At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, 2024 Starts With a Fairly Disgusting Bang.
As I've indicated repeatedly in my DU writings, somewhat obsessively I keep a spreadsheet of the weekly 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.
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 quadratic axis:
Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2
January 1-6 were part of week 52, beginning on 12/31/2003. Here's the data for the first full week on 2024, Week 1:
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 419.54 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 398.26 ppm
Last updated: January 13, 2024
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 01/14/2024)
2024's first full week shows an increase over week 1 of 2023 of 3.93 ppm in the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO2.
As of this writing, 2502 weekly data points are recorded at the Mauna Loa website, and can be accessed from the data pages. The current reading is the 22nd highest. Of the 50 highest, 13 have taken place in the last 5 years, 33 in the last 10 years, and 40 in this century. Of the 10 that occurred 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 went out of control.
The comparator with the value 10 years ago is 25.21 ppm higher than that of the first week of 2014. Of the 50 highest 10 year comparators, this is 23rd highest, out of 2046 pieces of such data. All of the top 50 in this category have taken place since 2019.
There are people here who believe that the reactionary return to 19th century dependence on the weather for energy supplies - abandoned for a reason - is about addressing climate change.
This has never been true. Enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy" was originally not about addressing climate change, for which it is clearly inadequate. It's clearly not working and never had a chance of doing so. The land and material intensity of so called "renewable energy" are unsustainable.
Things are getting worse faster than ever.
Enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy" was always about attacking the only sustainable scalable form carbon minimized clean energy, nuclear energy. In this, it was successful, arresting progress in nuclear energy in its tracks by popularizing bad thinking, selective attention and by sweeping the consequences of this anti-progressive scheme to entrench fossil fuels under the rug by diverting attention from it.
The antinuke scheme of ignoring fossil fuels, the death toll, the environmental destruction, and collapse of the atmosphere, is unraveling; nuclear energy is no longer a pariah. Almost certainly it's too little, too late. The planet is burning.
Have a nice Sunday afternoon.