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World CO2 Levels at Record High Since the Last 650,000 Years

guardian.co.uk — The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control. Scientists say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution.

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MakiMaki 75 days ago

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corbettkroehler, on 05/12/2008, -3/+6Eventually, the skeptics will be overwhelmed by the truth!
- Railer, on 05/13/2008, -4/+3What that CO2 Levels are at record highs yet temperatures have leveled out since 1998 and has dropped considerably in the last years DESPITE record highs?
  
  You're right us skeptics are truly overwhelmed by the truth that CO2 has NOTHING to do with Global Climate and that despite years and years of evidence showing this fact, enviro zealots continue to believe this myth.
  
  I my self am awestruck by the stupidity of the environmental movement, after 3 decades of flawless safety in nuclear energy industry, enviros still will not even think about the possibility of setting up more nuclear plants and again for absolutely NO logical reason. Skeptics will always be overwhelmed by the stupidity of zealots.
  
  Notes:
  Global Temperatures from 1998:
  http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MEITEMPS_LAST_DECA ...
  Nuclear Energy use around the world:
  http://www.world-nuclear.org/images/info/elecperce ...
  Lithuania know it's safe, and use it safely, but the USA is I guess not technology as advanced as Lithuania?
  - Daz3, on 05/13/2008, -1/+5"after 3 decades of flawless safety in nuclear energy industry, enviros still will not even think about the possibility of setting up more nuclear plants and again for absolutely NO logical reason."
    Yea, that good old nuclear waste isn't harmful at all...
    - Railer, on 05/13/2008, -2/+6What nuclear waste? Once again enviro FUD does not hold up to reality.
      'France now reprocesses well over 1000 metric tons of spent fuel every year without incident at the La Hague chemical complex, at the head of Normandy’s wind-blasted Cotentin peninsula. La Hague receives all the spent fuel rods from France’s 59 reactors. The sprawling facility, operated by the state-controlled nuclear giant Areva, has racked up a good, if not unblemished, environmental record."
      http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb07/4891
      It must be annoying to be wrong so often.
      - vikingcoder, on 05/14/2008, -1/+3http://www.acamedia.info/politics/nonproliferation ...
        In 1977, President Carter deferred indefinitely commercial reprocessing of plutonium produced in commercial U.S. nuclear plants, citing concerns about the consequences of proliferation. President Reagan lifted that ban in 1981, but the development of reprocessing facilities was no longer considered economically viable in the United States.
        
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac ...
        Despite these economic and political realities, the tight-knit nuclear power industries in a number of countries, including France, Japan and Russia have continued to pursue the plutonium reprocessing and the plutonium fuel cycle. These countries have invested vast sums in breeder programs that have no chance of succeeding in the foreseeable future. This obsession with uneconomic solutions to the energy problems reflects institutional inertia, state subsidized isolation from the market, and a technological fixation with achieving the "holy grail'of nuclear technology through the breeder reactor, regardless of cost.
        ...
        With high confidence based on two decades of persuasive experience, the United States should continue President Carter's sound economic and security policy of deferring indefinitely the reprocesmg of plutonium in civil reactors. Moreover, a renewed effort should be undertaken to build an international consensus against an economically unjustified plutonium economy which entails serious international security risks. While such an effort will continue to meet resistance, one would hope that opposition will be considerably diminshed from 1977 given the unanticipated difficulties that the opponents of the policy have experienced over the last two decades.
      - Railer, on 05/14/2008, -3/+1Wow viking you amaze me with the level of just pure stupidity is... is .. overwhelming. Now instead of people believing an article in the IEEE, by a NUCLEAR ENGINEER we should listen to what? A guy who as far as I can tell is a middle tier bureaucrat, who has a God complex, from an article 10 years old talking about technology that's 25 years old? Wow that's just sad. Go back to your cold dark cave you Luddite.
        
        “If we do reprocessing and recycle, we can increase the capacity of Yucca Mountain 100-fold,” says Phillip Finck, a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois. Suddenly, instead of being crammed full on its opening day, Yucca Mountain would be able to handle everything the industry could throw at it until 2050 or beyond, staving off searches for additional Yucca Mountains."
      - vikingcoder, on 05/14/2008, -1/+2Try reading your own provided article; at least the entire first page. It agrees entirely with the articles I presented.
        
        (bottom of the first page)
        >>
        France’s experience suggests that reprocessing as done now is not ready to catalyze a full-blown nuclear renaissance.
        ...
        even in France—the best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplish—the technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste.
        >>
        
        (article conclusion)
        >>
        Without breeder reactors, the case for reprocessing is less than compelling. Considered in isolation, the economic arguments for and against reprocessing are a wash. Most of the arguments concerning security and terrorism, too, seem moot. But until or unless breeder reactors are commercialized that can truly burn up all the residual fissile material found in spent fuels, reprocessing will simply concentrate high-level waste in a form that’s hotter and harder to handle, exchanging one nuclear waste headache for another.
        >>
      - Daz3, on 05/14/2008, -1/+2"It must be annoying to be wrong so often."
        I wouldn't know. Viking pretty much just crushed your argument with your own evidence.
      - Railer, on 05/14/2008, -2/+1It must be nice to live in a world where nothing give off any was what so ever, the technology is there to clean up 90% of the nuclear waste I know you enviro zealots would let out one dropper of waste from any from of energy no matter how insane that is. The amount of waste now is tiny compared to 30 years ago and safely is prefect, but to Luddites nothing is ever good enough. You also create waste by exhaling, I assume you want all people to stop that too?
        
        As for crushing arguments, no he did not, "Without breeder reactors" well guess what WE HAVE BREEDER REACTORS. Without feet we can't walk, ya but we have feet so we can walk. That PROVES my point not disproves it, you mean we would have to change the laws oh no!
        
        "reprocessing will simply concentrate high-level waste in a form that’s hotter and harder to handle, exchanging one nuclear waste headache for another." abd this is just stupid, your right though, I found taking all my waste and having it crushed and up into a land fill is the same as just throwing it out in my back lard in compressed.
        
        But arguing with people who thing the world would be better off without 2 or 3 billion people less on the planet is pretty much pointless.
      - Daz3, on 05/15/2008, -1/+2Are you drunk? I'd refute you if only I could understand what you are trying to say.
      - Railer, on 05/15/2008, -1/+1Two points
        
        1. Nuclear energy is INCREDIBLY safe.
        http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html
        2. Despite record CO2 Levels the world is cooling, and has fallen out of EVERY IPCC model.
        http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MEITEMPS_LAST_DECA ...
        http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archi ...
        
        simple enough for you.
- vault, on 05/13/2008, -6/+3And what truth would that be, warm-monger? The truth that global warming amounts to a whopping 0.7 degree increase in global temperature over the past CENTURY?
  - Daz3, on 05/13/2008, -2/+4Do you understand anything about feedback loops?
SteelChicken, on 05/13/2008, -3/+2650,000 years ago cavemen and all their campfires destroyed the ecosystem!
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World CO2 Levels at Record High Since the Last 650,000 Years

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