An Illuminating Error in My Recent Terrifying Mauna Loa Post.

[NNadir]

Yesterday I made a post about the data that I found terrifying at the Mauna Loa CO₂ observatory, which smashed a number of records all at once.

This is that post: At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, a Terrifying, Startling Week and Month, New Records Everywhere.

One of the statements in that post was this one:

...the previous year's record is generally surpassed in March, occasionally in April. It has NEVER been passed in February...

This statement, in which I did something one should not do when one is handling data was "...off the top of my head..." was wrong, very wrong. My excuse is that I was pretty shaken by all the other data which is correct.

Recognizing I had done this, I went back to check myself and showed that my statement excerpted above was incorrect. In the following years, the previous year's record was surpassed during February: 1988, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2013, and 2021.

What is interesting about these years is where they rank among the worst 65 years recorded at Mauna Loa based on the average reading in that year.

1988 was the worst year on record when it was recorded; it now ranks as the 9th worst year out of 65 years of records. (An increase of 2.38 ppm over the 1987 average.)

1998 was the worst year on record when it was recorded; it now ranks as the 2nd worst year out of 65 years of records . (An increase of 2.96 ppm over the 1997 average.)

2003 ranks as the 6th worst year out of 65 years of records. (An increase of 2.53 ppm over the 2002 average.)

2005 does not rank in the top ten out of 65 years of records. (An increase of 2.28 ppm over the 2004 average.)

2009 does not rank in the top ten out of 65 years of records. (An increase of 1.81 ppm over the 2008 average.)

2010 ranks as the 5th worst year out of 65 years of records . (An increase of 2.58 ppm over the 2009 average.)

2013 ranks as the 4th worst year out of 65 years of records . (An increase of 2.68 ppm over the 2012 average.)

2021 does not rank in the top ten out of 65 years of records. (An increase of 2.21 ppm over the 2004 average.)

In the worst year ever recorded, 2016, an increase of 3.40 ppm over the 2015 average, the previous year's record was not recorded in February.

It was recorded in January.

Only one other year thus far has passed the previous year's record in January.

That year is 2024.

The new record was set in first in the week beginning January 28, 2024, 422.28 ppm. It was surpassed the very next week, the most recent week recorded as of this writing, that of the week beginning February 4, 2024, which reported an astounding, shocking and terrifying 425.83 ppm, blowing all previous records out of the water by an unprecedented amount. The data was, by the way, corrected on data review at the Mauna Loa Observatory, an increase of 0.01 ppm from that reported in my previous post linked above. All other remarks in that post are correct.

If the trend holds, which it did not do in 2021, 2009 and 2005 by making it into the "top ten," we are in for a hell of a year in accumulations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO₂ in 2024, a hell of a year.

Unbelievable, utterly unbelievable, were it not for the truth that it is real.

Have fun on Super Bowl evening. I think I'll have a drink.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[FirstLight]

1. This, and your original post, should be on the Greatest page...

But I am guessing many people not only don't want to read your observations, but probably can't bring themselves to comment.

...and really what is there to say? we're screwn.
The whole efforts to curb emissions by 2030 is a joke when the emissions from (how many years ago?) are just now making the rounds. Add to that the feedback loop from melting permafrost and methane release...we're screwn sideways.

I can literally recall saying 10+ years ago that the models were all wrong and that things were gonna happen faster, like a snowball rolling downhill gathering steam. And over and over again I see more articles that say "oops, things are happening faster..." were the models wrong? Or were they not disclosed in full because the scienists KNEW the shit was already hitting the fan...

I've apologized to my kids for bringing them onto this flaming shitheap of a planet. I plan to see as much of the beauty and grandeur as I can before it's all gone, or we are.

[NNadir]

2. Thank you. I see the "kids" thing a little differently.

I convinced one of my sons to go to the front lines of doing something to address it.

It is unfair that it falls to his generation to address and clean up after our mistakes, of course, but a great generation is one that faces and addresses great problems.

There's that old cliche about "May you live in interesting times." He will, and my wife and I have seen to it that he has the tools to be in the fight.

It's bad, a lot of tragedy will ensue, and already has done so, but if nothing else, we have left them with knowledge. I have hope that they will succeed when the preternaturally stupid among us die off.

Our generation will have to face the judgement of history of course, which is not good for the memory of us, but if the future generations in criticizing what we did shake their heads in bemusement at our stupidity, they will have done great things.

