The weekly year to year Mauna CO2 reading for the week of 6/30/19 among the 50 worst increases ever.
Each year, the maximal value for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere for a particular year is observed in the Northern Hemisphere's spring. The Mauna Loa Observatory reports weekly year to year increases for each week of the current year compared to the same week in the previous year.
This year, in 2019, as is pretty much the case for the entire 21st century, these maxima represent the highest concentrations of carbon dioxide ever recorded going back to 1958, when the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory first went into operation. Weekly data is available on line, however, only going back to the week of May 25, 1975, when the reading was 332.98 ppm.
May 12, 2019 set the all time record for such readings: 415.39 ppm.
These readings, as I often remark vary in a sinusoidal fashion, where the sine wave is imposed on a monotonically increasing more or less linear axis, not exactly linear in the sense that the slope of the line is actually rising slowly while we all wait with unwarranted patience for the bourgeois wind/solar/electric car nirvana that has not come, is not here and will not come.
This graphic from the Mauna Loa website shows this behavior:
The annual minima are generally recorded in the Northern hemisphere's autumn. This year's absolute readings will fall until around September, whereupon they will begin to rise to what is sure to be a new record maximum in 2020.
Somewhat obsessively I keep a spreadsheet of the weekly data, 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.
In these spreadsheets, in particular, I record in this spreadsheet the increases over the previous year.
Here is the data for the week ending June 30, 2019:
Week beginning on June 30, 2019: 413.38 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 409.57 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 388.63 ppm
As of this writing, there have been 2,266 such weekly readings recorded at Mauna Loa, going back to 1975. The increase is the 32nd highest ever recorded among all of these. This places in the top 50 among all such data points, greater than 98.6% of all such readings, in the "percent talk" utilized to generate wishful thinking about this disaster.
With the year just about half over, 9 of the 50 highest year to year weekly average increases ever recorded have been in 2019. Thirty-four of the top 50 such readings have taken place in the last 5 years; 38 in the top 50 recorded in last ten years, and 41 of the top 50 recorded in this century.
The average increases over the last 4 weeks when compared to the same week in 2018 has been 3.26 ppm. For the whole of 2019, these weekly year to year increases have averaged 3.11 ppm.
In the 20th century these figures averaged 1.54 ppm; in the 21st, 2.14 ppm (and rising).
If the fact that this reading is 24.75 ppm higher than it was ten years ago bothers you, don't worry, be happy. You can read all about how wonderful things will be "by 2050" or "by 2100." Wind. Solar. Elon Musk. Tesla Car. And all that.
If you're even a tiny bit troubled, head on over to the E&E forum here, and read all about how great so called renewable energy is doing from one on the anti-nukes running the place and why the toxicology and energy waste associated with the second law of thermodynamics with respect to batteries is "green."
My impression that I've been hearing all about how rapidly bird and bat grinding wind turbines are being installed since I began writing here in 2002, when the reading on April 21, 2002 was 375.42 ppm.
This should not disturb you since it is better to think everything is fine rather than focus on reality and focusing on reality - particularly in Trumpian times - is as annoying here as elsewhere.
All this jawboning about the wonderful growth of so called "renewable energy" has had no effect on climate change, is having no effect on climate change, and won't have any effect on climate change, but it's not climate change that counts: It's all that wonderful marketing showing pictures giant sleek wind turbines on steel posts that counts.
Don't be angry, be happy and nice. Say nice things. Be pleasant.
If the fact that steel is made by coking coal at high temperatures in coal fired furnaces enters your mind, I suggest you meditate and say, "OM...om...om...om..." until you're only left with happy thoughts.
At the risk of repetitively asserting that reality - as opposed to cheering for our own wishful thinking - matters, though let me say again:
In this century, world energy demand grew by 164.83 exajoules to 584.95 exajoules.
In this century, world gas demand grew by 43.38 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules.
In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 32.03 exajoules to 185.68 exajoules.
In this century, the use of coal grew by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.
In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules.
10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.
Nuclear energy, provided 28.81 exajoules, or 4.9% of world energy demand in 2017, this while under constant attack by people who think it is "too dangerous." In it's entire history, stretching over half a century nuclear has not killed as many people as will die today from air pollution, which is roughly 19,000 people; seven million people will die from air pollution this year.
2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)
Nuclear energy was the last, best hope for humanity and, in fact, for the planet.
Fukushima.
Really? Really?
If last week's death toll from the heat wave in Europe is anything like the one that struck in 2003, more than 70,000 people will have died from it: Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003, (Jean-Marie Robain et al, Comptes Rendus Biologies Volume 331, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 171-178).
If you think that unlike you, I am worrying and not being happy, you can always chant stuff about how "by 2050" or "by 2075" or "by 2100" future generations will all live in a so called "renewable energy" nirvana powered by the sun and the wind and tooling around in Tesla electric cars.
I'll be dead "by 2050," as will most of the people doing such soothsaying about that magic year, but I'm sure that the future generation living through 2050 will all be cheering for our wonderful insight into the world in which they will be living.
Or maybe not. Maybe they won't forgive us for our wishful thinking by which we casually dumped responsibility on them to do what we were purely incompetent to do ourselves, this while we consumed every last drop of rare elements to live in our bourgeois moral hell.
We will not be forgiven, nor should we be.
I wish you a pleasant work week.