The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa: Yet Another Update.

[NNadir]

Last edited Sun Sep 15, 2024, 11:20 AM - Edit history (1)

As I've indicated repeatedly in my DU writings, somewhat obsessively I keep spreadsheets of the of the daily, weekly, monthly and annual data at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory, which I use to do calculations to record the dying of our atmosphere, a triumph of fear, dogma and ignorance that did not have to be, but nonetheless is, a fact.

Facts matter.

When writing these depressing repeating posts about new records being set, reminiscent, over the years, to the ticking of a clock at a deathwatch, I often repeat some of the language from a previous post on this awful series, as I am doing here with some modifications. It saves time.

A recent post (not my last on this topic) reflecting the annual record being set is here:

Latest Update on the Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa

We've just had another very, very, very bad week of data, that of the week beginning 9/08/2024.

Week beginning on September 08, 2024: 422.06 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.52 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.09 ppm
Last updated: September 15, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Most of the time I produce posts in this series, I refer to increases of the 1 year week to week comparators, generally when one of the readings among the 2,537 week to week comparators recorded at the observatory appears in the top fifty. For this week, week 36 of 2024, the increase over week 36 of 2023, the increase is "only" 3.55 ppm higher, which places it as tied, with another data point, for the 94th highest ever recorded. So the text from my last post on the topic on single year comparators is unchanged. For convivence I repeat it here as written a few weeks ago, when there were 2532 data points:

There have been 2532 weekly data points such as that immediately above, recorded at the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory which are available on the data pages of the website which compare the value with the same week of the previous year. The reading above, for week 31 of 2024, shows an increase of 4.02 ppm over week 31 of the previous year, 2023. Among all such increases for weekly data, again, 2532 of them, compared with the same week of the previous year, this is the 27th highest ever recorded. It is one of only 31 readings to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm, ten of which took place in the current year. Four of these readings exceed increases of 5.00 ppm, three of which were in 2024. Of the top 50 week to week/year to year comparators 18 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 12 occurred in 2024, 39 in the last 10 years, and 45 in this century.

Of the five readings from the 20th century, four occurred in 1998, when huge stretches of the Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests caught fire when slash and burn fires went out of control. These fires were set deliberately, designed to add palm oil plantations to satisfy the demand for "renewable" biodiesel for German cars and trucks as part of their "renewable energy portfolio." The only other reading from the 20th century to appear in the top 50 occurred in the week beginning August 21, 1988, which was 3.91 ppm higher than the same week of the previous year. For about ten years, until July of 1998, it was the highest reading ever recorded. It is now the 36th highest.

In this one I will focus on the week to week comparators over a ten year period.

The increase over week 36 of 2014 is 26.98 ppm.

An interesting and disturbing thing about this week's reading is where it stands among comparators with the reading of ten years previous. Of all such ten year comparators among the 2081 comparators week to week comparator over a ten year period, this is the third highest ever recorded. The highest, 27.65 ppm occurred earlier this year, in the week beginning February 4, 2024, week 5, which also gave the highest single year comparator, that with week 5 of 2023, where it was 5.75 ppm higher.

All of the top 50 highest comparators in week to week comparisons with that of ten years earlier have taken place since 2019, with two of the 50, the 40th and the 48th having occurred in that year, the rest since 2020. Of the top 50 such data points, the 7 highest have occurred in 2024. Overall, 22 of the top 50 occurred in 2024, which of course is not done yet.

Actually, there is a considerable, but not dramatic, amount of statistical noise in these readings, and to "smooth" things, I keep a 52 week running average of the ten year comparators. This is also the highest ever observed; on average over the last 52 weeks, readings are 25.35 ppm higher than they were 10 years earlier. In all the years I've worked with this data, this running average is the highest ever observed.

In week 36 of 2014, this running average was 20.88 ppm/10 years.

Things are getting worse faster.

People lie, to each other and to themselves, but numbers don't lie.

If one looks, one can see that the rate of accumulation recorded at the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory is a sine wave superimposed on a roughly quadratic axis:



Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2

Referring to the crude quadratic axis in the graphic above, one can make a rough model of the behavior of this system, using simple high school level calculus, by treating the rate of change in the rate of change - the change in the 52 week average comparators - as a second derivative with respect to time (in years), integrating twice, and using, as boundary conditions, the 1 year comparator, and the current reading. In my spreadsheet I do this automatically. If one solves the resulting equation using the quadratic formula to see when we will hit 500 ppm, one will see this should take place in 2046. (I will be dead then, and not live to see what little warnings I offered here.) The crude equation predicts that in 2050 the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste will be somewhere between 515 and 520 ppm.

The same media that loves to promote a seriously intellectually crippled serial rapist, con man and felon as a viable Presidential candidate likes to talk about a so called "energy transition" that is supposed to save our asses.

This highly advertised propaganda is connected with the unsupportable belief that the vast sums of money spent so called "renewable energy," which I personally regard as reactionary as the six thugs of the apocalypse in the rogue US Supreme Court, is about addressing climate change.

It isn't.

The reactionary impulse to make our energy supplies dependent on the weather, this precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather by lying to ourselves about our continuous and rising use of dangerous fossil fuels, was always an ignorant attack on nuclear energy.

All the money is clearly wasted and ineffective. How much money is it?

The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy, much of the latter to prevent the willful and deadly destruction of existing nuclear infrastructure.



IEA overview, Energy Investments.

The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy," ignoring the fact that the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" is basically a front for maintaining the growing use of fossil fuels.

