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Earth

The Earth's CO2 Levels Are Increasing Faster Than Ever (msn.com) 168

"Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren't just on their way to yet another record high this year," reports the Washington Post.

"They're rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations." Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. And from January through April, CO2 concentrations increased faster than they have in the first four months of any other year...

For decades, CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa in the month of May have broken previous records. But the recent acceleration in atmospheric CO2, surpassing a record-setting increase observed in 2016, is perhaps a more ominous signal of failing efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they cause to Earth's climate. "Not only is CO2 still rising in the atmosphere — it's increasing faster and faster," said Arlyn Andrews, a climate scientist at NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. A historically strong El Niño climate pattern that developed last year is a big reason for the spike. But the weather pattern only punctuated an existing trend in which global carbon emissions are rising even as U.S. emissions have declined and the growth in global emissions has slowed. The spike is "not surprising," said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at Scripps Institution, "because we're also burning more fossil fuel than ever...."

El Niño-linked droughts in tropical areas including Indonesia and northern South America mean less carbon storage within plants, Keeling said. Land-based ecosystems around the world tend to give off more carbon dioxide during El Niño because of the changes in precipitation and temperature the weather pattern brings, Andrews added. And for CO2 concentrations to fall back below 400 parts per million, it would take more than two centuries even if emissions dropped close to zero by the end of this century, she added.

This year's reading "is more than 50 percent above preindustrial levels and the highest in at least 4.3 million years, according to NOAA."
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The Earth's CO2 Levels Are Increasing Faster Than Ever

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  • a worthy dupe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @09:43AM (#64464831) Homepage Journal

    Nuclear - this is what we need, it doesn't emit CO2 and it works around the clock and provides massive amounts of energy and it doesn't degrade the way solar does and it can be easily controlled and the waste is stable and becomes more and more stable over time, unlike what the detractors tell us. This is what we need, it's not what we are getting obviously.

    I think there are a few stories that should be posted every day, over and over again, there are answers to these stories that should be posted over and over again, the only thing that works with people is constant repetition, you can even teach people to sympathize with terrorists, like the idiots who chant for palestine and hamas, I am always amused by women on campuses and the non binary individuals, homosexuals and trans people who rally for Islamic causes, I wish them to get what they are chanting for, I just want to be there when the Islam does to them what it is supposed to do to them.

    So we can teach people to be anything, any ridiculous thing at all on Tik Tok and such, this means that it is a failure of the thinking community that there are so many ignoramuses out there preventing the obvious solutions to the most pressing problems. We have to use nuclear instead of coal, gas, oil. We have to stop terrorism, which means supporting Israel and Ukraine. We have to deal with the failing economies by shrinking down government spending and allowing people to work for living instead of relying on government hand outs. Those are clearly unpopular opinions, they are fortunately or unfortunately the correct ones.

    • Re:a worthy dupe (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @11:17AM (#64465017) Homepage Journal

      (There's a lot to unpack in your post. I'm going to ignore the less valuable parts)

      Nuclear - this is what we need, it doesn't emit CO2 and it works around the clock and provides massive amounts of energy and it doesn't degrade the way solar does [...]

      Acting on that assumes people are ready to build out nuclear power today. The public hasn't bought into nuclear power yet, and might always be afraid of it. Some nations like China are likely to mobilize toward nuclear power as they shutter coal and gas.

      The United States is culturally able to accept nuclear power in their back yard, not counting the handful of affluent people who won't even tolerate windmills or overpasses in view of their property. But the construction industry in the US isn't capable of building plants on budget, on time, nor to multiple reactors at once.

      Europe doesn't make as big of a slice of the CO2 output as the US, China, and India, and while they have the technology and some of the construction capacity, it seems a lot of Europeans don't want nuclear power plants in their neighborhood. I could be wrong, and maybe some of them have changed their tune recently?

      Nuclear power plants do required more maintenance than a photovoltaic solar system. And reactors are shut down on a regular schedule, meaning you do get 0 output from them during that period. So you generally want to have multiple reactors at a site. Solar can be hot swapped for maintenance, individual panels can be removed from an installation and replaced with new ones. And panels can be refurbished and used in the same installation or sold in a different market.

      Some ways to even out solar would be to setup an installation ladder, where you add new panels every year and when the oldest panels have reached the end of their useful service life you replace them in batches every year with technology that is 10 years newer. There are lots of disadvantages to solar, but it initial cost is cheap and you can make use of unused urban areas to install rooftop solar.

