A Return to Extraordinary Weekly Year to Year Increased CO2 Readings at Mauna Loa: 11/11/18
I keep a spreadsheet of weekly readings at Mauna Loa which calculates the difference (almost always positive) between a particular reading and the same reading of the same week the year before.
There are 2,233 such readings as of this writing, stretching back to May 25, 1975.
The top 50 readings range from a 5.04 ppm increase in a single year, recorded on July 31, 2016, to a 3.60 ppm increase recorded on May 26, 2013.
Twenty-eight of the top 50 occurred in 2016, which was an El Nino year.
This makes up the bulk of the 30 out of top 50 recorded in the last 5 years. There were two readings in this class in 2017, a post El Nino year. Thirty-six of the top 50 occurred in the last 10 years. Thirty-nine of the top 50 occurred in the 21st century.
Eight of the top 50 occurred in 1998, also a El Nino year, during which huge swathes of the South East Asian Rain Forest burned when fires set to clear forest to create palm oil plantations for "renewable" biodiesel fuel went out of control.
Two readings in 1988 were in the top 50.
One was in 1980.
2018 has been a post El Nino year; typically these are milder in terms of carbon dioxide increases to the El Nino years themselves. There were actually three readings in 2018 that recorded rises as compared to the same week of the year before that were less than 1.00 ppm, something not observed since 2015, when one such rise was recorded.
Well, finally, in 2018 we've got a figure breaking into the top 50. The week ending 11/11/2018 recorded a value of 3.63 ppm over the same week last year. It is the 28th highest increase out of 2,233 readings.
Some people think that solar and wind energy will save the day. They have not saved the day; they aren't saving the day; and they won't save the day. The reason is physics.
I recently referred to the most recent 2018 World Energy Outlook, published a week ago by International Energy Agency (IEA).
That post, which was largely, as I expected, ignored because um, truth is unpopular - especially when couched in a sarcastic title - is here: 2018 World Energy Outlook: Solar and Wind Grew by 11.24% in 2017; Gas by "Only" 3.32%!!!!
It reported that world energy consumption rose from 2016 to 2017 by 8.88 exajoules. Of that 8.88 exajoules, the bulk of it came from increases in the use of dangerous natural gas, which grew by 4.19 exajoules. (Coal based energy production, which some people report as "dead" - even though it remains the fastest growing source of energy in the 21st century - fell by a paltry 0.21 exajoules. It's not "dead." It's not even ill. It still produces 157.01 exajoules out of the 582.84 exajoules reported by the IEA, and is exceeded only by oil, which provided 185.68 exajoules in 2017, an increase of 1.97 exajoules.)
The combined solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which humanity has foolishly chosen to bet the planetary atmosphere, grew by 1.21 exajoules, and thus grew less than dangerous petroleum did, less than dangerous natural gas did. It did record an insignificant milestone however. For the first time, these four forms of so called "renewable energy" - even if the material requirements make anything other than "renewable" exceeded 10 exajoules: 10.63 exajoules to be exact.
The reading at Mauna Loa for the week ending 11/11/18 was 408.72 ppm.
No one now living will ever see a reading there of under 400 ppm again.
I'd like to congratulate all those people who carried on using gas and coal powered computers in this century about how "dangerous" nuclear energy is. I'd like to ask some of them, "Compared to what?" but there's no point in it. Experience teaches that their definition of "danger" does not include the 7 million people who died from air pollution in 2017. Because of their confused and selective attention, nuclear remains pretty static, having been producing around 28 exajoules of primary energy consistently throughout the 21st century, all the while accompanied by cacophony by scientific illiterates about how it "has to go." Were it not for fear and ignorance, it might have done more to save lives and fight climate change, but that was not to be.
The die is cast.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
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