Soccer coaches tell their player to "keep their eye on the ball" and management professors teach " if you can't measure it, you can't manage it". That's why climate change could actually help us move towards sustainability. In the same way that the speedometer in a car serves to indicate when we are driving dangerously fast, a measure of CO2 concentrations serves to indicate whether our actions are leading us towards safety or danger.
If humanity is to make the transition to a society and an economy that operate in harmony with nature's immutable laws, then we all need to become more ecologically literate. There are two numbers to learn and bear in mind when reading the mass of literature on this topic:
- 2 degrees centigrade
- 350 parts per million.
The first number relates to what the International Panel on Climate Change considers the maximum increase in average global temperature over pre-industrial levels which could be considered safe to humans. Increases beyond that global average would result in affects that are considered "dangerous". There's considerable debate still as to whether the 2 degree figure is, in fact, either safe or optimistic, but that's another story for another post.
The second figure relates to a concentration of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. While the CO2 gas is invisible to the naked eye and easily forgotten or ignored, scientists have learned to measure CO2 concentrations with considerable accuracy. The science, at this point, is relatively simple - the more CO2 that is emitted, the more is concentrated in the atmosphere and the less heat can escape. So again the critical question is what atmospheric CO2 is safe? In April 2008, ten scentists led by James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies stated that the upper ceiling should not exceed 350 parts per million. Every year that passes in which we allow concentrations to exceed that number and grow in magnitude exacerbates the problem and requires more drastic cuts in emissions. Or to be more clear - to get atmospheric CO2 to decline to the safe side of 350 ppm, global emissions have to be virtually eliminated.
So instead of looking at the speed guage in your car, or following interest rates, the Dow Jones or Nasdaq indices with riveted attention, it is vital we keep our attention focused on CO2 concentrations. And to help that process, a Canadian, Michael McGee of Larbon Solutions has generated a number of widgets that feed and dsiplay real time data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that measures and reports CO2 concentrations every month.
A range of widgets are available at CO2 Now and we have reproduced one of the larger ones below. As you can see we are already 10% above safe levels and concentrations are increasing year on year.CO2 Now will update the widget with the latest information as it comes avilbale from NOAA. We encourage our readers to embed their widget of choice on their web sites, blogs and Facebook pages and urge as many others to do the same.
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