      Ignoring the limited amount of rooftop solar, Nuclear power still wins at using the least amount of area for the most power produced. I don't mind having both technologies in place when it makes sense. For example, a grocery store can run their day time lights 100% on solar. And some hospitals report that they cut their power bill by a third or more with solar. Saving money seems like a good reasons to go "green".

      you can even teach people to sympathize with terrorists, like the idiots who chant for palestine and hamas,

      I sympathize with children, who are in the middle of this through no fault of their own, and the parents who have lost children in a senseless war. But I condemn the use of violence against civilians for political ends (terrorism), such as kidnapping civilians and holding them for months in order to extort Israeli. Is that too nuanced? I hope not.

      there are so many ignoramuses

      If, for example, I am an ignoramus. Is there any way for me to know? Maybe I'm too stupid to know how stupid I am. The question is an example the Dunning–Kruger effect. Scary thing is I'm registered to vote. Imagine a millions of idiots going to the ballot box armed with whatever trash they heard on the Internet?

      • Re:a worthy dupe (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @01:54PM (#64465291) Homepage Journal

        Europe doesn't have an issue with people not wanting nuclear near them. It's two other things.

        The first is cost. It's astronomical here, and there are cheaper options. Also takes 20 years to build, so it needs multiple governments to back it financially. It can't be built privately, only governments can finance it due to the high cost.

        The second is that in some countries there is strong anti nuclear sentiment in general, particularly Germany. They don't have or want nuclear weapons either so have a choice over civilian nuclear power too.

        • UAE figured out how to build nuclear power plants on time and on budget. Are you telling me that Germany can't figure this out? I suspect that they can, they just don't yet have the political will. If they had been unable to get copious amounts of LNG shipped in from USA and Canada then I'd expect their attitudes on nuclear power would have changed very quickly. As it is now it may take another shift in energy supplies to shake some sanity into them.

          UAE didn't take 20 years to build their nuclear power

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            UAE uses slave labour and has a terrible safety record.

            • No troll, there are no slaves in the UAE.
              • It's a controversial topic [humanrightsresearch.org]. The poster isn't just making it up for the LuLz. Just because you disagree with it doesn't mean he's trolling you.

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                The UAE is widely accepted (in the West) as using modern slavery. The victims are paid (a very small amount), but the conditions are set up to make them indentured servants. Not enough money to move out of the dormitories, which they have to pay to use. Instant arrest and deportation if they resign or even try to find better work. Poor conditions and zero rights, with no enforcement of any laws that would protect them.

                It's been an issue with events held in the UAE. The facilities are all built with slave la

          • The nuclear power plants in Slovakia were originally designed and built by Rosatom, but left unfinished when the USSR fell apart. These stations were eventually completed by Siemens, so Germany knows very well how to build nuclear plants.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      >Nuclear - this is what we need, it doesn't emit CO2 and it works around the clock and provides massive amounts of energy and it doesn't degrade the way solar does and it can be easily controlled

      Nuclear power isn't great for variable output, though it's awesome for base load. It can be the majority of your solution, but it can't be your sole solution. You have to worry about providing power to the reactor for cooling for weeks after a shutdown, so as we've seen in Ukraine... anywhere you have a neighbo

      • That is a overlapping problem with renewable though and the solution is the same, keep building more storage. Nuclear reactors can vary their output, they are just slow at it having to do it over big gradual shifts.

        Have enough buffer in the grid and ability to vary your other sources and it can managed. Also pretty good idea to build energy intensive process right next to the plants which can use up the excess power. Waste incineration, fuel synthesis, desalination, even just compute projects. Extra e

        • Nuclear's problems have always been the technical details. Specifically, every single plant is basically a one off. They're trying to modularize, but it's too little too late unfortunately.

          And of course having to wildly over engineer them because failure simply isn't an option. Cost / benefit has never made sense for nuclear on the large scale. Far too much of the cost isn't included in the price.
          • I would argue the lack of standardization is also a political issue. Standards have to be enforced usually, it's what France generally does with their reactors and Canada did as well the with the CANDU reactors.

            There is not a technical reason not to standardize but putting private companies in competition isn't going to generally lead to a sharing of knowledge or plans by itself. At the bare minimum the US needs a "reference design" that is open to people wanting to build plants. That can also help the r

            • It's just missed it's time mostly. It's useful currently for a specific reason - CO2 and climate change. It's downsides are *significant* and when viable alternatives scale up, it's just not going to be worth it except in those niche environs where factors align. Like a polar base or somewhere similarly lacking in renewable scale. Even then, renewable generated hydrogen as a portable fuel could just as easily replace the diesel currently used.

