Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are surging "faster than ever" to beyond anything humans ever experienced, officials say

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By Li Cohen, CBS News. 

Excerpt: Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found. ...The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May ...50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. ..."Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill." ...The news from NOAA comes a day after the European Union's climate change service, Copernicus, announced that Earth has now hit 12 straight months of record-high temperatures.... 

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