[FirstLight]

3. which era are you from exactly...

I know many DUers are more likely to have graduated HS in the 60s-70s....I'm a Gen Xer (class of 88) and I'm not sure if we're the problem or any kind of solution. To be honest I dont see many of my age group in the business of politics or other helpful endeavors. (Maybe I'm just blanking right now lol)

I have one Milennial born in 92 and two Gen Zers born 2002 &2003... Not sure how much they can contribute when they are all just struggling to stay afloat. So yeah.

[NNadir]

4. I came of age in the Early 1970's and became a grown up in the late 1980's with the help of my wife...

...who is actually a decade younger than I am. I was a "late onset" father. My wife were married for almost a decade before we agreed with each other to become parents.

Your "millennial" is slightly older than my first son; your two "Gen Z's" are slightly younger than my youngest son, an MS level materials scientist working on his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.

My oldest son majored in art, and is working in art, his career is beginning finally to gel; but he lives at home with us; we don't charge him rent so he can sock money away, which he is in fact doing.

Anyway, about me, for some autobiography, I therefore am a (gasp) boomer, and my wife is on the border of being a "boomer" and whatever comes after "boomer," "X," I think.

The worst generation in my view is the one to which I belong, but I would include the "X's" - I believe these distinctions "booms," Xs, Millennials..., will vanish in history - with some responsibility for the wrecking of the planet. We will all wear the stain on wrecking the planet by obliviousness.

We will all be remembered in my opinion to have partied and consumed our way into a planetary disaster and history will not forgive us.

I first caught a glimpse of this somewhere about 1978, when I flew in to my old home from California, and my friends bought tickets to see "Jefferson Starship" in my honor as their guest. It was a few days after Solzhenitsyn gave his speech at Harvard condemning Western "Civilization" for it shallowness, as it were.

Look, it's not like I agreed with Solzhenitsyn that a "spiritual" component is necessary for morality and decency. I'd even argue that his own "morals" and "decency" were distinctly questionable. I'm distinctly aspiritual myself, and whether my "ethics" and level of "decency" are themselves suspect is not for me to say. I'm no philosopher. Still, seeing a bored Grace Slick sing "White Rabbit" for the zillionth time, with a huge American flag hanging from the roof of the Coliseum, with fist fights outside in the hallway and stoners being chased by undercover cops, drunks laying in their own vomit in the parking lot, I was struck with a kind of dystopian horror, a feeling that something was wrong with us, specifically my generation.

I remember that well.

I wasn't even aware of climate change then, and my environmental views were, at that time, nonsensical rote tripe albeit filled with an inflated sense of self righteousness that only weakly masked stupidity and ignorance, the same as what one still sees around, all too commonly.

I decided to change, and awkwardly I moved to do so, in fits and starts. Then by sheer accident, I met my wife, through ogling her with a bunch of other men. Despite all of that, she let me in her life, and she shrugged off my hormonal fascination to tell me who she was, and who she was was something beyond the inspiration of all those male hormones that followed her around, mine and others, moths, flames, all that stuff. She was a human being, a profound human being.

It was pure luck that she stood by me.

Now I'm looking at the end of my life, and my heart is breaking because I could have been, should have been, more but in the end what I did manage, under the general rubric of "too little, too late," sort of makes up for my boomerism, of which, I confess, in the end, I am not entirely cured.

My son in nuclear engineering has led a charmed life, I think, embraced by people with the power to offer him huge opportunities. He works hard, but is quickly rewarded for his efforts. I think he doesn't know of hard work that is not rewarded. The opportunities just keep coming to him and I do my best to remind him of his responsibilities to act nobly with what he's been given.

(I also argue technical points with him, so maybe they'll emerge back in his mind after I am dead.)

I know that many, maybe most, young people are struggling, and the weight on them, financial and otherwise may stem from the fact that their parents abrogated responsibility for leaving a better world than the one they themselves found. Struggle though can be good for one's "soul" whatever a "soul" might be. (My biggest worry for my youngest son is that he has not struggled all that much; a failure to struggle can lead to "asshole disease." He doesn't have it, but he could develop it.)

I nevertheless expect a great generation is rising, and they will find a way to be worthy of their being, even if "we" - the generations of oblivious consumers - were not. Let us not regret their lives, but instead limit any regrets to our own lives, such as they were.

Thanks for asking.