Via NYT: A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning
Jonathan Kingston/Aurora Select, for The New York Times
KEEPING WATCH The Mauna Loa Observatory, at an altitude of 11,135 feet above sea level in Hawaii, has been continuously monitoring and collecting data related to climate change since the 1950s. More Photos »
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii — Two gray machines sit inside a pair of utilitarian buildings here, sniffing the fresh breezes that blow across thousands of miles of ocean.
Temperature Rising
Tracking the NumbersArticles in this series are focusing on the central arguments in the climate debate and examining the evidence for global warming and its consequences.
THE KEELINGS Charles D. Keeling, top, with his son Ralph in 1989. More Photos »
The first machine of this type was installed on Mauna Loa in the 1950s at the behest of Charles David Keeling, a scientist from San Diego. His resulting discovery, of the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, transformed the scientific understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth. A graph of his findings is inscribed on a wall in Washington as one of the great achievements of modern science.
Yet, five years after Dr. Keeling’s death, his discovery is a focus not of celebration but of conflict. It has become the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming.
When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide.
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