WH Memo 9/17/1969: "It is now pretty clearly agreed that the C02 content will rise 25% by 2000.”

a reply to: Ahabstar

The oceans, and more specifically the marine plankton make up most of the carbon sequestration on Earth. Sure, deforestation isn't a good thing -- but most of Earth's oxygen and CO2 reclamation comes from the ocean:

The world ocean is the major sink for carbon dioxide and is estimated to contain more than 90% of the inventory. In a time (potentially, at least) of global warming, it is obviously imperative to understand the carbon flux within the world ocean and the parameters which may influence it.

Link

Humans do a great disservice by treating the ocean as a garbage dump and toilet...

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Yup. Increasing atmospheric CO2 leads to lower oceanic pH levels. Don't know much about how phytoplankton are going to deal with that.

Not much we can do about it if china keeps burning more coal then all the rest of the world with no emissions controls.

Then they have been lying for years about what coal they have been burning.
cleantechnica.com...
www.washingtonpost.com...
Then add
www.chinadialogue.net...

It occurs to me that I missed something prior to the 1965 report:

Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.

This was a speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson, titled Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, given on February 8, 1965.

It remains a true indictment of generations since.

a reply to: Greven

Actually, before the current crop of right-wingers, there has been significant progress on all of those fronts ---- except for CO2, where there is massive regresss and denialism.

This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials

Global Success: test ban treaty and safer nuclear.

and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Global Epic Fail.

Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials.

Developed world success.

Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe.

Developed world massive success.

Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.

Developed world success. Cap and trade is part of a scheme currently in place to significantly reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from plants in the USA, negotiated and implemented in the Reagan & GHWB administrations.

All the successes came from shared regulatory action with sharp government enforcement, informed by ongoing scientific research. Guess what? Mother Nature doesn't care about your preferred political ideology. Only atoms emitted matter.

Imagine if we had to deal with all of those with our current political system: they'd claim that lead poisoning is a myth or it's good for babies or all the doctors and biologists are lying for their "lucrative" academic grants.