Keeling Curve Designated National Historic Chemical Landmark

The American Chemical Society has named the graph that charts that rise — called the Keeling Curve, so named after the scientist who began the CO2 measurements — as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.

“The Keeling Curve is an icon of modern climate science,” Thomas J. Barton, the most recent past president of the ACS, said in a statement. The recognition that CO2 levels were building in the atmosphere thanks to human activities underpins the science of global warming.

EDIT

The amount that carbon dioxide levels have risen since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution has caused Earth’s average temperature to rise by 1.6°F since the beginning of the 20th century. That temperature rise could nearly double by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t curbed, according to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The Mauna Loa CO2 record changed how we view the world,” Ralph Keeling said in a statement. “It proved for the first time that humans were altering the composition of air globally, and it thereby legitimized the concern over human-caused climate change.” The importance of the Keeling Curve is now recognized with, yes, a plaque, placed at the site of Keeling’s lab on the San Diego campus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

EDIT/END

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/keeling-curve-designated-landmark-19106