Amber Alert

 

My wife was trying to use her phone camera to capture the eerie amber light around sunrise this morning, but it wouldn't work. The software refused to believe it really looked that strange. 

I woke up from a poor night's sleep, having spent too much time at around 1 a.m. thinking about how climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades while we twiddle our collective thumbs. The group called 350.org was named for the CO2 target of 350 ppm, a greenhouse gas concentration that we passed in 1990. We surpassed 400 ppm in 2016 and are at 412 ppm now. We are simultaneously making history and ending it.

I wish I could head out to Drake's Beach and enjoy a quiet and lovely sunrise, like this one from 2014.

The amber light on that morning was tinted by a bit of fog, but no smoke. To get a better idea of the color of the light my wife was trying to photograph out our back window this morning, check out the North Bay Fire Cam screenshots below.

Looking west from Mt. Tamalpais.

Multi-cam View

Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth’s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed.

LINK

[UPDATE: Earth Day, 4/22/2024, atmospheric CO2 at 426ppm.]

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