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NNadir

(33,365 posts)
Thu Apr 7, 2016, 03:39 AM Apr 2016

March 2016 blows away the record for annual CO2 increases over previous March readings: 3.31 ppm.

The monthly figures for March 2016 are in at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory. The March average for 2016 was 404.83 ppm. The March 2015 average was 401.52.

For those fond of arithmetic, the difference was 3.31 ppm.

For all data recorded in Marches of any year, this is a new record, the previous worst March, that of March 2013 (increased over March 2012) being 2.89 ppm. Thus the change in the change on these two data points, the second derivative if you will, was 0.42 ppm.

Rather remarkable.

The worst annual figure for increases over a previous year was observed in 2015, at 3.05 ppm.

February 2016, was the worst monthly figure recorded for any month of any year at Mauna Loa, 3.76 ppm over February 2015.

If any of this disturbs you, don't worry be happy. They're building a solar roadway in France, and Scotland is just brimming with so called "renewable" electricity generation. I heard all that wonderful news right here at Democratic Underground, right here at the "Energy and Environment" page.

In the case of our climate policy on this planet, the means far more important than the ends the ends. We don't give a rat's ass about the concentration of carbon dioxide on this planet so long as we build more and more and more and more so called "renewable energy" facilities. We spent two trillion dollars on this stuff in the last ten years, and we're doing just great, 3.76 ppm, followed by 3.31 ppm. By the way, this stuff is neither renewable nor is it sustainable, but again, don't worry, be happy.

It doesn't matter if stuff works, so long as we think it's cool stuff. We're bourgeois to the point of mindless; this data is a function of the West's continuing view that poor people on this planet don't exist.

If I sound bitter, I am.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

17 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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March 2016 blows away the record for annual CO2 increases over previous March readings: 3.31 ppm. (Original Post) NNadir Apr 2016 OP
Consumption-driven deregulated capitalism requiring increasing production Ghost Dog Apr 2016 #1
Everyone, I do mean everyone, on the planet is involved. NNadir Apr 2016 #2
Nice read, thanks, but misses the point. Briefly, Ghost Dog Apr 2016 #3
I have written at length about the lack of decent living conditions for the bulk... NNadir Apr 2016 #4
Mmm. "Stalin", and "Libertarian". You profoundly misunderstand. Ghost Dog Apr 2016 #5
No thanks. I think I understand what I need to know about these subjects, and there are... NNadir Apr 2016 #6
Then, your advocacy is based in (deliberate) ignorance, Ghost Dog Apr 2016 #7
We all have our own definition of ignorance. Mine is obviously different than yours. NNadir Apr 2016 #11
Associating contemporary Somalia with anarchist political philosophy Ghost Dog Apr 2016 #17
where is this coming from? Any way to know where the bulk is emanating? Fast Walker 52 Apr 2016 #8
Forest fires in SE Asia were very much involved in the 1997-1998 event, and until 2015... NNadir Apr 2016 #9
thanks... interesting to think the increase in atmospheric C02 is due to release from a warmer ocean Fast Walker 52 Apr 2016 #10
We just spent, in ten years, two trillion dollars on so called "renewable infrastructure." NNadir Apr 2016 #12
I'm not convinced it is "quixotic" Fast Walker 52 Apr 2016 #13
Well, then, with all due respect, actual data conflicts with your failure to be convinced. NNadir Apr 2016 #14
I just said I wasn't convinced (yet), not that I can't be convinced. Fast Walker 52 Apr 2016 #15
Nuclear reality vs fantasy kristopher Apr 2016 #16
 

Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
1. Consumption-driven deregulated capitalism requiring increasing production
Thu Apr 7, 2016, 05:56 AM
Apr 2016

of poisonous shit, the negative value of which is hardly if at all accounted for in the calculations of said economic system, causes mass social suffering and in fsct suicide. Meanwhile an 'elite' sociopathic few and their facilitators and cronies extract and accumulate what becomes unproductive, in any real social or cultural sense, so-called 'wealth', imagining, if any thought is dedicated to the subject at all, that they find themselves somehow above it all.

It is this economic system that must be attacked, dismantled, and a socially- and environmentally-sane alternative built.

