GEOL 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tetraethyllead, Keeling Curve, Gasoline

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering
• Course: GEOL 106
• Professor: Paul Grogan

Document Summary

Has increased since 1800"s and took a steep increase since 1960. Reeling began measuring it at the top of a hawaiian volcano. Just like how they analyzed the dust in ice layers, that took the air bubbles trapped in the ice and analyzed the amount of co2 in the air. These helped show that the scale of human impact has risen dramatically in co2 in the atmosphere exponentially. 2 main differences: scale: in past, was more local, less global. Intent: in past, effects were unintended and unanticipated. Thomas midgely had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history . In 1921, midgley invented leaded gasoline, tetra-ethyl lead. In 1930-31, midgley invented freon for refrigerant (the first of the cfcs) creating holes in the ozone: chloroflourocarbons break down ozone in upper atmosphere. Extinction rate has increased massively in the last 200 years.