Increase In Carbon Dioxide Levels Reached A Record High In 2024 – CleanTechnica

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Actor Robert Downey, Jr. once told a judge who was about to sentence him on a drug charge there was little the court could do to make him to stop his abusive behavior. “It’s like I’ve got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal,” he said. It’s not a stretch to say human beings have a similar love affair with the fossil fuels which create the carbon dioxide emissions causing the Earth to overheat to the point where human civilization itself is threatened.

According to Yale Environment 360, carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before, putting hopes of limiting warming in jeopardy. The proof of the pudding is the data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai’i, which has been tracking the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the past 60 years. Last year saw the biggest one-year increase ever recorded with carbon dioxide levels — measured in parts per million — rising by 3.58 ppm. That figure exceeds the most pessimistic predictions of the UK Met Office, which says that even record high emissions from fossil fuels cannot fully explain the surge in carbon dioxide.

UK scientists note that increasingly severe heat and drought mean that trees and grasses are drawing down less carbon dioxide than in the past, while desiccated soils are also releasing more carbon back into the atmosphere. Conditions were particularly poor last year owing to a very warm El Niño, which happens when warm waters pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean. That concentration of heat contributed to the hotter, drier weather across much of the tropics and was likely a contributing factor in the horrific wildfires in Los Angeles, California this month. The El Niño period ended this past summer, which allowed the Pacific Ocean to settle into its cooler La Niña phase. That should allow vegetation to absorb more carbon according to UK scientists, who forecast a smaller jump in carbon dioxide levels in the coming year.

Carbon Dioxide & The Hottest Year On Record

This month, NASA, NOAA, and European weather officials all concluded that last year was the hottest on record, finding that 2024 measured roughly 1.5 degrees C warmer than the pre-industrial era. While the world has not yet officially breached the 1.5 degree Celsius target laid out in the Paris Agreement, which will be judged according to the average temperature over several years, the new figures mean that goal is almost certainly out of reach.

“Countries have agreed to the 1.5 degree global warming limit not out of convenience but out of necessity to limit harm and suffering of people,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “Even if we are on track to surpass 1.5 degrees, these reasons don’t change, and only make a stronger case for focused action on reducing greenhouse gas pollution.”

If a crazed psychopath was holding a knife to your child’s throat, you would do everything in your power to prevent injury to him or her. You would sacrifice your own life to save that of the child. Global heating is like that knife, except we treat it like a cosmic joke. We laugh about it and elect leaders who will increase the pressure of the blade by ramping up the extraction, production, and consumption of fossil fuels.

We continue to buy cars from Toyota, even though it engages in climate disinformation campaigns that shame it. We continue to buy water and soft drinks in single use plastic bottles because we can’t be bothered to carry a reusable water bottle. We continue to buy cars and trucks that spew untold amounts of crud out their tailpipes. In essence, we are like Thelma and Louise, driving over the cliff and being thrilled by the prospect of a crash landing. Are we really any different than Robert Downey, Jr, except that our drugs of choice are oil, methane, and coal?

What will it take to break through the wall of ignorance and indifference we have erected around us? Clearly we won’t lift a finger to rescue our planet from being degraded by the effluent of our consumer driven society. Appeals to reason fall on deaf ears. Words from scientists are dismissed as self-serving blithering from people looking to cash in on research grant money.

Images of stranded polar bears, disappearing sea ice, and melting ice caps are dismissed as “woke” claptrap. People migrating from places that no longer support human existence are labeled as rapists and murderers who want to eat our pets and steal our jobs. Hysteria is the order of the day. Rational thought and reasonable discussion are dismissed as evidence of weakness and moral decay. We have reached a “hold my beer” moment where we are prepared to throw everything good about human culture away in exchange for “winning,” whatever that means.

What will we have we won if we destroy the only home we will ever know? We are like passengers on a sinking ship drilling holes in the hull to let the seawater in faster. Rational arguments are so yesterday; all we have left are emotional appeals that ignore science, fact, or actual thinking. We don’t need artificial intelligence that will help the emperors and oligarchs identify those who dare resist them more easily; we need more actual intelligence to identify the risk we all face and develop rational strategies to reduce those risks. Then we need to implement those strategies while there is still time.

Thoughts From Carl Sagan

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to recall the words of Carl Sagan, the noted astronomer and planetary scientist. He had some thoughts about Earth and the human race that are pertinent to this discussion.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

There are those who believe whatever is going on the environment is influenced by natural rhythms or solar flares, and of course they are right. Those things are contributing factors. But the BIGGEST factor is burning fossil fuels. If we continue to do so at the same pace we are doing so today, we will consign our species to extinction. The environment can tolerate a certain amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere but there are tipping points beyond which things become unstable to the point where humans can no longer thrive on Earth.

We are at that point now, and accelerating our use of fossil fuels rather than reducing it. We are placing the barrel of the shotgun in our own mouths and bragging about how good it feels. Our epitaph, after we pull the trigger, will be, “They did it because it was more convenient than not doing it.” What a waste, to throw away a perfectly good planet for the sake of convenience.