At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, the 2024 Terror Continues.

Last edited Sun Mar 10, 2024, 09:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Note the minor update in the data described in post #4.

As I've indicated repeatedly in my DU writings, somewhat obsessively I keep a spreadsheet of the 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.

This is a regrettable add on to my post of last week, which referred to the regrettable add on to the post of the previous week:

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory Continue.

I've been at this for a long time, and I've never seen anything quite like the beginning of 2024.

Let's cut to the chase with some statistics on what is already shaping up to be a mind blowing disaster in terms of accumulations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide.

The data from week 9 of 2024, which, if it is continues as it has been going through the first 8 weeks, will certainly go down in history as a landmark disaster:

Week beginning on March 03, 2024: 425.51 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 421.44 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 398.78 ppm
Last updated: March 09, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 3/9/2024)

This week's increase from week 9 of 2023 compared to week 8 of 2024 is 4.07 ppm.

There are 2510 weekly data points recorded on the Mauna Loa Observatory's pages; this is the 20th highest ever recorded. It is one of only 25 readings out of 2510 to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm over the reading of the same week of the previous year. Of the fifty highest such readings out of 2510, five have taken place in the first 9 weeks of 2024, included the two highest ever recorded included, 5.75 ppm higher in week 5 of 2024 in comparison to week 5 of 2023, and 5.53 higher in week 7 of 2024 compared to week 7 of 2023. Week 5 and week 7 of 2024 represent two of only three such week to week comparators with readings of the previous year to exceed a 5.00 ppm increase. The only other such an increase to exceed 5.00 ppm occurred in 2016, the previous "worst year ever" in CO2 accumulations, 5.04 ppm recorded in the week beginning July 31, 2016, week 28 when compared with week 28 of 2015.

Of the top 50 highest readings out of the 2510, 14 have taken place in the last 5 years, 35 in the last 10 years, and 42 in this century. Of the eight 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 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" went out of control.

In the week to week comparisons with readings 10 years ago, week 9 of 2024 compared to week 9 of 2014 the reading is 26.73 ppm higher. The top four of all such ten year comparators all occurred in the first nine weeks of 2024. All of the top fifty such readings have taken place since 2019.

A 52 week running average of 10 year week to week comparators has now reached 24.74 ppm/10 years, the highest level ever recorded. In the ninth week of 2001, that running average was 15.30 ppm/10 years.

As I've been reporting over the years in various contexts, the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide which is killing the planet fluctuate sinusoidally over the year, with the rough sine wave superimposed on a roughly quadratic axis:



Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2

There is some statistical noise in these readings, but the overall trends are clear enough, inescapable, dire, terrifying, even as they are largely ignored or swept from attention by cheap diversions:

In spite of these ever worsening and ever more astounding numbers - people lie to each other and to themselves but numbers don't lie - you will still find people mindlessly cheering for fantasies about bourgeois toys that do nothing to address climate change, be they electric cars, solar cells and/or wind turbines, all of which are exercises in promoting the use of fossil fuels, the destruction of wilderness, and the demand for mining. We also have people here and elsewhere selling fossil fuels by rebranding them as "hydrogen," the production of hydrogen, which overwhelmingly made from fossil fuels, involving exergy destruction and thus driving climate change faster along with all of the other public fantasies.

The big lie people tell themselves and each other that this pixilated reactionary scheme, electric cars, solar cells, wind turbines, hydrogen blah, blah, blah is "doing something" about climate change. This is nonsense. That it is nonsense is clearly shown, again, by the numbers. The reactionary scheme of carrying on about so called "renewable energy" that led us here was never about climate change or any other environmental issue and the claim that it is is an afterthought. It was always about attacking the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels, nuclear energy.

The antinukes won and humanity, and in general the rest of the biosphere lost.

We're clueless.

If there is an argument that as a long time advocate of nuclear energy I am engaging in Schadenfreude, I remind anyone who confuses my distress with smirking that I am a member of humanity myself, as are all of the members of my family.

History will not forgive us, nor should it, but I am a part of that history, the shame falls on me as much as on anyone else and if I differ in any way in that state of shame, it only inasmuch as I am aware of it.

As John Donne famously had it:



Have a nice weekend.