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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Sun Sep 22, 2019, 10:40 AM Sep 2019

We may have reached the annual minimum for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere: 408.50 ppm.

Each year, the minimal value for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere for a particular year is observed in the Northern Hemisphere's early autumn, usually in September. 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 minima are uniformly higher than the carbon dioxide minima 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.

For many years now, I have kept spreadsheets of the data for annual, monthly, and weekly Mauna Loa observatory data with which I can do calculations.

In the weekly case, the week ending 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:



Here is the data for the week beginning on September 15, 2019

Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Week beginning on September 15, 2019: 408.50 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 405.67 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 384.59 ppm

As of this writing, there have been 2,277 such weekly readings recorded at Mauna Loa, going back to 1975. The increase over the same week of 2018, is "merely" 2.83 ppm, I say "merely," because the average for 2019 is 3.07 ppm over the previous year. This is only the second year in history in which this average has exceeded 3.00 ppm. The first was the El Nino year of 2016, when the average was 3.40 ppm.

The operative point is that this reading is only 0.09 ppm lower than last week's reading, which was, 408.59 ppm. This suggests, if one is experienced with working with such data, that this is most likely the annual September minimum reading. For the rest of this year, and through May of 2020 the readings will be rising. We will surely see next May readings around 418 ppm, if not higher.

Seven of the 50 highest year to year weekly comparison increases ever recorded have been in 2019. This includes the week beginning on April 28, 2019, when the increase measured 4.48 ppm, the eighth worst in recorded history. Six of the 10 worst readings have taken place in the last 5 years, all of them well over 4.00 ppm. 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 3.10 ppm.

In the 20th century these figures averaged 1.54 ppm; in the 21st, 2.15 ppm (and rising).

Early in this century, beginning with Germany, the world bought into the "renewable energy will save us" meme.

It hasn't. It isn't. It won't.

If the fact that this week's reading is 23.93 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.

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.

Don't worry. Be happy. Head over to the E&E forum, and read about "largest" solar facilities are being installed in place x or place y. Celebrate the victory.

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 and again and again and 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?

Facts matter and it is a fact that on the scale of disasters, Fukushima is demonstrably trivial. The average year to year weekly comparison increases since 2011, when Japan shut it's nuclear reactors to see if they were "safe" is 2.40 ppm.

According to the data published in Lancet in 2016 on causes of worldwide mortality, the number of people who died from air pollution since the Fukushima event can be roughly estimated at 60 million people. Sixty million people is roughly half the current population of Japan. How many people died from radiation from the Fukushima reactors again? If this is the focus of all your fears, Fukushima, let me know.

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.

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We may have reached the annual minimum for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere: 408.50 ppm. (Original Post) NNadir Sep 2019 OP
Kick defacto7 Sep 2019 #1
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