2023's Annual CO2 Minimum at the Mauna Loa Observatory Is 3.02 PPM Higher than 2022's Annual Minimum.

[NNadir]

As I have written many times at DU, I regularly track the weekly, monthly and annual data at the Mauna Loa CO₂ observatory, remarking on the regular setting of new records.

Here is the most recent reported weekly average:

Week beginning on October 15, 2023: 419.46 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 415.82 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 393.98 ppm
Last updated: October 27, 2023

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Here is an example of one of those posts: New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 423.65 ppm.

The annual concentrations, as a function of season fluctuations takes the form of a roughly sinusoidal function mapped on to a almost imperceptibly quadratic axis.

I derived a crude approximation for the quadratic equation in another post on this website: A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.

To wit:

When I joined DU in 2002, I believed that solar and wind were important tools for addressing climate change. I was supportive of money spent on the infrastructure and research devoted to this theory. Of course, when I joined DU in November of 2002, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 372.68 ppm. For the last week for which Mauna Loa data has been posted as of this writing, the week beginning July 3, 2022, that measurement was 419.73. I trust - hopefully not naively - that people can add and subtract. The first derivative, the rate of change of CO2 concentrations as measured by 12 month running averages of weekly Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory data, in November 2002 in the week I joined DU, was 1.66 ppm/year. Given the last data point as of this writing, it has reached 2.45 ppm/year.

Let's do something very, very, very crude, just as an illustration with the understanding that it is unsophisticated but may be illustrative:

As of this writing, I have been a member of DU for 19 years and 240 days, which works out in decimal years to 19.658 years. This means the second derivative, the rate of change of the rate of change is 0.04 ppm/yr^2 for my tenure here. (A disturbing fact is that the second derivative for seven years of similar data running from April of 1993 to April of 2000 showed a second derivative of 0.03 ppm/yr^2; the third derivative is also positive, but I'll ignore that for now.) If these trends continue, this suggests that “by 2050,” 28 years from now, using the language that bourgeois assholes in organizations like Greenpeace use to suggest the outbreak of a “renewable energy” nirvana, the rate of change, the first derivative, will be on the order of 3.6 ppm/year. Using very simple calculus, integrating the observed second derivative twice, using the boundary conditions – the current data - to determine the integration constants, one obtains a quadratic equation (0.04)t^2+(2.45)t+ 419.71 = c where t is the number of years after 2022 and c is the concentration at the year in question.

If one looks at the data collected at the Mauna Loa displayed graphically, one can see that the curve is not exactly linear, but has a quadratic aspect somewhat hidden by the small coefficient (0.04) of the squared term:



This admittedly crude "model" roughly suggests that the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste, carbon dioxide concentrations, given the trend, will be around 520 ppm “by 2050,” in 28 years, passing, by solving the resultant quadratic equation, somewhere around 500 ppm around 2046, just 24 years from now.

I’ll be dead then, but while I’m living the realization of what we are doing to future humanity fills me with existential horror.

The annual yearly local minimums in the weekly readings generally take place in October but sometimes occur in September. Last year it took place in the week beginning October 2, 2022, when the annual local minimum was recorded at 415.27 ppm.

It appears that the weekly readings have begun rising over the previous week again, with the apparent local minimum having taken place in the week beginning September 24, 2023, when the reading was 419.29 ppm.

If one has not joined Greenpeace, and can thus do simple arithmetic, this means that 2023's minimum is 3.02 ppm higher than that of 2022.

The annual local maximum in 2023, also at this point the global maximum for all Mauna Loa readings, was 424.64 ppm, observed in the week beginning May 28, 2023, 3.01 higher than 2022's local maximum, 421.63 ppm.

In the year I joined DU, 2002, the annual maximum was observed during the week beginning May 26, 2002, and was 376.20 ppm, 2.27 ppm higher than 2001's local maximum, 373.93 ppm.

The week that I joined DU, the week beginning 11/17/2002, the reading was 372.57 ppm. In my tenure here, as of this week, it is an astounding 46.89 ppm higher.

For the whole time I have been at DU, I have listened to soothsaying about how solar and wind energy would save the day. The soothsaying persists. If this soothsaying represents a theory, the theory should be rejected, since, in science, theory that has no correspondence to data is discarded as worthless. The data is clear.

In fact, the soothsaying about the magical solar and wind industries has now devolved into dogmatic faith. The reactionary fantasy of making access to energy dependent on the weather, abandoned in the 19th century for a reason has failed to address climate change, failed to affect the use of dangerous and deadly fossil fuels and in fact, has increased reliance on them.

It did not work. It is not working. It won't work.

The first two statements are observable facts and the last is a continuation of the observed trend, which is that throwing trillions upon trillions of dollars at solar and wind has had no effect on the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

Things are getting worse, and not merely getting worse, but are getting worse faster.

Enjoy the weekend.

[Frasier Balzov]

1. Does your sense of futility extend likewise to nuclear fission?

[NNadir]

2. There is a huge problem with nuclear fission.

It has nothing to do with technical issues, safety issues, reliability or cost.

It has mainly to do with public stupidity, fear and ignorance.

From a technical standpoint it is the only thing that will work. Unfortunately, fossil fuel marketing, of which the solar/wind/hydrogen/battery scams are members of a very successful subset has succeeded in demonizing it, as it is the only technology that can eliminate fossil fuels.

Today, around 19,000 people will die from air pollution, as they have every day this year, every day last year, and every day of the last several decades. Obviously climate change is making everything worse, far worse.

Still we have people carrying on about the Sendai Earthquake which besides destroying a city with seawater, and killing around 20,000 people with collapsing buildings and drowning, also destroyed three nuclear reactors at Fukushima.

While the planet burns, people care only about the reactors, although the number of deaths associated with radiation is, if not zero, vanishingly small.

Around 80 million people died from air pollution since Fukushima, and no one gives a rat's ass.

The problem with nuclear energy is not, again, technical. It is essentially infinitely expandable. The problem is one that appears in many other places beyond energy and the environment, but which dominates energy and the environment, the embrace of the marketing of ignorance.

Am I clear?

[Frasier Balzov]

3. You're clear if you meant to say this:

Fossil fuels and essentially all popular alternatives except nuclear are on one side of the debate.

Nuclear fission is on the other side.

Nuclear is losing a propaganda war waged against it by all the other technologies, even though it stands the best chance of making a positive difference.

Noting well that the debate must exclude fusion for now until theory is made practical.

[NNadir]

4. That is exactly what I meant to say. Thanks.

[hatrack]

5. Looks like we've made the annual turn - dailies are up to 319 ppm and higher since mid-month

Heading up now through May. This is the last year we'll see 418 ppm or lower, even on daily readings, let alone monthly.

[NNadir]

6. At the current rate, I'm expecting 2024 to reach between 427 and 428, possibly beyond, in May-June.

A peak to peak change of "just" around 3.00 ppm, as we saw from 2022 to 2023, would put us at around 427.6 ppm.

The accumulation rate is clearly accelerating, as is the rate of consumption of dangerous fossil fuels.

The latest soothsaying from the IEA says that the use of dangerous fossil fuels will peak "by 2030." As usual, this is delusional bullshit, but even were it true, it would still be half a century too late, and if it falls from a 2030 peak to what we've seen in 2022 and 2023, it would still be an unconscionable disaster.

I don't have access to the 2023 WEO yet, although it's been released, but should do so soon, in which the buried numbers in units of energy, Exajoules, will cut through all the crap by which capacity, GW, is represented without respect to reliability, capacity utilization.

One doesn't need to see those numbers to see that they will be ugly, since the CO₂ numbers don't lie.