Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time 👀💔

[progree]

Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time, AP, 6/7/21

The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50 percent higher than when the industrial age began.

And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientist reported Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”

By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.
MORE: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/06/07/carbon-dioxide-levels-hit-50-higher-than-preindustrial-time

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It's been stuck in my head for at least 20 years that we were 40-something percent above pre-industrial levels. Now I'll have to unstick that factoid and stick in 50-something percent.

[cilla4progress]

1. I see growing things going crazy,

that is, wildflowers trees. Growing more than usual.

Am I right this can be tied to high CO2 levels?

[Duppers]

2. Atmospheric CO2 Just Hit a Peak Not Seen on Earth in 4 Million Years

Another scary article here....

https://www.sciencealert.com/carbon-dioxide-just-hit-a-peak-not-seen-on-earth-in-4-million-years

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We're on track to burn our planet; earth's temps will just keep climbing if we don't immediately stop burning fossil fuels (& having too many kids - the planet just cannot support us all).

[progree]

3. Yes, scary, I excerpted a bit --

On at least a couple of days in 2021, in fact, Scripps researchers observed daily levels exceeding 420 ppm, notching up another disastrous first in human history. (( "420 day", sounds familiar -Progree ))

((back 4 million years ago when levels were last this high -Progree)) The high levels of accumulated atmospheric CO2 during the late Pliocene meant the world was a very different place back then, about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer compared to the pre-industrial period baseline.

In fact, Earth's polar regions were so warm they were grown over with forests, and the ice that would later form in Antarctica and the Arctic was still liquid water – swelling the oceans to a sea level over 20 meters ((65 feet)) higher than it is today.

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NOAA was saying last year that about half of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by the land and oceans (making the latter more acidic),
meaning that the other half adds to the CO2 atmospheric levels.

Implying to me that even with an immediate 50% cut to our CO2 emissions, it will only just stabilize today's already very problematic high levels. And then we have methane and other GHG emissions that need to be drastically reduced too.

[Duppers]

4. There's such a resistance to even learning about...

... the scope of this life-ending problem. Global climate change IS the most serious problem we face!

The cause is not just vehicles using petro or buildings & homes heated w/gas furnaces but the greater amt of fossil fuels that are burned to produce electricity.

And to compound the problem, methane and nitrous oxide are released during the combustion of fossil fuels. Methane is the most powerful greenhouse gas with a "100-year global warming potential, 28-34 times that of CO2."

And to further compound the situation, the more the planet heats up, the more methane that is being released from thawing frozen peat bogs across the planet.

Every Republican rejecting the truth of global climate change should educated themselves ...but that'll never happened.

A DUer even posted yesterday about how a proposed array of solar panels would block the view of a beautiful desert. Sadly, and along with most others, they must not comprehend the full scope of the planet's problem. We desperately need all the solar panels and windmills that we can build, until we can find other alternate energy sources. Even nuclear fuel plants, as dangerous as they are, are far less likely to end life on earth than our continuing to burn fossils fuels at the rate we are going.

[NNadir]

6. We DON'T desperately need all the solar panels and windmills that we can build.

We have been building them at an environmentally alarming rate.

They don't work.

We need to STOP repeating pabulum like "Even nuclear fuel plants, as dangerous as they are, are far less likely to end life on earth than our continuing to burn fossils fuels at the rate we are going."

Dangerous compared to what? To the gas plants that need to run whenever the sun goes down and the wind isn't blowing?

I never tire of offering up this link to what is and is not "dangerous."

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

Where exactly in this comprehensive document, is the putative death toll associated with nuclear energy? How does this death toll, if it exists (a clue, it doesn't) compare to the death toll associated with combustion while we all wait, decade after decade, for the magic solar and wind nirvana that never comes?

Nuclear energy saves 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).

That's a fact.

Facts matter.

It follows that insisting that nuclear power is "dangerous," is far more dangerous than nuclear power has ever been, the bogeymen at Fukushima and Chernobyl included.

The real source of this on going tragedy is the willingness that people have to lie to themselves. Clearly that willingness is not limited to the right wing. We do it a lot ourselves.

[NNadir]

5. Actually, compared to recent months, and recent years, the May 2021 figures are comparatively mild.

I do not know from whene the data in your link, comes, but I use the data from the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory data page, and keep spreadsheets of the data (weekly, monthly, and yearly) for use in calculations and comparisons.

The figures I have from this data for 2021 as compared to 2020 is a difference of 2.06 ppm, not 1.82 ppm. (NOAA did announce a minor change in analytical calculations earlier this year reflecting the use of blanks and spikes, which I did not enter into my spreadsheet, and this may account for a small difference.)

Nevertheless 2.06 ppm is relatively mild for these times. It is "only" the 17th worst May recorded in the last 61 years of this type of data available on the data page. By comparison, again based on my spreadsheet, April 2021 came in at 2.84 ppm higher than 2020 ("only" the 7th worst), March 2021 came in a at 2.64 ppm higher than 2020 ("only" the 2nd worst), February 2021 came in at 2.84 ppm higher than 2020 ("only" the 6th worst), and January 2021 came in at 2.12. ppm higher than 2020 ("only" the 19th worst).

The all time record for a monthly increase over the previous year's month came in March 2016, 4.16 ppm over March 2015, followed by 4.01 ppm recorded in June of 2016 over June of 2015.

But don't worry. Be happy.

I'm something of a crank, since I'm not expressing overwhelming joy with so called "renewable energy" which I keep reading is "cheap," at least when the sun is shining and/or the wind is blowing, irrespective of whether anyone actually can use the electricity generated by these mass intensive short term future landfill rich "green" facilities..

I am known for favoring nuclear energy, which continues to dwarf solar and wind energy by a factor of two combined when measured in units of macroscale energy - this unit is the Exajoule - and according to Jim Hansen, writing in 2013, had already prevented the release of more than 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide, this while being vilified by people who call themselves, despite their obvious lack of education and their willingness to drive to protests in their cars to chant slogans, "environmentalists."

If one looks at the actual numbers, even blindly, it is clear that despite all the cheering and all the money thrown at so called "renewable energy," things are getting worse not better, and worse at an increasing rate for that matter.

I wonder we would have been if Glenn Seaborg hadn't worked to get more than 100 nuclear plants built in this country.

Nevertheless, I read here and elsewhere all the time that "nuclear energy is too expensive." I, being a crank, I usually ask "for whom, us or future generations?" but no matter. It's clear in the minds of people making this statement that climate change isn't "too expensive."

I also read here and elsewhere that "nuclear energy is too dangerous." It's clear in the minds of the people making this statement that the death of around 7 million people per year from air pollution isn't "too dangerous."

Go figure...

Don't worry. Be happy.

I may think I understand perfectly why things are worsening at an accelerating pace, which I attribute to selective attention, ignorance and wishful thinking all rolled up in one oily carbonized ball, but I'm just a crank. I'm well aware that many people of better will disagree with me, and obviously they're right, at least in a world where numbers don't matter, and from what I read, numbers don't matter. They pale when compared to blind faith.