Data Corrections At The Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory and the 2023 Concentration Records.

[NNadir]

As I've written in this space many times, I have been monitoring the weekly, monthly and annual data for CO2 concentrations at the "Mauna Loa" CO2 Observatory for many years.

This observatory, which began recording data in 1958, represents the longest running record of carbon dioxide concentrations in the world.

My most recent comment in this space on the readings there, and the recent records being set because we are doing nothing to address climate change is here: New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 424.40 ppm.

Here is the latest data that is a result of doing nothing to address climate change:

Week beginning on May 07, 2023: 424.29 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 420.75 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 399.74 ppm
Last updated: May 15, 2023

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Whenever I say "doing nothing," I can surely expect all kinds of excuses, tortured prevarications, and soothsaying from aficionados of the failed, and yes, useless, solar and wind industries and the even more stupid and far more dangerous ideas of storing energy (with the appalling hydrogen and battery nonsense) when we do not have clean primary energy. These are to be expected. Popular lies always die with difficulty, particularly when they take on cult status.

I will find time to do the numbers on how weak and tiresome these excuses are in the face of where we are but that is not what this particular post is about so much as the nature of data collection, data management, and data review.

My post on April 30, two weeks ago reported - based on the data posted by the Observatory at that date - that the record concentrations were 424.40. Today I'm here to report that the data reported for May 7, 2023 is the apparent record.

What's going on?

What I've noticed is that for the first time in my experience, the numbers are undergoing revision on the fly, sometimes days, sometimes weeks later. The data for April 30 of 2023 has been corrected, and is now reported on the data pages of the Mauna Loa website as 423.96 ppm, slightly less than the revised figure of 424.04 ppm for the week beginning April 23, 2023.

The reasons behind this probably have to do with the eruption of the Mauna Loa volcano, which caused the original observatory to be moved to Mauna Kea as reported on the website:

Due to the eruption of the Mauna Loa Volcano, measurements from Mauna Loa Observatory were suspended as of Nov. 29. Observations starting in December 2022 are from a site at the Maunakea Observatories, approximately 21 miles north of the Mauna Loa Observatory.

It appears that the original observatory has been reopened, but as any scientist involved with highly precise and accurate measurement will tell you, data must be treated with scientific review, using established methods for quality control and quality assurance.

Analytical chemistry is a very serious business, subject to rigorous scientific rules and practices, many of these (as in the pharmaceutical industry) controlled by legally binding regulations which are subject to continuous review.

It appears that the original Mauna Loa facility has reopened, but to insure the data integrity of this important record, to rule out or identify systematic errors that may have resulted from the unavoidable shift in location, both observatories will operate simultaneously for a year:

2022 Mauna Loa Eruption and Interruption of Leading CO2 Signal

Introduction

The Mauna Loa volcano erupted November 27, 2022. About seven hours later, lava flows buried the access road and cut electrical powerlines to the remote, world-famous Mauna Loa Observatory.

This global atmosphere monitoring facility is best known for producing the longest running record of high-precision measurements of CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere. This incident caused a pause in CO2 measurement programs at Mauna Loa: the NOAA CO2 monitoring program (NOAA GML), and the Scripps CO2 monitoring program (Scripps / UCSD).

The eruption lasted about two weeks. Volcanic activity began to settle down on December 9, 2022, and lava flows stopped expanding by December 13, 2022. The USGS reported that lava flows travelled 12.1 miles and covered an area of 16.5 square miles.

To continue the Mauna Loa CO2 record, temporary measurement site was set up at the nearby summit of Maunakea. NOAA began its Maunakea measurements on December 8, 2022. Scripps began its measurements at this temporary site on December 14, 2022. The two monitoring programs will continue the Maunakea measurements for about a year after measurements resume at the Mauna Loa facility. This will provide an overlap which will allow scientists to compare measurements at the two nearby locations.

On March 9, 2023, Scripps resumed its measurements of CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory. As of April 24, 2023, it is not yet known when NOAA will resume its CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa.

A more detailed account of events is next. Then, links to external reports and coverage is listed in chronological order.


Detailed Story & Comment

Since March 1958, scientists have been using high-precision instruments to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) in Hawaii. Located 3,400 metres above sea level, this atmospheric research facility is home to the world's longest-running instrument record for CO2 measurements. This CO2 record generated the Keeling Curve which is now "an icon of modern climate science" (ACS). It resulted in discoveries that advanced human understanding of our impact on the atmosphere, climate and environment--and our capacity to address the impacts.

Mauna Loa is also the world's erupted on November 27, 2022 at 11:30 p.m. At about 6:30 p.m. the next day, lava flows cut through powerlines on the Observatory Road access route which supplies electricity to the nearby Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO). This is the remote, premiere atmospheric monitoring observatory which scientists have been using to monitor and collect data for understanding changes to the planet's atmosphere and climate since the 1950s.

