsustainabilityforum.org - by Kristina Byrne - January 31, 2013

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Dow Chemical to Offset Olympics CO2

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - March 15, 2012

Dow Chemical, which was named the Official Carbon Partner of the XXII Olympic Winter Games, plans to mitigate the carbon footprint of the Sochi 2014 Games using its energy-efficient technologies.

Dow will apply its technology to target areas, such as building infrastructure, industry and agriculture within Russia. Improvements may include adding Dow’s air-sealing technologies to buildings and insulation materials for energy efficient and affordable housing, the company said.

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Global Warming is Epic, Long-Term Study Says

                            (LINKS TO STUDY ABSTRACT AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ARE BELOW)

       

Scientists look at an ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide coring site.  Credit: Thomas Bauska, OSU

CNN - by Ben Brumfield - March 8, 2013

Global warming has propelled Earth's climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest -- in just one century.

A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

"If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record," he said.

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Study Abstract - A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract

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Giving communities a voice in resilience

People adapt. Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

Image: People adapt. Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

irinnews.org - March 5th, 2013 - Jaspreet Kindra

Contrary to popular belief, most rural communities facing recurrent climate shocks learn to adapt, using their own resources and knowledge. Yet many international aid programmes have outside “experts” craft interventions without the involvement of those they seek to help.

And many development projects do not actually promote adaptability, said Simon Levine of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), in a 2012 Oxfam blog post.

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