The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa Stretches Further into 2025.

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 updating this on going disaster (last week) is here:

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa Stretches into 2025.

We've just had another very, very, very bad week of data, that of the week beginning January 26, 2025.

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 2,557 week to week comparators recorded at the observatory appears in the top fifty. For this week, week 4 of 2025, the increase over week 4 of 2024, is 4.58 ppm higher, which places it as the 9th highest out 2,557 data points of annual week to week comparators going back to the mid 1970's.

Of the top 50 week to week/year to year comparators 23 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 13 occurred in 2024, 40 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 43rd highest.

It is one of only 35 readings to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm, eleven of which took place in 2024. 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 23 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 13 occurred in 2024, 40 in the last 10 years, and 45 in this century. Of the first 4 weeks of 2025, two have appeared in the top 50 recorded.

If we focus on the week to week comparators over a ten year period the situation is even more dire.

The increase over week 4 of 2015 is 26.59 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 1655 comparators week to week comparator over a ten year period, this is tied for the 12th highest ever recorded. The highest, 27.65 ppm occurred in 2024, in the week beginning February 4, 2024, week 5 of 2024, 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 2020. Of the top 50 such data points, the 9 of the ten highest have occurred in 2024. The one that didn’t is last week’s, week 3 of 23. Overall, 27 of the top 50 occurred in 2024. All four of 2025’s readings thus far are in the top 50 of comparators with ten years earlier.

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 25.91 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 4 of 2015, this running average was 21.13 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 loved 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.

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.

(Experiment, even trillion dollar failed experiments like the “solar and wind will save us” experiment, always are superseded by their results.)

The recently concluded Biden administration, the last Constitutional President of our fallen democracy, 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

It is sad that we are now entering a very dark age, defined by the opening shots of “Project 2025” designed to destroy the United States Constitution and substitute an oligarchy composed of venal, ignorant and dishonest men, one in which propaganda and lies will obscure real knowledge. President Biden did what he could do to save us; it proved to not be enough to overcome our collective ignorance.


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, “nuclear is too expensive” bullshit blah, blah, blah...

These arguments are beyond silly; they’re outright dangerous. They kill people because nuclear energy saves lives and it also represents the only scalable and sustainable form of carbon dioxide free energy that exists.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

I suggest finding someone more credulous than I to whom to chant endlessly about these anti-nuclear 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.

This is true no matter how many catcalls are directed at nuclear by members of the consumer bourgeoisie who have dominated, at peril to the world at large, the unfortunate trajectory of energy use.

Of course, people do issue these catcalls, even this late in the game.

Of course, many such people self identify as an "environmentalists." 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.

If you are inclined the join in these catcalls, be sure to prattle on about your complete and total indifference to the laws of thermodynamics, laws of physics that are not subject to repeal by appeals to wishful thinking, by carrying on about energy storage, lots of battery bullshit, hydrogen bullshit, etc. as if there was enough so called “renewable energy” to store for months at a time. There haven't been any such "renewable energy" surfeits, long enough or sustained enough to justify this junk, there aren't any going on now, and there won’t be any in the future, but none of this should prevent you from cheering for the trashed landscapes and mining pits you leave for future generations as piles of ruins. Screw future generations. If they need resources, they can sort through our landfills and said ruins.

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

Our media will declare you an “environmentalist.” Good for you.

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 some time 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, once again, our last Constitutional President, President Biden, for his hard work to press for the expansion of nuclear energy, since very clearly we are out of time and have been so for some time. He could not save our country from suicide, nor could he save the world at large from suicide or from oligarchy, and yet, even having so failed, he will prove out in history, should the honest record of history still prevail somewhere, somehow, a great man, a great President.

As for history in general: 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.

History, should history exist, will not forgive us, nor should it. Have a pleasant Sunday evening.