This webpage presents a summary and many links to informaiton the 2022 volcanic eruption at Mauna Loa which interrupted the atmospheric CO2 record which serves as the leading signal of coming changes in climates and environments worldwide, and which, we hope, will soon straighten and bend down to become a signal that shows past and coming progess to resolve the current crisis...

This new practice of revision of the data will cause some extra work for the data pages I maintain at home to work with the data in the ways to which I am accustomed to doing. I will need to spend extra time to follow the revisions, periodically checking the entries to see that they correspond to the data reported by the website which may or may not have been subject to revision.

It's clear however that the situation is growing more tragic day to day, spinning out of control.

I insist, whatever bullshit I have to endure in terms of reactionary rhetoric - attempting to return the infrastructure of humanity to the 18th century dependence on weather at precisely the time we have disastrously destabilized the weather is reactionary - we are doing nothing, unless one credits that lying to ourselves is "doing something." If we were doing something other than kidding ourselves, the rate of climate degradation would be slowing, but it's not: It's accelerating.

Numbers don't lie. They can be subject to correction, but they don't lie.

I trust you're having a pleasant work week.

[zipplewrath]

1. Primary cause

as the population increases, all of the things that contribute to increased CO2 are driven upwards. It's more cattle, more cars, more electricity, more fossil fuel burning, more airplane flights, more of everything. Sadly, as the world temperature increases, there is also more air conditioning, much of it fueled by fossil fuels.

[NNadir]

2. Bullshit. The primary cause is lying to ourselves.

Spare me.

[zipplewrath]

4. You mean like ignoring the effect of population growth?

The more of us there are, the smaller our carbon footprint needs to be.

[NNadir]

5. Like I said, spare me.

[zipplewrath]

7. 2.5 billion

There are 2.5 billion more people in the world since 1990.

If you don't think that has an impact on CO2 production and release... well, spare me.

[NNadir]

8. Really? The whole problem is poor people and not the citizens of rich countries?

How is that the United States, with 4.25% of the world's population is responsible for 12.7% of the climate emissions?

The real problem here is that bourgeois people in the first world rather resent the world's poor for wanting to live like Americans, that they have not agreed to remain impoverished so Americans can issue smug pronouncements about how other people shouldn't exist because they're bad for the environment.

We got rich on coal, and then we exported our coal based industries to China and India. Now we resent them for existing because, well, we're perfectly "green."

The average American who wants to commit suicide because "there are too many people on the planet" would require 7 dead Indians to eliminate the same carbon cost.

It would take 33 citizens of the the "Democratic" "Republic" of Congo to kill themselves to account for one American who thinks there is too many people on the planet.

It would take about 10 Nigerians to commit suicide because there are too many people on the planet to equal one American who committed suicide because there are too many people on the planet.

It would take two Chinese; but of course, China is leading the world in the construction of nuclear power plants; unlike those who wish to blame the poor. They have 19 nuclear plants under construction and are operating 38. They will not have to kill themselves for climate action. (I note that Americans complaining about "too many people" do not include themselves among the "too many." )

It is quite possible that within my very short remaining life time, we'll see Chinese carbon intensity for electricity fall below that of Germany and possibly as low as that of Finland.

UNEP Climate Action

It is well known that countries in which citizens feel secure, safe, and and can afford a decent life style have lower birth rates than countries that are mines for human slavery, like say, "Democratic" "Republic" of Congo, where slaves dig cobalt for our "green" batteries for our electric cars and our idiotic "renewable energy" fantasies.

China, Japan, Finland are examples of countries in which the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate.

An interactive map shows fertility rates all around the world; I note that they are highest in the countries with the lowest per capita energy consumption in general: Total Fertility Rate 2023, World Population Review.

I believe in human development goals; I'm not cheering for poverty, nor am I cheering for dirty energy to climb out of poverty. I had hoped early in my life for a sustainable population, which I fully concede is way below 8 billion people, by attrition. Now we smugly call for the same result by catastrophe.

If it makes anyone in the "too many people" set happy, the first set of people to die from extreme heat are likely to be those who don't have air conditioners because they don't have money and they don't have reliable electricity.

It may be hot world wide, but the people who want to blame the poor strike me as pretty cold.

I asked to be spared going through this exercise in contempt for the poor, but one doesn't always get what one wants.

Have a nice evening.

[zipplewrath]

9. Now your just making stuff up

I don't dispute that the wealthiest nations are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the carbon. But at the end of the day, 2.5 billion people are going to generate a tremendous amount of CO2, regardless of where they live.

[NNadir]

10. I'm not "making stuff up." As these things called "REFERENCES" show, we could kill 3 billion...

...people on this planet - the three billion that we pretend don't exist, those living on less than $7.00/day - and have very little effect on climate change.

There are lots of references with simple googling, but here's one that pops up from 2020: Half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day.

