The unprecedented 2016 measurement of large increases in CO2 concentrations over 2015 continues...

[NNadir]

On February 21 of this year, to describe my practice of monitoring the situation at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide observatory I posted the following:

At the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory website, they have a data page which compares the averages for each week of the year with the same week of the previous year.

The data goes back to 1974, and comprises 2,090 data points.

I import this data into a spreadsheet I maintain each week, and calculate the weekly increases over the previous year. I rank the data for the increases from worst to best, the worst data point being 4.67 ppm over the previous year, which was recorded during the week ending September 6, 1998, when much of the rain forest of Southeast Asia was burning when fires set to clear the forests for palm oil plantations got out of control during unusually dry weather. Six of the worst data points ever recorded occurred in 1998 during this event, another was recorded in the January following that event.

It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.

There are now 2,094 data points as opposed to 2,090. Of these 2,094 data points, only 9 recorded a value exceeding 4.00 ppm over the previous year. Two of these nine have occurred in the last two months.

The most recent released data point, for March 20, 2016 came in at 4.19 ppm over the same week in 2015. (2015 was the first year to have exceeded an increase of over 3.00 ppm over the previous year.)

Of the top 25 such values ever recorded, 5 were recorded in 2016.

As I noted previously, the worst monthly increase ever observed was that of February 2016.

February 2016 recorded as the worst February ever, by far, for carbon dioxide increases over the...

In several years of watching this data, I have never been as disturbed by it as I am right now. It would seem that something is spiraling out of control.

The average data for all weekly data points for increases over the same week of the previous year since 1974 is 1.74 ppm; for the 20th century, 1.54 ppm, for the 21st century, 2.05 ppm; for 2015, 2.25 ppm; for 2016, 3.24 ppm. Since the Fukushima event caused Japan to shut (temporarily) its largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, nuclear energy (but not its coastal cities, even though living in coastal cities was far more dangerous than nuclear plants) the increase has been 2.25 ppm.

Don't worry though...be happy. They're building a solar roadway in France, and even if it gets covered by sand, grease, skid marks, and tire wear, it's the thought that counts.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Vote Bernie Sanders! The only candidate who says this is a MORAL ISSUE!

Hillary is playing $$$ games. And the Republicans, who knows what they are doing? Bread & circuses? Fiddling their dicks while Rome burns?

BERNIE'S THE ONE! The ONLY serious climate change candidate! We need to mobilize ALL of the resources, energy and people of this great country to address this NOW. NOW! It is a moral issue! It is THE moral issue of our time! Do we leave our children with an uninhabitable planet? Or do we act, now, and help mobilize the world to save our only home?

And BESIDES BERNIE'S MORAL STANCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE, he will most certainly be a president who works to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the majority of people, and will help our people and other peoples' around the world survive the disastrous weather ahead and the radical economic transformation that needs to occur for habitability to be ensured. He will mobilize us and ask the best of us.

No other candidate will do this. We NEED him to do this. And he knows it.

[NNadir]

3. Bernie Sanders is a terrible candidate if one is concerned about climate change.

Morality is an issue for many people who are not Bernie Sanders, but an ethical outlook on climate change is not enough.

What is required to address climate change is familiarity with a) reality, but even more so, b) science.

Bernie Sanders is opposed to the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, nuclear energy.

His program, which involves investing in expensive, toxic, and useless so called "renewable energy" is delusional.

It hasn't worked. It isn't working. And it won't work.

The world spent close to two trillion dollars on so called "renewable energy" in the last ten years, and the results of this popular but disastrous approach to climate change is clearly written in the data above.

Because of the policies that Sanders endorses, his state's policy of dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide into the planetary atmosphere has risen from zero, to hundreds of thousands of metric tons.

Now. Vermont was, until two years ago, the only state in the Union that did not dump dangerous fossil fuel waste into the planetary atmosphere, and now it does.

As an ethical issue I could not ever imagine myself voting for Sanders to be the Democratic nominee for President. We have an infinitely better choice if climate is the issue, infinite in the sense that she has not announced a policy of making things worse, something Sanders has committed himself to doing.

If, may God forbid, if Sanders is the nominee, I will be forced to vote for him, not because he's good, but because he's less terrible than any of his possible opponents. For me, it will be the worst choice I've had since that reprehensible fool Michael Dukakis ran against that awful man George H.W. Bush.

No person serious about climate change should vote for Sanders.

Have a nice evening.

[kristopher]

4. Sanders: #1 threat to US (and world) is climate change.

He knows that nuclear is just another dirty, dangerous, toxic corporate grab for money.

He also knows that the anti-renewable lying campaign served by the nuclear industry is grounded firmly in corrupt politics, greed, and total disregard for the welfare of the public.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=98985

[kristopher]

2. Good thing renewables ramp up quickly - Global renewables capacity to reach 3,200 GW in 2025

Global renewables capacity to reach 3,200 GW in 2025

Jan 28, 2015 09:45 CET by Ivan Shumkov


Jan 28, 2015 (SeeNews) - The installed renewable energy capacity around the world is projected to jump to 3,203 GW in 2025 from 1,566 GW in 2012 as declining costs allow developing countries to adopt such technologies.

This is indicated in Frost & Sullivan’s Annual Renewable Energy Outlook 2014 report, which says that the global green energy capacity will grow at an average annual rate of 5.7% in 2012-2025. The market researcher has determined that solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power will account for 33.4% and 32.7%, respectively, of the total capacity added over the period under review, followed by hydropower with a 25.3% share.

Frost & Sullivan estimates that the worldwide solar power capacity will surge to 668.4 GW in 2025 from 93.7 GW in 2012, but the falling PV prices and the “veritable boom” in that segment will hurt the concentrated solar power (CSP) market.

Meanwhile, global wind power capacity is expected to hit 814 GW in 2025, going up from 279 GW in 2012. Frost & Sullivan stressed that the offshore wind market will not grow at the expected pace, but small-scale wind turbines will open up new applications.

http://renewables.seenews.com/news/global-renewables-capacity-to-reach-3-200-gw-in-2025-460517

Good to keep solar heat applications in mind also. It's definitely, by some, an under appreciated resource.
https://www.iea-shc.org/data/sites/1/publications/Solar-Heat-Worldwide-2015.pdf

And what even better?

The goal and expectations have increased just since these reports were written.


Now, if we could just get the cooperation of the crackpot-obstructionists-that-can't-give-up-their-dreams-of-a-glowing-future-through-nuclear, things would ramp up even more quickly. I mean it should be a crime what they've done in Britain! The lies, energy chaos, and locked in increased emissions that the pursuit of nuclear has resulted in literally should be a crime, don't you think. Dismantling their very successful energy efficiency program in order to preserve energy demand so that they would have a rate base for a nuclear plant guaranteed to produce some of the most expensive electricity in the world - Yes, I'm sure that is an ethical crime.