The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa: Yet Another Update 12/03/2024
Last edited Tue Dec 3, 2024, 08:40 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:
The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa: Yet Another Update 11/10/2024
We've just had another very, very, very bad week of data, that of the week beginning 11/24/2024.
Week beginning on November 24, 2024: 424.59 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.31 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 397.98 ppm
Last updated: December 02, 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 2548 week to week comparators recorded at the observatory appears in the top fifty. For this week, week 47 of 2024, the increase over week 47 of 2023, the increase is 4.28 ppm higher, which places it as the 18th highest out 2,548 data points of annual week to week comparators going back to the mid 1970's.
It is one of only 33 readings to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm, twelve 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 20 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 15 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 40th highest.
If we focus on the week to week comparators over a ten year period the situation is even more dire.
The increase over week 47 of 2014 is 26.61 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 2088 comparators week to week comparator over a ten year period, this is tied for the 9th 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 10 highest have occurred in 2024. Overall, 28 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 25.63 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 47 of 2014, this running average was 21.03 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.
We still have people here at DU, this late into the disaster prattling on about how so called "renewable energy" is beating out nuclear energy, even though the combined solar and wind industry combined has never, in an atmosphere of sybaritic bourgeois saturnalian enthusiasm, not once, produced as energy as nuclear energy produces routinely in an atmosphere of malign (and ignorant) criticism.
It is interesting and notable that the same people who still carry on with stupid reference to "costs" - they couldn't give a fuck about the cost of the extreme global heating we are now experiencing - and attack nuclear energy on this basis are completely and totally disinterested in attacking the unimaginable external costs of dangerous fossil fuels, costs recorded in millions of deaths each year, the destruction of vast ecosystems by fire and alternately inundation or just plain heat.
Irrespective of their inane anti-science rhetoric about batteries and hydrogen, as it disregards the laws of thermodynamics, an apologetic orgy of wishful thinking designed to make the failed solar and wind industries appear to be reliable, which they will never be, all the money spent on solar and wind is clearly wasted and ineffective. The impulse is reactionary, to make our energy supplies depend on the weather, precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather because the reactionary fantasy is not working.
How much money is it?
The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.9 trillion dollars, compared to 524 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy (including a vague term the IEA calls "other clean energy" ), much of the latter to prevent the willful and deadly destruction of existing nuclear infrastructure. Presumably "other clean energy" includes fusion, which has provided zero useable energy for any purpose
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. One may also download a *.csv file with the data.
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."
It is sad that we are now entering a very dark age, one in which propaganda and lies will obscure real knowledge. President did what he could do to save us; it proved to not be enough to overcome our collective ignorance.
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 heating, 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.
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 day tomorrow.
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