Adaptation

by Mike Patrick

Created on: September 28, 2009   Last Updated: September 30, 2009

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, (OSHA), the maximum safe CO2 level for humans is 5,000 parts per million (ppm), or 0.5% of the atmosphere. At that level, a worker can be exposed to CO2 for 8 hours every day, through an entire 40 hour work week, without adverse effect. OSHA has always been known to err on the side of safety; it's kind of their job. CO2 actually becomes toxic to humans at around 8,000 ppm, or .8% of the atmosphere.

I found a global-warming site on the Internet at http://co2now.org/ which appears to update the present CO2 level hourly. It says Earth's present atmospheric level is 385.92 ppm. Let's just round that up to 386 ppm. That is .0386% of the Earth's atmosphere. Okay . . . that's a little too concise to work with. Let's round it up to .04%.

In the last 50 years, CO2 levels have averaged rising a tad under 1.5 ppm a year. If that trend continues, the human race is going to be in real trouble according to OSHA standards-around the year 5223. That should allow enough time to adapt to the increased CO2 toxicity; heck, it might be enough time to evolve.

But we're not worried about CO2 becoming toxic. We're worried about it trapping enough heat to warm the oceans, melt the polar ice caps and raise the ocean levels. Now we can understand that most of human adaptation would involving moving population centers away from the rising seas. Can we get it done in time?

The sea levels have been rising for the last 10,000; every since the last large Ice Age. According to Wikipedia (I know, that's not the worlds best reference work), for the last 100 years they have averaged rising about 1.8 mm per year. For the metrically challenged, that's about .07 inch; somewhat less than the thickness of an average human hair. At that rate, I don't even want to try to figure out what year the Statue of Liberty will be under water. It's so far in the future we may very well have learned to grow gills by that time.

Perhaps it isn't the sea level that bothers you. Maybe it's the progression of the deserts caused by CO2 climate change. There's nothing but good news here. Increased levels of CO2 cause increased plant growth. Although approximately one third of the world has been desert covered for thousands of years, the paltry increase of CO2 since the Little Ice Age is starting to shrink the deserts. Millions of square miles are turning green. If CO2 continues to rise, there will be whole new areas for humans to move into; areas oceans will never cover.

Unfortunately, all the news isn't good. Studies of ice-core samples from the Polar Regions show that CO2 fluctuations lag 800 years behind temperature fluctuations. That means that CO2 doesn't force global warming; global warming forces CO2. It also means that the CO2 levels we are experiencing now are an echo of the temperature from somewhere around the year 1200.

That is the inconvenient truth for Al Gore (and may be why he won't debate anyone) which negates the whole argument of, not only man-made global warming, but any global warming being caused by CO2. The good news is we don't have to spend trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to lower CO2 levels.

There are two items of bad news connected to the trillions in savings. First, the global temperature quit rising in 1998 and began dropping in 2002. Unless it starts rising again, we have less than 800 years of increasing benefits from rising CO2 before the CO2 level follows the temperature and begins dropping too.

Second, something other than CO2 was forcing the increase in temperature. That something may be a real threat that we need to learn to control-or we may be forced to adapt.

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