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
2. Everyone, I do mean everyone, on the planet is involved.
Thu Apr 7, 2016, 06:11 AM
Apr 2016

It's easy, but I think, completely disingenuous to blame this state of affairs on some nebulous sociopathic elite.

Similarly the people I hear yelping the loudest about what is and is not "environmentally sane" are, in my opinion. clueless.

This is very much a technical issue; solutions exist, and are technically feasible, but they do not involve changing any particular economic system. In fact, in an emergency of this scale, focusing on changing the economic system would be a useless distraction.

Some years back, I made fun of the idea that an opinion of climate change was somehow involved in particular feelings about the social/economic system:

Smashing the Corporate Robber Baron Centralized Power System with Individual Power Systems.

Feel free to vote in the poll there.

Have a nice day.

 

Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
3. Nice read, thanks, but misses the point. Briefly,
Thu Apr 7, 2016, 04:26 PM
Apr 2016

It is the consumptive imperative growth-paradigm of contemporary capitalism as it operates in practice in most of the world today, and from which stems excessive energy demand, that is the overarching problem to be solved.

As an anarcho-environmental-socialist, if you will, I would not necessarily dismiss the use of nuclear fission or fusion electrical energy generation, whatever the degree of central- or decentralisation (mini-generators could be of interest), as part of a system of intelligently-designed, regulated and operated economies.

My point is that everything depends on this re-design and succesful implementation of new kinds of society.

But you say you do not care, ...

I don't care what social system builds nuclear power plants, so long as they are built
.

... apparantly assuming a priori that business-as-usual must persist, ...

My advocacy of nuclear power is about the crisis in climate change on a world that now holds six and one half billion people, many of whom who have no access to decent living conditions.


... in societies which provide for far from decent living conditions for too many.

Where you mention a preference for integrated public trsnsport systems, however, you do imply some social change.

Greetings.

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
4. I have written at length about the lack of decent living conditions for the bulk...
Fri Apr 8, 2016, 06:54 AM
Apr 2016

...of humanity elsewhere:

Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come

In it, I criticized, in connection with the dangerous and ignorant fool Amory Lovins...

...myopic bourgeois provincialism...


As for "redesigning society" well, leave me out of that one. I would ask those who propose such "redesign" who will do such designing, and then how said design would compare with the other seven billion redesigns possible from the other seven billion human beings.

The world has had some very bitter experience with pseudointellectual top down redesigns of society, cf, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jung-Un, etc. At a gut level, these kinds of specious solutions are a kind of arrogance.

Stalin - often praised as a genius in his life time, which probably ended with his urine soaked body being smothered by Beria, Beria's one act of decency in a depraved life - often spoke to his forced admirers of his grand success at redesigning society. I, for one, am not impressed.

Decentralization is a very, very, very, very, very bad idea, at least where energy and the environment is concerned, since by nature, distributed energy is distributed waste ultimately. This is a technical fact, and has nothing to do with culture or socioeconomic ideology.

Were it up to me, I would change many things about the world, but it is not up to me, nor, necessarily, as I have implied, should it be up to me. I would hope that humanity over all will become wiser, a weak hope perhaps, but, from my perspective, the only ethical and reasonable hope.

Have a nice day.
 

Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
5. Mmm. "Stalin", and "Libertarian". You profoundly misunderstand.
Sat Apr 9, 2016, 11:17 AM
Apr 2016

Please educate yourself well in the fields and gardens and pleasant courtyards of "Anarchist political philosophy," then let's discuss....

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
6. No thanks. I think I understand what I need to know about these subjects, and there are...
Sat Apr 9, 2016, 05:54 PM
Apr 2016

...far more useful things to do than get what passes for an "education" in these "fields."

I've lived a long time, and in that process, grown up a great deal, and there is at this hardly any need to discuss these subjects, about which I've made myself very, very, very clear that I regard as being of no practical interest, and very little intellectual interest at all.

My remaining life is short, and I feel the need to do more beautiful things, and trust me, "Anarchist Political Philosophy" is nothing to which I've given a single thought since my acne dried out.

 

Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
7. Then, your advocacy is based in (deliberate) ignorance,
Sat Apr 9, 2016, 08:24 PM
Apr 2016

or, worse, sociopathy.

"I don't care what social system builds nuclear power plants, so long as they are built."

