“In the early part of the record around 1958 on, the average annual rate of carbon dioxide growth was something like 0.7 parts per million (ppm) per year, whereas in the past five or six years, the average rate of growth has been more like 1.8 ppm per year two and a half times faster. And up to 2.54 ppm in 2002-2003.”
– Pieter Tans, Ph.D., NOAA

October 15, 2004 Boulder, Colorado – This week in London at the annual Greenpeace business lecture, disturbing recent greenhouse data from America’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, Britain’s Hadley Center and the Norwegian Institute for Air Research was discussed. In 2002 and 2003, the average rise in the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere rose from about 1.5 parts per million by volume to as much as 2.54 ppm. Some atmospheric scientists worry that such a sudden and rapid increase in greenhouse CO2 is linked to rising global temperatures. If the CO2 continues to increase rapidly for the next five to ten years, it could mean that even the soil of our planet is warming to the point that it more easily releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. A Norwegian scientist, Dr. Kim Holmen, has been studying soil and permafrost oxidation to carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere. See: 10-13-04 Earthfiles. He told me this week: “There is a storage of carbon in soils that can oxidize to CO2 which is at least three times as large as the total atmospheric content of CO2.” If the soil and permafrost warmed up enough to release a lot more carbon dioxide, that would increase global warming which releases more CO2 from soils and on and on – which might lead to a “runaway greenhouse” of ever-increasing temperatures.Click for report.




