Keeling Curve -- Climate change's most iconic research project is in danger

[phantom power]

Climate change's most iconic research project is in danger--a victim of budget cuts in an era of increased government belt-tightening. The Keeling Curve is a measurement of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, begun in 1958 by Dr. Charles Keeling. It is the longest-running such measurement in the world. The curve was instrumental in showing how human emissions of carbon dioxide were steadily accumulating in Earth's atmosphere, and raised awareness that human-caused climate change was an ever-increasing threat to the stability of our climate. After Keeling's death in 2005, the measurements were continued by his son, Ralph F. Keeling. Support from NSF, NOAA and NASA is being diminished or withdrawn, and Keeling has turned to crowd-funding to help raise funds to continue these important measurements. I hope you can join me in making a donation.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2644


Figure 1. The Keeling Curve: climate change's most iconic image. The curve's steady year-by-year increase in CO2 due to burning of coal, oil, and natural gas has wriggles on top of it, due to the natural seasonal cycle in CO2--plants suck in CO2 during the Northern Hemisphere growing season, then release it during the winter. Image credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USCD.

[hootinholler]

1. Can we fund science already?

We need these measurements, why do the people who make them have to beg?

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Denial is so much easier

if you just disable those pesky data collectors.

[hootinholler]

3. I couldn't find the rhetorical question smiley

We got one for sarcasm though.

[pscot]

4. Ignorance is best

How can we concentrate on bracketology and the new cold war if we're all worried about CO2?

[truebrit71]

5. So as we pass through the 400ppm threshold this is going to disappear?

Sort of like the shutdown of radiation monitoring on the West Coast after Fukushima....it's almost as if this were part of a larger plan or something...

[Nihil]

6. These are not the droids you are looking for ...

Consume!

Profit!

Growth!

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

[truebrit71]

7. Right?

Fucking depressing...

[Nihil]

8. Yep.

Welcome to the desert of the real.



Or take the blue pill, put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and
pretend that it's all going to be sorted out by "someone" real soon now
because we've always been clever little tool monkeys and that's not going
to change is it?