              And frankly, in limited cases like that even oil based d
              • Yeah for sure agree there, we are behind the 8 ball but with nuclear power i often think of various versions of "the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is today"

                Also I am big on it not just because of climate but just the fact that I really love the idea of a future with electricity "too cheap to meter" as it were, i don't just want to replace our existing fossil fuel based power needs, I want to exceed them, by a lot. So much energy things like hydrogen cracking becomes pretty v

                • I don't see fission nuclear going from most expensive to "to cheap to meter". Fusion nuclear, perhaps, I think the same issues of "has to be so safe it can't be allowed to fail" over engineering work against that.

                  Renewables though, I really think can. The reasoning, is there literally is no fuel cost. The number that really sold me was 8000:1. That's the amount of solar energy that hits the earth each year compared how much energy all of the planet currently uses.

                  in a single hour, more energy i
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Got any more extreme lies to pack into that? Essentially nothing you said is true.

    • 'the waste is stable'. LOL Yes, radiation decay is quite predictable and stable. Safe on the other hand is a different thing.

      Fission Nuclear is absolutely needed for the next couple decades because it's CO2 climate change benefits outstrip its *numerous* problems.

      It is, hands down, the most expensive method of power generation we have - and that doesn't even include the cost of storing that 'stable' waste for, checks notes, longer than modern society has existed.

      The epitome of hubris to think th
    • Nuclear - this is what we need

      It might be what we need but it's not at the price tag a private nuclear industry can afford. There's is only one option that can ever make nuclear an option in the United States and that is a fully controlled government ran and funded state program. Not when we can literally build 38 x 1 GWh solar installs for the cost of a single 1 GWh electrical nuclear plant. And right now, solar is still not completely refined, it's still has massive room for increasing effectiveness and driving costs down. It woul

  • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @09:46AM (#64464837) Homepage

    Didn't we see this story yesterday?

    Yes, carbon dioxide ppm is the highest ever measured. No, that's not news: it's a rising curve. Every year is a record high. We're adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere faster than it's being removed.

    This year's rise over last year's high was slightly greater increase than usual, but the difference is well within the noise.

  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @09:49AM (#64464839)
    Is the increasing derivative consistent with climate models or is it a surprise? "Climate is doing what we predicted" isn't all that interesting, its not surprising. "Climate is doing something worse than the models predict" is concerning not just because its bad but because it means the models are wrong
    • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @10:13AM (#64464881) Homepage

      Is the increasing derivative consistent with climate models or is it a surprise?

      The increasing derivative is well within the meaurement error, but in any case, real or not, it has nothing to do with climate models. Carbon dioxide concentration is an input to the climate models, not an output.

      Data for the most recent year is here: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluem... [ucsd.edu] and the full record since measurements began is here: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluem... [ucsd.edu]

      • I don't think its that simple. CO2 is absorbed or desorbed from the oceans, and metabolized by plants. The human generated CO2 is an input to the models, but I assume the lifetime of the CO2 in the atmosphere and the exchange with sinks like the ocean is in the model as well. The total amount of CO2 dissolved in the world's oceans is larger than the known fossil fuel reserves. Of course that concentration doesn't change much but the rate at which it reaches some equilibrium with the atmospheric concent
        • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Of course that concentration doesn't change much but the rate at which it reaches some equilibrium with the atmospheric concentration should matter.

          It changes [iaea.org].

        • I don't think its that simple. CO2 is absorbed or desorbed from the oceans, and metabolized by plants. The human generated CO2 is an input to the models,

          Yes, and is the vastly most important part of the input of CO2 into the atmosphere.

          Really. The rise in CO2 concentration isn't an output of climate models. This is input to the model.

    • Climate models model the climate and its reaction to external forcings. CO2 emissions are a human input into the climate system, not an inherent property of it. To create forecasts, we use representative concentration pathways, but these are not outcomes of the models, but inputs to it. They cover a wide range, but I suspect we are close to RCP7 or RCP8.5.
    • Most models underestimate the warming, because the climate scientists assume humanity will decrease or hold constant CO2 emissions. In fact, humanity has in increased fossil fuels consumption year over year for decades.

      The allure of cheap energy is strong.

      • Most models underestimate the warming,

        Really? What makes you believe this? It appears to me that the models have been over estimating the warming because there's been many very widely published predictions of far more warming than we've actually seen in the last 50 years. How many times has a date been predicted for some major city to be underwater, that date passes, and not seeing any city underwater?

        because the climate scientists assume humanity will decrease or hold constant CO2 emissions.

