Do you have to worry about 400?
[Just look at the trend and ignore the number 399.50 at the top, because I do not know what the time frame "Current" refers to]
No.
Not if you had not worried about 395, 356, or 315.
As you would have guessed these are some sort of timelines, concentration of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the years (annual average) 2014 (projected), 2010-2011, 1992 and 1958 respectively.
OK, the trend is set; it is obvious. If you started worrying about what appears to be inexorable increase in CO2 concentration now, you could worry about it in 2020, 2025 … till we reach 2050. And, register your worries through action.
But, beyond 2050 there is no point in worrying or taking action other than putting your air conditioner on High-Higher-Highest Cool settings. World climate then will start to resemble current Chennai climate! What Chennai climate will be in 2050, I dare not imagine.
Have fun everywhere as you do in Chennai year round!
Raghuram Ekambaram
2 comments:
I do share your concern, Raghuram. I speak much in my classes about what we are doing to the planet and what the students can do to mitigate the evils.
Matheikal, thanks so much, truly appreciate it. I hope you saw that I had deliberately omitted saying what that 400 is, beyond a mere number. I thought that at this stage the need to explain 400 and all the other numbers, tag them with a unit will merely add to the crowd and not to the intensity of the feeling that should be evoked in it. It is, my thinking went, a felt duty of people to seek out the explanation. No spoon feeding.
RE
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