At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, a Terrifying, Startling Week and Month, New Records Everywhere.

Last edited Sun Feb 11, 2024, 03:38 PM - Edit history (2)

Let me preface my standard Mauna Loa Observatory commentary and language by saying that I am totally shocked by what went on in the data reported there. I have never seen anything like it, and I've been monitoring this data for many years.

My mind is blown; it's nothing sort of horrible.

The standard commentary I use in these posts:

Let me stop here, to repeat, In all the years I've been doing this I have NEVER seen anything like this, multiple records shattered in the same week.

Let's being with the weekly data:

Week beginning on February 04, 2024: 425.82 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.08 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 398.18 ppm
Last updated: February 10, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Let's look at what is record setting here: First and foremost. 425.82 ppm is the highest value ever reported at Mauna Loa for the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere. Given the sinusoidal nature - the highest reading recorded in a year typically is observed in April or May, rarely in early June - *the previous year's record is generally surpassed in March, occasionally in April. It has NEVER been passed in February.*

Another record established in the week to week increase over the same week of the year before, in this case. There have been 2505 points of this type recorded going back to 1975. The global average going back to 1975 for all 2505 weeks reported is 1.87 ppm increases. In the 21st century, that average is 2.20 ppm increases for all weeks in the 21st century.

This week's increase, from week 5 of 2023 to week 5 is an astounding 5.74 ppm, the greatest such week to week comparison between consecutive years ever record, by far, the (now) 2nd worst ever having occurred in week beginning July 31, 2016, when the increase was 5.01 ppm, making one of only two to exceed a 5.00 ppm increase.

The observatory does not record days for which data review fails quality control. All four data points making this week's data average under this curation are in the top 10, unsurprisingly, for highest ever daily readings. The highest daily reading ever recorded is now that recorded on February 7, 2024, 426.40 ppm; followed by February 4, 2024, 426.21 ppm; followed by February 5, 2024, 425.96 ppm; and February 8. 2024, 425.43 ppm. Five of the highest daily readings occurred in 2024, still a young year, and the other 5 in 2023.

These numbers are astounding.

For monthly data, January 2024 was the second worst monthly average for any of the 65 January months recorded at Mauna Loa, 3.33 ppm higher than the average for January of 2023.

Of the top fifty increases recorded out of the 2505 data points for any week compared with the same week of the previous year, 40 have taken place in this century, 33 in the last 10 years, and 13 in the last 5 years. Of the 10 data points in the top 50 that took place in the 20th century, six occurred in 1998, when the rain forests in S.E. Asia caught fire after slash and burn fires set to make palm oil plantations for "renewable biodiesel" for Germany's "Renewable Energy Portfolio" went out of control during a drought. There is no telling whether the Chilean and Australian fires in the Southern Hemisphere summer are playing a role as dramatic as the rain forest fires of 1998. Other feedback loops may be operating.

(With this reading, the reading for the week beginning August 28, 2022 (3.71 ppm increase over the same week of 2021) fell out of the top 50. Of the ten readings in the 20th century, five, including two from 1998, fall between the 41st and 50th worst.)

As for the ten year data, 27.64 difference from the same week in 2014, is the highest ten year comparator ever, the next highest, being 26.53 ppm higher in a week in 2021 than the same week of 2011.

Fourty-eight of the top 50 comparators have taken place during or after 2020; two others in 2019.

In the Northern Hemisphere this coming summer, what hasn't burned already, will burn. You can count on it.

By the way, this morning I attended a lecture by a clueless professor at Princeton University, Jesse Jenkins, this lecture:

Science on Saturday: The Pathway to Achieve a Net-zero Economy in the U.S. by 2050 (Jesse Jenkins)

It was all about how solar and wind will save us, attached to money, money, money, money with complete indifference to environmental issues. He claimed that emissions have "leveled off," because of solar and wind and gas, the same line of shit that Socolow and Pacala were handing out in 2004, twenty years ago, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the fifth week when the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide was 377.88 ppm.

Something's going on, and what that "something is, is not "leveling off." Things are getting worse faster. How exactly can an "expert" be so disconnected with reality?

Maybe he wants to be the next Amory Lovins, a clueless bourgeois soothsayer who never checks his assumptions but chants them endlessly, no matter how much of his half a century of this soothsaying has proved and will continue to prove nonsensically disconnected from reality. To Professor Jenkins credit, he tried not to throw up when nuclear energy was mentioned. This is new in the Princeton academic community, where the conversation is all about nuclear wars that don't happen, and so called "nuclear waste" that has yet to kill anybody. Professor Jenkins to his also to his (more marginal) credit stated that so called "nuclear waste" can be contained indefinitely, but seemed not to understand what it actually it is, a tremendous future resource. The only other thing he correctly stated is that electrolysis is thermodynamically inefficient, producing the accurate number of about 50% efficiency, but really, he had to be prodded to mention the existence of the laws thermodynamics.

Be very suspicious of anyone, even a professor at a swell University, who talks about energy without putting thermodynamics on the front burner.

It was all cheering for solar, wind, batteries and hydrogen, pure thermodynamic nonsense.

Sorry kids, chanting doesn't work and there aren't enough cobalt slaves for all those batteries we'll need to keep our little bourgeois fantasies running along like the Duracell bunny.

Here we are, the planet on fire, some kind of atmospheric catastrophe staring in our face, and still all this happy talk. It's like prayer was in bubonic plague.

Disgusting.

My heart is breaking. Fortunately, in the academic world, there are people who can grasp reality. None of them have a shot at joining the Andlinger Center at Princeton University though.

Have a nice weekend.

Note: The statement now bolded and between asterisks is incorrect.

The correction has been described here: An Illuminating Error in My Recent Terrifying Mauna Loa Post.