        It appears to me that the models will have three lines, a "best case", a "worst case", and a line in the middle on if nothing changes. Could

        • rising costs of renewable energy.

          uh, good news? this is patently false? renewables are getting cheaper literally every year. linky [nrel.gov]

          It's cheaper to build an entirely 'new' solar plant than to just operate an existing coal plant.

        • Solar PV is cheaper at producing electricity not energy. For heating, mostly gas is cheaper. It is also dispatchable. So, solar power has only displaced gas for heating in a few places -- many of the Greek islands use Solar systems for water heating, especially in the holiday sector where the chief disadvantage of solar (winter) doesn't really matter.

          Gas also has other advantages -- it's easier to move around for example on roads or water, at least till you have a functional grid.

          It will be several years be

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Human CO2 emissions are an input to the models. Some scenarios may underestimate warming due to underestimating CO2 emissions, while others (may) overestimate it. That's why, for example, the IPCC considers a bunch of scenarios.

        None of the common scenarios assume we'll hold CO2 emissions constant. Most of them assume we'll continue to increase for a while, then start reducing emissions, and they consider different timelines for that happening.

      • Most models definitely overestimate the warning.
        This is a concern, because if they start to become right because of some unaccounted for variable moving- we're really fucked.
        Right now, CO2 sensitivity is lower than most models think. This is scary. It can mean there's an unaccounted for sink. That sink may not have infinite capacity.
        It may release its carbon atmospherically when it fails.

        Being on the low side of most models is not a comfort.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It's an exponential, and a remarkably consistent one:

      https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/tren... [noaa.gov]

      • That graph is fucking horrifying.
        Just eyeballing, it appears to have about a 20 year doubling time. Maybe a little less.
  • Without AI (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Saturday May 11, 2024 @10:27AM (#64464905) Homepage

    I remember seeing, AI is sucking up all new power, forcing utilities to keep fossil fuel plants on-line. If not for AI, I think I read we would be on our way to removing fossil fuel for electricity.

    So I guess +2.5C and probably +3.0C here we come :(

    • AI isn't a significant slice of our society's energy usage. AI, data centers, etc are bundled with the commercial sector when it comes to US DOE statistics. And Industry and Transportation and Residential all use more than the Commercial sector. [eia.gov]

      So I have to ask. Is your complaint about "AI sucking up new power" based on some data, or is it an assumption on your part? And is there information showing that this forces utilities to keep fossil fuel plants online?

      • by skam240 ( 789197 )

        AI data centers are power hungry the same way giant bit coining mining operations are. Crypto currency mining could be using as much as 2.3% of all the electricity generated in the US https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov], give AI some time to catch up.

        • That assumes you are training AI continuously. Which isn't the case in a production system, where you are doing mainly inference. And the development clusters are much much smaller and run for short duration. So no, cryptomining and AI are not comparable. It's like trying to argue that streaming Netflix is equivalent to mining bitcoin.

    • AI does useful things and improves a lot each year. It is not frivolous. Your argument rings very similar to those people who complain rockets waste money and generate CO2. BTW do you own a pet? https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
    • I remember seeing, AI is sucking up all new power, forcing utilities to keep fossil fuel plants on-line. If not for AI, I think I read we would be on our way to removing fossil fuel for electricity.

      So I guess +2.5C and probably +3.0C here we come :(

      Well, if it makes you feel any worse, that power was likely sucked from former $hitcoin-mining operations. We may have been well on our way before AI even learned how to brain-fart.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      So I guess +2.5C and probably +3.0C here we come :(

      Unless we act decisively in the next few years, it will be a lot more. Do you see anybody about to act decisively? Because I do not.

    • What I like about AI is that the vast majority of it is being used to prep for replacing people's jobs. When I think about the thought of a bunch of computer systems taking the job I need to live while also taking the electricity I need to function as a human being in a modern society there's a smoldering pit of anger in me.

      I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen as these llms cause increasingly large numbers of layoffs. I know there's a bunch of old farts here on slash dot that don't believe that
  • There is a big upside to this. Plants do better, higher crop yields *and* less water required! This is huge.

    Downside--rich snobs beach property is washed away. Poor people in poor countries move to higher ground. Skiing not so good. Climate Nazi's scream "I told you so!", and most people don't care.

    • Concise and utter bollocks. I truly hope you troll for a living.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Plants do better

      Not always. Plant growth is constrained by a lack of any one of a number of critical nutrients. So you can give them all the CO2 you want and it may not help.

      For one thing, we are going to have to increase the supply of atmospheric NOx which plants can use. So far, the primary source of this is lightning. But we may be able to engineer some other processes.

  • And now we have data going back millions of years... Sure thing.

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