2024's Unprecedented Terror At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory Continues.

[NNadir]

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 which in turn referred to the post of the week before that:

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

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

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 10 of 2024, which, if it is continues as it has been going through the first 10 weeks, will certainly go down in history as a landmark disaster:

Week beginning on March 10, 2024: 425.74 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.08 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 400.31 ppm
Last updated: March 17, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 3/17/2024)

This week's increase from week 10 of 2023 compared to week 10 of 2024 is 5.66 ppm.

There are 2511 weekly data points recorded on the Mauna Loa Observatory's pages; this is the 2nd highest increase over the same week of the previous year ever recorded. It is one of only 26 readings out of 2511 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 2511, six have taken place in the first 10 weeks of 2024, included the three 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.

The year is still young.

Week 5 and week 7, and now week 10, of 2024 represent three of only four 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 of the difference between weeks of the year with those of the previous year out of the 2511 such data points, 15 have taken place in the last 5 years, 36 in the last 10 years, and 43 in this century. Of the seven 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.

From 1988 to 1998, the record for the highest such comparator was a reading of a 3.91 ppm increase recorded in week 34 of 1988, the week beginning in August 21, 1988, as compared to week 34 of 1987. It is now the 30th highest such reading.

In the week to week comparisons with readings 10 years ago, week 10 of 2024 compared to week 10 of 2014 the reading is 25.47 ppm higher. The top four of all such ten year comparators all occurred in the first ten weeks of 2024. All of the top fifty such readings have taken place since 2019. Seven of these are from the young year of 2024.

A 52 week running average of 10 year week to week comparators has now reached 24.78 ppm/10 years, the highest level ever recorded. In the tenth week of 2001, that running average was 15.31 ppm/10 years.

Since the first week of the year 2000, the week beginning January 2 of that year, the increase in the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the collapsing planetary atmosphere has been 57.08 ppm.

Since I joined DU in late November 2022, when, then as now, the main issue on my mind is the relationship between energy and the environment, the increase in the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO₂ has been 53.21 ppm.

In reaction to these obscene numbers, I've heard endlessly from people for whom I have no intellectual, moral, scientific, professional or educational respect, all about Chernobyl, and then about Fukushima, as if these fucking trivial events matter in comparison to an entire planet in flames. The appalling indecency of these tiresome, if popular, fools, to my mind, is on a Trumpian scale:

The number of people killed by air pollution at a rate of 6 to 7 million people per year since Chernobyl in April of 1986 is between 230 million and 270 million human beings; since March of 2011, the death toll from the same cause, air pollution, has been between 80 and 90 million human beings since the disgusting distraction obsession with Fukushima began, continuing right up to this day, working to advance the use of dangerous fossil fuels, about which the mindless antinuke community of intellectual and moral Lilliputians could not care less. These death tolls do not include the vast death tolls associated with climate change, extreme weather, heat stroke, etc...

Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249)

Climate change was already killing people around the time I started writing here:

Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 Robine et al., Comptes Rendus Biologie, 331 (2008) 2, 171-178.

Daily numbers of deaths at a regional level were collected in 16 European countries. Summer mortality was analyzed for the reference period 1998–2002 and for 2003. More than 70,000 additional deaths occurred in Europe during the summer 2003. Major distortions occurred in the age distribution of the deaths, but no harvesting effect was observed in the months following August 2003. Global warming constitutes a new health threat in an aged Europe that may be difficult to detect at the country level, depending on its size. Centralizing the count of daily deaths on an operational geographical scale constitutes a priority for Public Health in Europe.

Things are unambiguously much worse in 2024 than they were in 2003.

My anger is difficult to contain particularly with respect to the, again, Trumpian cretins who want to tell me that this is OK because they have barely enough brain cells left to mutter "Fukushima" or "Chernobyl" as if these words mattered on any scale of human decency.

No decency, zero, zilch, diddly squat, nix, nothing, among this set, none!

Once in this space I mused about the mythical - or not so metaphorically mythical - character of Cassandra, who was blessed by the gods with prescience but was required by them to always proclaim the truth. Her reward for always correctly predicting the truth was to be raped and murdered.

So be it.

Kill the messenger.

Of course, as opposed to the time of the Trojan war, we now understand powerfully the predictive power of numbers. The numbers above should speak to anyone with a modicum, even a mote, of intelligence. If they don't, don't bother to tell me about it. I'm depressed enough at the end of my life to see the planet in flames because of fear, ignorance, egged on by advertising to whip up insipid and highly selective attention. I really don't need to contemplate another in a long series of oppressive idiots I've encountered over the years, here and elsewhere.

Spare me.

The other stuff I say while reporting on this 2024 disaster, the one going under the radar while we all whine and carry on about things other than a planet in flames, our planet:

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 these pixilated reactionary schemes, 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.

[Attilatheblond]

1. First, I thank you for you courage in keeping track of the devestation. I know what being Casandra is like.

Second, for a few decades now, I keep pondering the premise of Ibsen's The Ice Man Cometh when skimming the 'news', and hearing Puck's one small, earth shattering line from Shakespeare as I set the news aside.

We have had a long time, by human lifespans, on this beautiful little orb. But, generation after generation, we have chosen the path of incorrect values. We kill our mother, thinking she is an immortal provider rather than the finite benefactor she is.

I am old now, and tired. Yes, I still try to engage in the 'important' matters of our day, mostly political, mainly because I care about what is here now. But, in truth, I know humans are all folly and no foresight. Depression is the only sane response, and I have fought it all my life. Seeing is a blessing and a huge curse. You see with technology and keep the numbers to back up the realities. I thank you, and know the curse you carry for your sight.

Me? I find myself rooting for the big giant asteroid and hoping I am gone before this beautiful orb is changed much more. Trying to see the beauty that still exists while being able to envision the hideous loss is almost too much to bear.