Science
Related: About this forumAt the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, February 2024 Is the Worst Month Ever Reported.
Recently in this space, I've been reporting on the unprecedented growth rate for accumulations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO2 in the planetary atmosphere as they are being observed in 2024, which surely, I'm convinced already, will prove to be a seminal year in the ongoing disastrous collapse of the planetary atmosphere.
The most recent such post is here: At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, Yet Another Terrifying, Startling Week in 2024.
I keep spreadsheets of the annual, monthly, weekly data at the observatory, and have recently begun tracking the daily data as well.
The data for February 2024 has just been posted on the Mauna Loa website:
February 2024: 424.55 ppm
February 2023: 420.30 ppm
Last updated: Mar 05, 2024
Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2
The monthly average data goes back to 1958, and thus increases have been available since 1959. In terms of increases over the month of the previous year, this increase of 4.25 ppm over the average reading recorded in February 2023 is the highest increase ever recorded for any month since 1959.
There have only been, in the entire history of records at the Mauna Loa Observatory, three months in which the average for that month has exceeded an increase of 4.00 ppm over that of the previous year, out of 780 months in the data files, the other two having been recorded in 2016, April (4.16 ppm increase over April 2015) and June (4.01 ppm over June of 2015).
Here's the standard language I use in these posts on the often unremarked tragedy in the planetary atmosphere:
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 the latter three to use in calculations.
Here's what I said in my most recent post on this topic, the one linked above discussing weekly data:
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.
I repeat: Clueless
as a day will repeat
its color, the tired sounds
run off its bones...
To repeat...