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Atmospheric CO2 Increasing at Record Rate: Accelerating our fossil foolish leap off a cliff [1]

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Date: 2024-05-10  

In the clean economy revolution, globally, there are truly many great stories and tremendous advances. Solar power continues its double-digit growth, clean generation is blowing away fossil fuels in new power plants, battery prices continue to fall rapidly , 40 million Ebikes were sold globally in 2023, and the list goes on. For the optimist side of this pessimistic optimist, there are too many to keep track of positive developments. Well, so much for today’s positive side of the optimistic pessimist.

2023: Highest Co2 Emission Growth Ever Recorded

While there are tremendous clean economy advances, it is hard to see their impact in the real world when considering what is going on with the Keeling Curve — the measurement of atmospheric CO2 at Mt Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

Not only are atmospheric CO2 levels higher with every passing moment*, 2023 saw the fastest Co2 emission growth ever recorded (e.g., ever happened in a single year during humanity’s existence). March 2024 was 4.7 parts per million (ppm) higher than March 2023. The second highest year-to-year was 4.1 for 2015/2016.

“It’s really significant to see the pace of the increase over the first four months of this year, which is also a record,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We aren’t just breaking records in CO 2 concentrations, but also the record in how fast it is rising.”

Now, there are aggravating factors that particularly worsen some periods — both 2015/16 and 2023/24 were El Nino periods which will see higher CO2 levels naturally. Going past the El Nino will (almost certainly see) a lowering from this frenetic growth rate.

“The rate of rise will almost certainly come down, but it is still rising and in order to stabilize the climate, you need CO 2 level to be falling,” Keeling said. “Clearly, that isn’t happening. Human activity has caused CO 2 to rocket upwards. It makes me sad more than anything. It’s sad what we are doing.”

While there are tremendous clean economy advances, worthy of praising, they are — at best — slowing our emissions growth and require ever greater accelerated deployment to set us on the path toward a net negative global society that will provide a path toward recovery from the devastating damages humanity has already baked into the system through fossil fuel use (and agricultural practices and land use and ...).

Climate Catastrophe isn’t about “grandkids”, it is already upon us and worsening with every passing moment. We’ve already launched ourselves over the cliff. The question is whether we stop making the canyon deeper (e.g., through mitigation (reducing/ending emissions)) and make our “vehicles” more able to survive the crash (resiliency and adaptation).

An old adage about climate change is that it is a balance between

mitigation (working to stop the problem),

adaptation (investing/acting to be able to deal with the implications), and

pain.

Every added CO2 (and, well, methane and ...) molecule is a commitment toward more pain.

Note:

* CO2 levels go up and down annually as there is more vegetation absorbing CO2 in the northern hemisphere (thus, summer sees reduced CO2 levels compared to winter). Thus, the explaining subtext of “CO2 levels higher with every passing moment” is the concept (reality) that each day’s CO2 level is higher than what has been recorded on that calendar day over the past 70 years.

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