From The Tennessean newspaper Wednesday Oct. 19, 2022
Climate change is not a new concern
Rising CO2 levels on scientists’ radar since
the 1960s
Dana Beltaji
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Addressing climate change – a now ubiquitous
term for the warming of the planet caused by humans emitting carbon dioxide and
methane from coal, oil and natural gas into the atmosphere – is becoming
exponentially more pressing, with the language of scientists, officials and
activists becoming more serious with every passing year.
The most recent report by the world’s top
body of climate scientists gave a damning assessment of where the world is
headed if more isn’t done to curb global warming. Already, more extreme weather
events are happening across the globe, from longer, more intense and more
frequent droughts and heat waves to devastating floods and wetter hurricanes,
attributed at least in part to climate change.
How the planet got here, the current and future
effects of climate change, and what to do next, are all questions that experts
have been researching for decades.
The history and future
There may be an uptick in climate-related
policy, discussions and activism, but the science isn’t all that new.
Scientists in the early 1800s began to
recognize that some gasses and water vapor could trap heat in the atmosphere.
And for the last 60 years, researchers could definitively measure that carbon
dioxide levels in the atmosphere were rising, thanks to a CO2-monitoring
station at Mauna Loa in Hawaii...
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