Fun with (Keeling) curve fitting

[GliderGuider]

I got thinking last night about how the Keeling carbon dioxide curve from Mauna Loa looks suspiciously like it's increasing its slope over time. I've never seen a projected Keeling curve, so I decided to try one. The raw data is available from Scripps. I put it into Excel and used the built-in trend lines to get the best fit I could. It turns out that the data matches a second-order polynomial extremely well (R^2 is virtually 0.99). Here, for your edification and amusement, is what the last 50 years looked like, and what the next 50 might look like if we don't get off our collective asses and Do Something. Or, of course, if complex system dynamics don't strike our civilization, collapsing our fossil fuel consumption.


:scared:

[hunter]

1. My bet's on "complex system dynamics."

I'll be keeping a wary eye out for giant squid when I'm swimming in the ocean too.

Maybe I can get rich selling chainmail swim trunks.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Yeah, I'd made the same observation

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise though.

If "the usual suspects" had simply kept putting out the same amount of CO₂ each year, then you might have a steady climb; but that's not what has happened.

Instead, more countries have been putting out more CO₂ per year.