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First Posted: 5/10/2013 WASHINGTON &#8212; Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday.
Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station which is in Hawaii and sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That was during the Pleistocene Era. &#8220;It was much warmer than it is today,&#8221; Tans said. &#8220;There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between (33 to 66 feet).&#8221;
Other scientists say it might have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first modern humans only appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The measurement was recorded Thursday and it is only a daily figure, the monthly and yearly average will be smaller. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it&#8217;s a round number &#8212; not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.
&#8220;Physically, we are no worse off at 400 ppm than we were at 399 ppm,&#8221; Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. &#8220;But as a symbol of the painfully slow pace of measures to avoid a dangerous level of warming, it&#8217;s somewhat unnerving.&#8221;
Environmental activists, such as former Vice President Al Gore, seized on the milestone.
&#8220;This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years &#8212; and especially over the last several decades &#8212; we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization,&#8221; Gore said in a statement. &#8220;We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.&#8221;
Carbon dioxide traps heat just like in a greenhouse and most of it stays in the air for a century; some lasts for thousands of years, scientists say. It accounts for three-quarters of the planet&#8217;s heat-trapping gases. There are others, such as methane, which has a shorter life span but traps heat more effectively. Both trigger temperatures to rise over time, scientists say, which is causing sea levels to rise and some weather patterns to change.
When measurements of carbon dioxide were first taken in 1958, it measured 315 parts per million. Some scientists and environmental groups promote 350 parts per million as a safe level for CO2, but scientists acknowledge they don&#8217;t really know what levels would stop the effects of global warming.
The level of carbon dioxide in the air is rising faster than in the past decades, despite international efforts by developed nations to curb it. On average the amount is growing by about 2 parts per million per year. That&#8217;s 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age.
Back then, it took 7,000 years for carbon dioxide to reach 80 parts per million, Tans said. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels have gone up by that amount in just 55 years.
&#8220;What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity,&#8221; said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.
China spews 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air per year, leading all countries, and its emissions are growing about 10 percent annually. The U.S. at No. 2 is slowly cutting emissions and is down to 5.9 billion tons per year.
The speed of the change is the big worry, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. If carbon dioxide levels go up 100 parts per million over thousands or millions of years, plants and animals can adapt. But that can&#8217;t be done at the speed it is now happening.
Generally carbon levels peak in May then fall slightly, so the yearly average is usually a few parts per million lower than May levels.

Carbon dioxide levels set record