Late last month, officials at California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography turned to Twitter seeking donations to maintain the iconic 'Keeling curve', a 55-year record of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. An appeal for funds launched in July had attracted only a few small contributions, not nearly enough to keep the programme going. Scripps geochemist Ralph Keeling, who took over the C02 measurements started by his father Charles, is neither surprised nor disappointed. "That's more a fishing expedition than anything," he says of the nascent crowdsourc-ing at Scripps in La Jolla. But he is worried. For years, he has struggled to cobble together enough cash to support the CO_2 programme and an atmospheric-oxygen record that he pioneered in 1989. Bouncing between grant programmes designed to fund short-term projects, not long-term monitoring, he has cut staff and streamlined operations to keep the records going.
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