When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm).
By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm.
This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.
“This problem is not going away, and we’re moving further and further into uncharted territory, and almost certainly, very dangerous territory.”
We aren’t totally sure. Rainforest isn’t the correct term but it was probably lush and green. The evidence we had is vegetation on Antarctica approx 90 million years ago. That also has the caveat that 90 million years ago, Antarctica was further north and didn’t intersect the south pole. North Pole today is an ice sheet, so probably was a thinner ice sheet back then too.