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
11. We all have our own definition of ignorance. Mine is obviously different than yours.
Mon Apr 11, 2016, 06:20 PM
Apr 2016

It's pretty amusing, but telling, to have an anarchist define sociopathy.

It's OK, most anarchies, Somalia comes to mind, don't have very good educational systems, and defining things is thus not a strong point.

 

Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
17. Associating contemporary Somalia with anarchist political philosophy
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 09:54 PM
Apr 2016

in action is a demonstration of profound ignorance of, propably, political philosiphy and science in general.

No retort required, thanks.

Enjoy what's fast coming down the line.

 

Fast Walker 52

(7,723 posts)
8. where is this coming from? Any way to know where the bulk is emanating?
Sun Apr 10, 2016, 03:24 PM
Apr 2016

what about those horrible forest fires in Indonesia, for instance?

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
9. Forest fires in SE Asia were very much involved in the 1997-1998 event, and until 2015...
Sun Apr 10, 2016, 11:35 PM
Apr 2016

...1998 was the worst year ever recorded.

This said, since the turn of the century, the rate of increase has been accelerating without major fires.

This can be seen by evaluating all of the data for annual increases from 1959 to the present date, which covers all the time that the carbon dioxide observatory at Mauna Loa has been operating.

From 1959 until 2000, a period of 41 years, there were five years where the increase exceeded 2.00 ppm, 1977, 1983, 1987, 1988 and 1998. Of these, only one year exceeded 2.5 ppm, the year of the SE Asian fires, 1998, at 2.93 ppm.

Since 2000, a period of 15 years, there have been nine years that exceeded 2.00 ppm, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, the latter being the first to exceed 3.00 ppm. Four of these nine years exceeded 2.50 ppm, 2015, 2012, 2005, and 2002. It now seems possible that we will never see a year with an increase below 2.00 ppm again.

2016 is unbelievably bad so far. The weekly averages for increases over the same week of the year before, now stands at 3.25 ppm. The same average for the worst year ever observed, last year, was 2.25 ppm.

The grotesque failure to manage climate change gas releases can therefore not be attributed to forest fires alone.

One cause is that humanity has been telling itself a big lie, which is that if it throws huge sums of money at so called "renewable energy," it will make a difference. With more than 2 trillion dollars down the rabbit hole in the last ten years, and the numbers of dollars so wasted each year rising rather than falling, this approach is a clear and unambiguous failure. So called "renewable energy" has not worked, is not working, and will not work because of its low energy to mass ratio, its reliance on relatively rare materials, and its unpredictabilty and poor reliability.

Conversely, the superior form of energy, nuclear energy, has been maligned unmercifully by poor thinkers with small minds, and even though it remains, by far, the world's largest source of essentially climate gas free energy, there have been many poor decisions, like stupidly choosing to burn dangerous fossil fuels in Japan after Fukushima - air pollution from these fuels kill millions of people each year - because nuclear energy was claimed, insipidly, to be "unsafe."

The solubility of carbon dioxide in water decreases with rising temperature, as anyone who has opened a warm soda can on a hot day can easily see. Temperatures, in particular surface temperatures have been rising, and this is some feedback effect because of the decreased carbon dioxide solubility into the largest sink, the ocean. Since carbon dioxide, as well as the pollutants such as sulfates, sulfites, nitrates, and nitrites are all acidic, the ocean has been acidifying measurably, with the result that the solubility of carbon dioxide is falling even more than mere temperature suggests. The stability of methane and carbon dioxide hydrates also decreases with rising temperatures. Release from permafrost is also a factor. None of these effects are under human control, and we may be reaching a tipping point in many places on the planet where these issues are concerned.

It is no longer possible to attribute the accelerating disaster to any one event or cause. Human fear and ignorance and wishful thinking are all involved, but the failure to defeat the myths behind them has now probably pushed the situation beyond the region where any human action can matter all that much.

Have a nice week.



 

Fast Walker 52

(7,723 posts)
10. thanks... interesting to think the increase in atmospheric C02 is due to release from a warmer ocean
Mon Apr 11, 2016, 07:49 AM
Apr 2016

that being said, I'm not convinced the money spent on renewables is such a waste. The infrastructure does need to be built before the carbon savings can be realized.

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
12. We just spent, in ten years, two trillion dollars on so called "renewable infrastructure."
Mon Apr 11, 2016, 06:28 PM
Apr 2016

Two trillion dollars is already greater than the gross national product of all but 8 of the 188 nations listed by the world bank.

