New Weekly Record High for Carbon Dioxide Established at Mauna Loa.
I'm not sure we've reached the maximum of the yearly cycle for carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa, which last year was obtained on the week ending April 22, 2018 and recorded at 411.68 ppm. In previous years this peak was often reached in May, but who's counting.
From the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory:
Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Week beginning on April 21, 2019: 413.77 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 411.70 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 389.94 ppm
Last updated: April 28, 2019
The increase over 1 year ago is 2.07 ppm, compared to the average of weekly year to year increase readings over the last 4 weeks, which was 2.85 ppm over the weekly reading of 2018.
The value recorded here, 413.77 ppm, is the highest weekly average reading ever reported at the Mauna Loa Observatory.
If the fact that this reading is 23.83 ppm higher than it was ten years ago bothers you, don't worry, be happy. I read right here on the E&E pages that solar power installations in American cities have doubled in the last six years, increasing in energy output from next to nothing to slightly farther to nothing.
My impression that I've been hearing all about how rapidly solar energy has been growing since I began writing here in 2002, when the reading on April 21, 2002 was 375.42 ppm should not disturb you, since it is better to think everything is fine rather than focus on reality.
At the risk of repetitively asserting that reality - as opposed to cheering for our own wishful thinking - matters, let me say again.
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. World energy demand in 2017 was 584.98 exajoules. Unquestionably it will be higher in 2019.
10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.
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.)
According to this report, the fastest growing source of energy on the planet in the 21st century over all was coal, which grew from 2000 to 2017 by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.
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" we'll all live in a so called "renewable energy" nirvana powered by the sun 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 perspicaciousness.
Or maybe not.
Maybe they'll hate our guts for not being remotely realistic, for leaving them with so little and so much destroyed.
Who can say? Soothsayers?
I may be too jaded to be comforted by "by 2050" rhetoric, having heard this stuff my whole adult life - and I'm not young - but you could try.
It's not results that count, but good intentions.
I hope you're having a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
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