New Weekly Record High for Carbon Dioxide Established at Mauna Loa.
Each year in late spring in the Northern Hemisphere, we reach the annual maximum for the year for concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide as measured at Mauna Loa. Graphically this looks more or less like sine wave in which the axis is slowly rising parabola, more or less, with a slope currently at 2.3 - 2.4 ppm year as opposed to about half that in the 20th century.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Apparently we have not reached the annual high for 2019, as measured in weekly average readings.
From the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory:
Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Week beginning on April 28, 2019: 414.32 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 409.84 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 390.36 ppm
Last updated: May 5, 2019
The increase over 1 year ago is 4.48 ppm. As of this writing, there have been 2,257 such weekly readings recorded at Mauna Loa, going back to 1975. This increase is the 8th highest ever recorded among all of these.
In 2019, with the year not half over, 7 of the 50 highest year to year weekly average increases ever recorded have been in 2019.
The value recorded here, 414.32 ppm, is the highest weekly average reading ever reported at the Mauna Loa Observatory.
If the fact that this reading is 23.96 ppm higher than it was ten years ago bothers you, don't worry, be happy. I read right here at DU that the US has installed a record number of wind turbines this year.
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 should not disturb you, since it is better to think everything is fine rather than focus on reality.
It's 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 giant sleek wind turbines that counts.
Feel good...feel good.
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 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 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 on me to see if I get all warm and fuzzy. (We are all getting warmer, and, um, it's not good.)
It's not results that count, but good intentions. Wishful thinking, if not good for the environment, is good for you, since it will help you relax by dreaming about your swell Tesla car you'll buy some day.
I hope you'll have a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