How much more "infrastructure," do we need from this quixotic adventure before we get it that it doesn't work?

The unfortunate thing is that the "infrastructure" is flimsy, and needs replacement almost as fast as it can be built, which is, by the way, not very fast.

I analyzed the comprehensive data from the Danish Energy Agency on its wind infrastructure, and found that among the thousands of decommissioned wind turbines in Denmark, the mean life time was a little less than 17 years.

Sustaining the Wind Part 1 – Is So Called “Renewable Energy” the Same as “Sustainable Energy?”

I've been hearing about how so called "renewable energy" would save the day my entire life, and I'm not young.

How many more generations will be required before we get it? With the incredibly high rate of atmospheric degradation being observed right now, how many more generations can be sustained.

Just asking.

Have a nice evening.

 

Fast Walker 52

(7,723 posts)
13. I'm not convinced it is "quixotic"
Mon Apr 11, 2016, 08:57 PM
Apr 2016

I know you love nuclear but seriously has to be better ways to go

NNadir

(33,365 posts)
14. Well, then, with all due respect, actual data conflicts with your failure to be convinced.
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 07:11 AM
Apr 2016

Northing, absoluitely, nothing can possibly be "a better way to go" than the only commercialized new form of energy discovered in the last two thousand years by the finest minds of the 20th century.

The supposition is that nuclear energy, and only nuclear energy, needs to be absolutely risk free, or everything else can kill at will.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect and without risk to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

You asked why the world's carbon dioxide accumulations are accelerating at a rate practically beyond comprehension, I provided an answer, and without any deeper analysis, you rejected it based on faith and supposition.

Within that last statement of yours, multiplied by the unsupportable belief of billions of people -that so called "renewable energy," which was, after all abandoned by humanity nearly two centuries ago because most people lived short miserable lives, is sustainable - lies the real answer to the question.

So called "renewable energy" hasn't been sustainable, it isn't sustainable, and it won't be sustainable.

Have a nice day.

 

Fast Walker 52

(7,723 posts)
15. I just said I wasn't convinced (yet), not that I can't be convinced.
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 08:27 AM
Apr 2016

And I'm still grappling with what you wrote.

"the only commercialized new form of energy discovered in the last two thousand years by the finest minds of the 20th century."
-- er, that's a very awkward phrase. Not sure why you wrote it like that.

"You asked why the world's carbon dioxide accumulations are accelerating at a rate practically beyond comprehension, I provided an answer, and without any deeper analysis, you rejected it based on faith and supposition. " --You actually didn't give a reason why CO2 levels are going up so much. You imply it has to do with new renewable energy sources, but it's not clear to me how wind and solar are causing more CO2 release.

"so called "renewable energy," which was, after all abandoned by humanity nearly two centuries ago because most people lived short miserable lives"-- I really don't know what this means.

"So called "renewable energy" hasn't been sustainable, it isn't sustainable, and it won't be sustainable."-- really? There's no way there can be new better technologies that ARE sustainable?

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
16. Nuclear reality vs fantasy
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 08:40 AM
Apr 2016

Coal and nuclear, nuclear and coal - two sides of the same centralized coin.

Ohio ‘bailout’ plan part of larger debate over nuclear’s future

WRITTEN BY
Kathiann M. Kowalski
7 hours ago


PHOTO BY
FirstEnergy / Creative Commons

An Ohio utility’s pursuit of a lifeline for an aging nuclear plant comes at a time when both economics and public opinion are aligning against nuclear power.

On March 31, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ruled that all FirstEnergy utility customers should guarantee sales for all electricity produced by the Davis-Besse plant along with certain coal generating plants in which FirstEnergy Solutions has an ownership interest.

The public debate around the plans has largely focused on fairness to consumers and competitors, but has occurred with a larger national discussion about nuclear power's role in a low-carbon future in the background.

Poll numbers released by Gallup last month show that, for the first time, a majority of Americans are opposed to nuclear power. The results follow “a downward trend in public approval of nuclear over the last six or seven years,” said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Takoma Park, Maryland...
http://midwestenergynews.com/2016/04/11/ohio-bailout-plan-part-of-larger-debate-over-nuclears-future/

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