Here's another reference along the same lines, saying pretty much the same thing:

The World Bank has also established poverty lines for lower middle-income countries (LMICs) at $3.65 per person per day and for upper middle-income countries (UMICs) at $6.85 per person per day. The number of people living in poverty as measured by the LMIC poverty line of $3.65 and the UMIC poverty line of $6.85 increased between 1990 and 1999, but then fell until the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when numbers increased. In 2022, we estimate that 1.85 billion people (26% of the global population) lived below the threshold of $3.65 a day and 3.71 billion (46% of the global population) lived below the threshold of $6.85 a day.

Economic poverty trends: Global, regional and national, February 23, 2023

Now, I don't happen to think that people living under these conditions are buying gasoline with their day's earnings and seeing if they can save on expenses by replacing a Toyota with a Tesla, but let's assume that we're speaking about Indians, and where in USD, the price of gas is about $5.00/gallon. If they're spending all their money on gas, they're getting about 1.4 gallons per day.

A gallon of gasoline produces about 9 kilos of carbon dioxide when burned.

If one follows through, one can recognize that killing all of those 3.7 billion people "because they're bad for the environment" and reducing the population to levels last seen in the 1970's to around 4 billion + we would save just 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

But the calculation is absurd. These 3.7 billion people are clearly not spending every dime in their lives on gasoline. They actually want to, um, eat for example.

One just can't generate that much carbon dioxide with no money, and as my previous references show that the poor countries have the highest rates of population increase, mostly because the poor require child labor.

If someone wants to suggest that someone is "making stuff up" it kind of behooves them to show some references to prove as much.

Handwaving and wild suppositions just don't cut it.

Have a nice day.

[zipplewrath]

11. So they don't expel any CO2?

They don't burn coal, they don't use public transport, they don't breathe. They don't consume beef or pork. They don't generate methane at all. Of course none of them migrate to economies that allow them to consume more, to use gasoline, to use electricity. They just sit there doing nothing but existing in silence. They don't generate any economic demands at all.

[NNadir]

12. They breathe. Apparently some people find them doing so troublesome. That releases CO2.

References showing that the 3.7 billion people living on less than $6.85/day are the major drivers of climate change would be useful to support an argument that climate change is tied to population and not to sources of energy used to eliminate poverty, not that anyone gives a rat's ass about poverty anymore.

Here is an open sourced reference, claiming that the richest 1% of the world's population is responsible for 15% of its emissions (it is an opinion piece, albeit in an open source (PLOS) scientific journal.

COP26: The eternally weak pulse of climate diplomacy, and what needs to change

This suggests, if true, that by reducing the population by 1% (you know as in "eat the rich" which is not necessarily what I'm suggesting) we could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 5 billion tons to figures last observed at the turn of the century, will a population reduction of just around 80 million people.

But I don't find this particular conversation to be relevant since at least on one side, it merely consists of unreferenced assumptions. I personally find them rather myopic, and profoundly disagree that the cause of climate change is merely the existence of people.

I note, relying on the figures in 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435, that in 2021 world energy demand was 624 Exajoules. This means on average, including both the obscenely rich and the most destitute poor, that the average human being, at a population of 8 billion, per capita had a consumption of about 78 GJ.

A kilogram of plutonium releases about 80 trillion joules of energy when completely fissioned. This means each person would be responsible for about a milligram of plutonium per year, working out to about 800 tons per year of fission products. (The majority of used nuclear fuel is unreacted uranium which can, in theory and in practice be converted to plutonium, thus the used fuel resources are very much larger than this, although the potential energy therein is enormous).

There would still be huge environmental problems involved in the support 8 billion people, most connected with land use, but climate change from the emissions of fossil fuels wouldn't be one of them.

Feel free to offer another unreferenced opinion in this thread, but do not expect a response. It's certainly tiresome and I don't credit at all the validity of these blank assertions in any way.

[OhNo-Really]

3. Been following CO2 since early 1990s

But I’m old now

But

Do I remember dire warnings ⚠️
If CO2 exceeds 350

And now it’s heading towards 430
🥶💨🤷🏻?♀️

“Is it time to give up on the 350 ppm goal? We’re now consistently above 400”

“I think it’s pretty unlikely that Mauna Loa will dip below 400 ppm in the monthly or weekly” averages, he said. That is a sentiment he first expressed in a blog post back in October, when it was becoming clear how strong El Niño would be.”

https://grist.org/climate-energy/is-it-time-to-give-up-on-the-350-ppm-goal-were-now-consistently-above-400/

[NNadir]

6. The problem with Grist, Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, blah, blah, blah...

...and many if not most climate concern trolls here is and has been that they are all reactionaries and have refused to open their closed minds as Jim Hansen did, and say the word "nuclear" without insipid comments on what is and is not "dangerous" and "expensive."

All these people carried on about the dangers of climate change, but in their limited parochial minds, Fukushima was more dangerous than climate change.

They were and are all out of their minds, but they all lacked the intellectual and moral depth to look at the numbers and change their minds.

Hence, 424 ppm, less than ten years after we first saw 400 ppm.

It's getting worse, faster.