Science

NNadir

(33,525 posts) Sun Mar 3, 2024, 09:12 AM Mar 3

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory Continue

This is a regrettable add on to my post of last week, which was this one:

At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, Yet Another Terrifying, Startling Week in 2024.

It began like this:

Two weeks ago I interrupted my standard language for my "monitoring the collapse of the atmosphere through the Mauna Loa CO₂ observatory" posts, to remark on being incredibly shocked by the numbers in 2024.

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

I also had a thread with a correction to statements I made in that post: An Illuminating Error in My Recent Terrifying Mauna Loa Post....

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 8 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 February 25, 2024: 425.28 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 421.24 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 398.32 ppm
Last updated: March 02, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

This week's increase from week 8 of 2023 compared to week 8 of 2024 is 4.04 ppm.

There are 2509 weekly data points recorded on the Mauna Loa Observatory's pages; this is the 20th highest ever recorded. It is one of only 24 readings out of 2509 to exceed 4.00 ppm. Of the fifty highest readings out of 2509, four have taken place in the first 8 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 5.00 ppm. 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 2509, 13 have taken place in the last 5 years, 34 in the last 10 years, and 41 in this century.

In terms of week to week comparators with weeks 10 years earlier, week 8 of 2024 is the second worst ever recorded, 26.96 ppm higher than week 8 of 2014.

A 52 week running average of 10 year week to week comparators has now reached 24.71 ppm/10 years, the highest level ever recorded. In the seventh week of 2001, that running average was 15.25 ppm/10 years.

Things are getting worse faster than ever.

Here's the slightly modified standard language from my Mauna Loa posts, which I am now putting near the end of these posts explaining some features of these depressing posts reporting the collapse of the planetary atmosphere:

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.

A recent post of this nature is here: At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, 2024 Starts With a Fairly Disgusting Bang.

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

The Observatory posts on its data pages curated and reviewed averages for daily, weekly, monthly, and annual data. I maintain spreadsheets for all four to use in calculations.

Here's what I said last week about this situation:

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 bourgeois toys that do nothing, be they electric cars, solar cells and/or wind turbines, to address climate change, all of which are exercises in promoting the use of fossil fuels, the destruction of wilderness, and the demand for mining.

The big lie people tell themselves and each other that this pixilated reactionary scheme, electric cars, solar cells, wind turbines, 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.

Enjoy the weekend.

This week, as usual, I had to listen here to mindless assholes whining insipidly about Chernobyl/Fukushima as if they matter in this context, along with a wood worker who doesn't give a shit if all the forests in the world burn because he, she, them or it happily runs woodworking power tools with his/her/their solar cells and thus, he, she, them or it says, "I'm doing my part."

One hears these things, and one doesn't really want to believe it, but one does hear them again and again and again.

It's all bourgeois head up the ass stuff, really.

Once again, numbers don't lie.

Brace yourself for impact.

Just like I said last week:

We're clueless.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

2 replies

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Highlight:

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory Continue (Original Post) NNadir Mar 3 OP

I know, right? -misanthroptimist Mar 3 #1

One of the tell tale signs... NNadir Mar 3 #2

-misanthroptimist

(810 posts)

1. I know, right?

Reply to NNadir (Original post)

Sun Mar 3, 2024, 12:34 PM

Mar 3

The stupid state won't even allow me to register my nuclear-powered car! Idiots!

Nuclear cannot -and never could- solve AGW. It could buy us more time at best.

NNadir

(33,525 posts)

2. One of the tell tale signs...

Reply to -misanthroptimist (Reply #1)

Sun Mar 3, 2024, 01:12 PM

Mar 3

...of antinukes, other than their poor educations and intellectual deficiencies is that they think their fucking cars are more important than say, the glaciers in the Himalaya mountains on which the two most populated countries in the world, China and India depend for their water supplies.

This suggests to me that we can include moral deficiencies with their intellectual and educational deficiencies.

I have written many places here and elsewhere about the well known properties of syn gas to displace all uses of petroleum. In fact, syn gas has already operated on an industrial scale to do this in countries where petroleum was not available because of odious governments, in Nazi Germany and in Apartheid era South Africa.

Of course, I'm not a fan of gasoline, nor of lithium batteries, nor in general the entire car CULTure. Nevertheless I do acknowledge that in a more sustainable world, rather than the unsustainable world that antinuke fear and ignorance has brought us, portable engines of some types, for instance farming machinery, might have limited application. In this case, I recommend DME which can displace all applications of dangerous gasoline, dangerous natural gas, dangerous LPG, and dangerous coal. This is available by something called "process intensification," a process by which waste heat is converted into exergy rather than dumping into the environment.

However this discussion is technical, and although this is the Science Forum we do have people who know nothing about science whatsoever show up here to show their contempt for the topics discussed here.

What is technically feasible however, is neither inevitable or even likely. As noted in the OP, the abysmally ignorant, and frankly rather deadly antinukes have won on a scale that defies the imagination. The results of their ignorance are written in the planetary atmosphere.

QED.

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