It was 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean this weekend as carbon dioxide hit its highest level in human history

Over the weekend, the climate system sounded simultaneous alarms. Near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). Meanwhile, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history.

Carbon dioxide levels from approximately 1750
 to present. (Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of human-induced climate change.

Saturday’s steamy 84-degree reading was posted in Arkhangelsk, Russia, where the average high temperature is around 54 this time of year. The city of 350,000 people sits next to the White Sea, which feeds into the Arctic Ocean’s Barents Sea.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Jason Samenow - “It was 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean this weekend as carbon dioxide hit its highest level in human history.”

Solving humanity's greatest risk

Are we at the endgame of human history?

Ecological collapse, resource depletion, climate change and food insecurity paint a pretty bleak picture, says science writer Julian Cribb.

So what could be the key to survival?

Listen to Julian Cribb on Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor - “Solving humanity's greatest risk.”

Change is technologically possible, but there is a 'tricky part'

Prof David Archer.

David Archer believes it is technologically possible to avoid dangerous climate change.

However, the Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Chicago admits there is a “tricky part” – making the decision.

Writing in his 2008 book, “The Long Thaw: How humans are changing the next 100,000 years of earth’sclimate” Prof Archer says: “Climate change is a global issue that ramps up slowly and last for a long time.

“Negotiating a solution would require a degree of global cooperation that is, I think, unprecedented in human history,” he writes.

The world presently suffers from a malaise of schoolyard-like squabbles between and within nations over myriad of matters that have little or nothing to do with the mitigation of climate change, indicating that the cooperation Prof Archer alludes to will forever elude the human community.

Professor Archer has been a professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1993. He have worked on a wide range of topics concerning to the global carbon cycle and its relation to global climate, with special focus on ocean sedimentary processes such as CaCO₃ dissolution and methane hydrate formation, and their impact on the evolution of atmospheric CO₂.

He teaches classes on global warming, environmental chemistry, and global geochemical cycles.