Happy New Year. 2022 in Carbon Dioxide Concentrations at the Mauna Loa/Kea Observatory.

[NNadir]

As I noted earlier, the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, possessing the longest record of controlled direct analytical readings of carbon dioxide concentrations in the planetary atmosphere (since 1959), closed owing to the eruption of the Mauna Loa volcano, but the measurements resumed at the University of Hawaii Mauna Kea, nearby.

The "Mauna Loa" CO2 observatory about to become the Maunakea observatory.

I have monitored the data from this observatory for many years, entering the weekly, monthly, and annual data from the Observatory's data page into spreadsheets for many years, so that I can utilized them to do calculations.

The data posted this week will be the last of the year. It is as follows:

Week beginning on December 25, 2022: 419.38 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 417.42 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 394.85 ppm
Last updated: December 31, 2022

I should note that 2022 was a relatively mild year - at least in terms of the 21st century, it would be considered disastrous in the 20th century - the average of all weekly readings in comparison to the same week of 2021 was 2.12 ppm higher than the previous year.

The average weekly year to year comparator changes for the 21st century is 2.17 ppm. In the 20th century (from 1959 to 2000) it was 1.54 ppm.

The worst year ever recorded for these types of weekly readings was 2016, when the average was 3.40 ppm.

There's a lot of bullshit flying around about an "energy transition" away from fossil fuels, basically based on the quasi-religious belief that lip service to so called "renewable energy" is effective and workable. There is no data whatsoever to suggest that this is true.

Things are getting worse, faster: Using the data in my spreadsheet, I keep a 12 month running average of comparisons between readings at Mauna Loa compared to the same week ten years previous. As of this week, that reading of averages of comparators between 2012 and 2022 is 24.51 ppm/10 years. In 2017, five years ago this week, it was 22.70 ppm/10 years. Ten years ago, it was 20.60 ppm/10 years. In 2002, 20 years ago, it was 16.86 ppm/10 years.

There is no "energy transition" and the reason that there isn't one is that the overwhelming of the money invested in a putative "solution" - one that doesn't work - has been on solar and wind energy. We are now half a century into hearing this anti-nuke fantasy; it's been as effective as saying the "Hail Mary" to cure cancer in a loved one.

Prayer may make you feel better, but it doesn't work.

2002 is around the time that the Chancellor, Gerhardt Schroeder, of a major industrial nation, Germany, announced a "nuclear phase out." After leaving the Chancellery, Schroeder went to work for Vladimir Putin's company, Gazprom, where he helped Putin fund the war now taking place in Ukraine. More people in Ukraine have been killed by German money used to finance Putin than were killed by Chernobyl, vastly more people. Germany is now relying on coal to run its power plants. As I noted here recently, Germany in its switch to nuclear to coal can be estimated to have killed about 5,300 people this year whose lives would have been saved had Germany not shut its nuclear plants:

12 Month German Carbon Intensity, 501 g CO2/kWh; An Estimate of the Associated Death Toll.

It's time for all of us to wake up, and be realistic. It's time to "go nuclear" against climate change. It is, I'm afraid, our last best hope.

Happy New Year.

[CoopersDad]

1. Diablo Canyon NPP is good news.

I'm in California and so relieved to learn that we aren't shutting down the plant.

Smart Governor, at least on this matter.