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420 ppm – Higher Than Ever

2023-01-19
Reading time: 2 minutes
Song: Walkin' on the Sun by Smash Mouth

Recently, there are over 420 carbon dioxide molecules per million of these and other gas molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen in our air. The significance of this number becomes apparent only in a historical context:

The relentless rise of carbon dioxide Source: NASA [1]

We humans, the species Homo Sapiens, have been around for about 250,000 years [2][3]. It is easy to see in the diagram above that mankind has never been exposed to such high levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and certainly not to an increase in this trace gas in such a short time.

The climate protection organization 350.org, founded in 2008, points out with its name that 350 ppm (parts per million) is the upper limit that is considered safe for our climate [4]. Considering that we have exceeded this limit by far, it seems contradictory to talk about a “greenhouse gas budget” in 2023. However, this budget is based on another indicator, the now well-known 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius global warming since the pre-industrial age. Where these “target” values actually come from and on the basis of which probabilities the associated budgets are calculated, however, must be dealt with in a separate text.

High CO₂ values are not only too high a concentration for the climate, they are also more than disadvantageous for our own concentration. It's all well and good to want to befuddle ourselves from time to time, but we can probably do without a permanent influence that constantly surrounds us and simply makes us dumber without lifting our spirits. According to a Harvard study, every additional 500 ppm makes us slower by an average of 1.6% and reduces brain throughput by 2.3% [5]. If we continue with our fossil fuels as we are now, NASA expects our CO₂ levels to rise to as much as 1500 ppm in the coming decades. In the final calculations, we would then be 3.8% slower and 5.5% dumber in the head. Who knows, two hundred years ago I might have managed this calculation without an abacus.

Sources:

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