The apparent annual low at the Mauna Loa CO2 observatory was in the week beginning 09/20/20.

[NNadir]

As I've indicated many times in this space, I somewhat obsessively keep a spreadsheet of the weekly data for concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide as recorded at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory. I use this spreadsheet 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.

Generally I post about milestones, all of which are unfortunate milestones, since nothing effective at all is being done about climate change anywhere. On the right, climate change is met with denial of its existence; on the left, the supposition is that tearing up pristine wildernesses and lacing them with roads to service wind turbines made with oil based plastic, coal based steel, copper, neodymium, dysprosium is doing "something." It isn't. Neither is the questionable practice of generating vast amounts of future electronic waste to make solar cells, doing anything. (The chemistry of solar cells is about to get worse, not better, with the rise of lead based perovskite solar cells.)

The data, which is a physical measurement, and thus a fact, clearly shows the reality. Facts matter.

Each year, although the general trend is rising at an ever increasing and alarming rate, the data follows a sinusoidal trajectory, a wave recorded on a slightly non-linear (and increasingly parabolic) monotonically rising axis. This graph, from the Mauna Loa site, which I have reproduced here many times before shows how this looks:



Atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory.

Earlier this year, I reported prematurely, several times, the annual peak in carbon dioxide concentrations, each of which was an all time record concentration, only to see a larger peak reached after a minor decline after the previous peak. The data was noisy, which is not entirely surprising. Temporary annual peaks were reached, only to be followed by brief declines, for the weeks beginning April 5, 2020, April 19, 2020, and May 3, 2020 before reaching the final maximum on May 24, 2020, which was a concentration 417.43 ppm. This figure will remain the all time record until late winter or early spring of next year, 2021, when 417.43 ppm will surely be surpassed before reaching an even more depressing maximum around May of 2021. This is, again, because we are doing nothing effective to address climate change other than to cheer for the destruction of wilderness, vast mining enterprises, many of which involve human tragedy, and cheering for so called "renewable energy," oh, and Elon Musk's electric cars for distracted and oblivious bourgeois types who don't want to hear anything about cobalt mines in the Congo region, as they rain on the "Green" parade.

History will not forgive us; nor should it.

There has been a lot of speculation and some wishful thinking that the Covid crisis would slow carbon dioxide accumulations. The folks at the Mauna Loa Observatory have a nice note addressing people who have been asking them about this:

Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19?

The evidence for a Covid "slowing" might be represented by the fact that the 2020 peak, again, 417.23 ppm was "only" 2.04 ppm higher than the 2019 peak, which was recorded on May 12, 2019 as 415.39 ppm. Such a figure for much the 20th century would have been terrifying, but in the 21st, where we have lots of wind farms, it's rather um, encouraging, at least in the Overton window of carbon dioxide changes. It is worth noting that the record 417.43 figure was, however, 24.80 ppm higher than the figure recorded in the same week ten years earlier, 2010.

There have been eight times in all recorded history at Mauna Loa, going back to the 1960s, where the comparisons, week to week, with data recorded 10 years earlier, have equaled or exceeded 25.00 ppm, for a rate equal to or greater than 2.5 ppm/year. Five of them occurred in 2020, our wonderful Covid year, and the other three were in 2019, including the 2019 maximum, 415,39 ppm, which was 25.27 ppm higher than the figure for the same week of 2009.

Don't worry. Be happy. Elon Musk's Tesla stock is doing very well.

This brings me finally to the annual minimum for 2020: It was recorded on the week beginning September 20, 2020.

The value was 411.00 ppm.

In comparison to the annual minimum of 2019, which was recorded during the week beginning September 29, 2019 and was 407.96 ppm, it is 3.04 ppm higher.

In recent times the East Coast of Australia was devastated by vast fires; on the West Coast of the United States was similarly devastated. Record heat waves have been recorded around the world, and if one looks closely at death statistics, one can see that these heat waves kill people. Increasingly powerful hurricanes slam into population centers around the world, including the United States, causing billions upon billions of dollars in damage. The use of oil, natural gas, and coal has been rising throughout the 21st century, despite all kinds of delusional wishful thinking. Air pollution deaths vastly exceed Covid-19 related deaths, although much attention is paid to the latter and little to the former.

Yet, I'm told, frequently, by nominally liberal people - for me liberalism is involved in caring about human suffering wherever it exists - that nuclear power is "too dangerous."

Famously, the famous climate scientist, Jim Hansen, calculated that even while being vilified as "too dangerous," nuclear power prevented the dumping of more than 30 billion tons of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide and saved almost two million lives: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Yet, it's "too dangerous" in the minds of some people.

Go figure.

Compared to what?

If we want to do something it will not be enough simply to defeat the racist, uneducated. uninformed, criminal currently living in the White House. On the contrary, it will take a good hard look at ourselves, and our own dogmatic beliefs, because we are decidedly not immune from ignoring facts.

Facts matter.

I trust you are having a pleasant and safe autumn weekend.

[Warpy]

1. It's still a huge increase in atmospheric CO2 over 60 years

and that is significant. The climate is changing, insects and the diseases endemic to warmer climates are creeping north. Trees are leafing out earlier in the spring and going dormant later in the fall. Wild weather swings and large tropical storms are becoming more common.

All of this has happened before, that's part of the problem. While we know industrial activity is contributing to the rising CO2 levels and we will need to find alternatives to fossil fuels (if only because one day we'll run out), it's unlikely we're 100% of the problem or that we'll ever be 100% of the solution to it, certainly not at present population levels.

I suppose we're just going to have to adapt as people have adapted for the whole 320,000 years or so we've been in our present form.

Teslas are very nice cars. If I could still drive, I might have one. However, anyone driving one in a haze of ecological self righteousness is deluding himself by not considering the carbon that went into its production and the carbon that generates electricity to charge it.