I fully expect our nominee, VP Harris, to have profited by her exposure to what I regard as the most important climate policy of the best Presidential Administration of my lifetime: The embrace of nuclear energy.

The Biden administration has rightly described itself as promoting "the largest sustained push to accelerate civil nuclear deployment in the United States in nearly five decades."

White House holds summit on US nuclear energy deployment

My strong opinion that nuclear energy is the last best hope of the planet is not subject to change by appeals to clap trap about so called "nuclear waste," the big bogeymen at Fukushima, Chernobyl (and even more silly) Three Mile Island, blah, blah, blah...

I suggest finding someone more credulous than I to whom to chant endlessly about these points. Take a drive in your swell car out to a "no nukes" concert and convincing yourself that rock stars know more about energy than engineers and scientists. You deserve it. Whether future generations suffer in extreme poverty because of your smug pleasures and appalling selective attention is not your concern.

Oh, and of course, be sure self identify as an "environmentalist." As one who gives a shit about extreme global warming, I won't credit this self identification anymore than I credit Donold Trump's descriptions of himself as a "very stable genius" and all that, but who cares what I think? The "...but her emails..." and "...sane washed Donold Trump..." media describes antinukes as "environmentalists" after all, even if I find that absurd and delusional, so there's that.

Do all these things. Don't worry. Be happy.

As for me, I'm far more concerned with the collapse of the planetary atmosphere than I am with the fear that someone somewhere at sometime may die from an industrial accident involving radiation. Let me repeat: I am far more concerned with the vast death toll, extreme environmental destruction, and the global heating associated with the normal use of dangerous fossil fuels than I am about carrying on insipidly about Fukushima.

Nuclear energy is not risk free, nor will it ever be. It is simply vastly superior to all other options, which in a rational world, as opposed to the one in which we live, would be enough to embrace it.

In any case I am certainly prone to thank our current President for his hard work to press for the expansion of nuclear energy, since very clearly we are out of time. I look forward to a Harris administration embracing this important legacy of President Biden. After all, our nominee, Ms. Harris, unlike her appalling opponent basking under appalling media love, is educated, intelligent, experienced and wise.

When our country, as precious as it has been to us, is an ancient memory, the rot we left behind in the planetary atmosphere will still persist.

Have a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. In a way, I'm glad that Biden's push for nuclear expansion hasn't gotten that much media attention ...

... because there's so much (truly) knee-jerk backlash to anything nuclear by a large, disproportionately vocal, segment of the public.

Quiet progress may be preferable, sadly, even though it's probably slower, unfortunately.

Where's the scare movie on global warming to counter "The China Syndrome" ? Oh, right, slow-moving disasters don't make for good box office. Or Nielsens. Better* to deny anything's wrong until it's obvious, then say "well, it's too late now!"

I wonder what the chances are of turning Michael Douglas or Jane Fonda - or maybe one of the films producers, directors, or screen writers - around on the nuclear issue, and publicly disavowing the scaremongering?









* better = more profitable (because USA! USA! USA!)

[NNadir]

2. I have been at this a very long time, ever since I understood the consequences of Chernobyl.

What I discovered was that those consequences - which I anticipated, based on ignorant antinuke hype that I uncritically believed, would result in a vast death toll, perhaps on a scale of tens of thousands of people, if not far more - was nothing like that.

(For the record I was working with radioactive materials at the time, but even so, I believed this nonsense.)

I have thus been pronuclear for more than 30 years, spending more and more time understanding nuclear technology at an ever deepening level. I can hold my own with anyone here - with references, no less, as opposed to rote sloganeering - on this topic.

When I came to DU, as a Democrat who weighed environmental issues as my prime concern, in particular what was then called "climate change" but now is better and more accurately described as "ongoing extreme global heating," unsurprisingly, I met a lot of resistance to my views on nuclear energy, because, regrettably, we were trained on our end of the political spectrum to be antinuclear. It was "cool" on the left to spout antinuclear slogans, something I knew when I was a young and dumb antinuke myself.

Nevertheless, I persisted.

There is, of course, still some hostility to reality here, generally from rote thinkers, for whom I am hard pressed to manage any respect (thank goodness for the ignore list), but I would say I am seeing a huge change in attitudes on our end of the political spectrum, toward what I personally regard as the last best hope of the planet, nuclear power. We are, on the left, I think, 'fessing up to the indisputable reality that opposing nuclear energy was (and is) a huge mistake.

Recent Democratic Presidents, Obama and Biden, both were supportive of nuclear energy, the charge being led by Obama's first Energy Secretary, Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, who pushed to get the Vogtle project, which will be serving Americans for generations to come, started. (Obama, however, did put the fool on Gregory Jaczko on the NRC, a grotesque mistake, but despite this fool, Vogtle is operating and now saving lives.)

Biden called on Nuclear Engineering Professor Kathryn Huff as Undersecretary of Energy, to get his excellent nuclear energy policy started. She's returned to academia now, but she did a lot to help save the planet in her three year tenure. This was a high quality appointment demonstrating a concern for expertise. Many other Democratic politicians are coming around, as shown by the 88-2 vote in the Senate for the Advance Act in support of nuclear energy, and of course, Gretchen Whitmer's efforts to restart a shut nuclear plant in Michigan.

As I've noted elsewhere, the Biden administration has been the most supportive of nuclear energy than any Presidential administration in half a century.

Much of this comes in under the rubric of "too little, too late" of course - antinukism in my opinion has left the planet in flames - but if the best time was decades ago, the second best time is now.

We had to start somewhere to undo the damage done by antinuke fear and ignorance, and thanks to President Biden, we have.