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For the last 650k years, atmospheric levels of carbon never topped 280 parts per million (ppm), but in the last century we have seen this rise to 385 ppm. Projections are that in the near future we will reach 450 ppm, and the long term goal among climate activists/scientists is to reduce down to 350 ppm. Some data claims that we're already at the effective 455 ppm given the levels of methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and nitrous in the atmosphere.
Why is this important?
At 1000 ppm, scientists believe it is very likely that we will trigger an anoxic event which, throughout prehistory, is thought to be responsible for numerous mass extinction events. Anoxic events essentially are very rapid oceanic and atmospheric changes in toxicity that poisons nearly all species of plant and animal
But it's 1000 ppm, it's a ways off, right? Well, not necessarily; this is because of environmental feedback loops that cause greater and greater natural emissions of greenhouse gases.
We don't know everything about these feedback loops because we are essentially conducting the first experiment ever, but we do know many of the numbers, and they suggest that it may be likely that once we hit great enough feedback loops we will have gone beyond a point of no return, and the globe will just continue to warm rapidly despite our ability to reduce greenhouse emissions.
These feedback loops are things like the more ice melts the less heat that gets reflected back into space and thus the faster the Earth heats and melts even more ice, the hotter it gets the more wildfires and thus the fewer carbon sequestering as well as higher levels of carbon emitted due to the plant burn, permafrost melting and thus creating a ginormous feedback loop of released methane which would probably be enough by itself to shoot us up to 1000 ppm or something, etc. There are many feedback loops, they're not well understood, but they are widely considered to be a major cause for alarm
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Originally Posted by Lukie
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