… which records and publishes CO 2 atmospheric data.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg

James Hansen, " If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that."

...but he didn't. Hansen has had the courage to say unpopular things that are today somewhat less unpopular than they used to be but still rankle some of our simultaneously overly imaginative and under imaginative people paying lip service to climate issues.

McKibben, by contrast, being a journalist and as such, not being big on scientific knowledge, has simply chanted the same things over and over while the world burns, being unwilling to risk his popularity.

I'm not a McKibben fan. I don't believe he ever saw a wilderness that he didn't think should be an industrial park.

James Hansen is certainly one of the most publicly recognized climate scientists, justly so, as well an important expositor of intergenerational ethics. He is unafraid of this role, clearly.

I am often thus less than amused to see Hansen worship that does not extend to an understanding of his views.

(seriously, though, this is REAL, ACTUAL, IMPORTANT news ... unlike some other things ...)

Annual fluctuation in CO2 follow a sinusoidal pattern. They maximize at the beginning of spring and then begin to decrease as plants become active and convert more CO2 into glucose during photosynthesis. The trough of the curve generally occurs in fall around September when many plants in northern hemisphere become dormant.

The long-term trend is that sinusoidal curve is going up every year. So the slope of the line through May each year show much more CO2 is in the atmosphere which will lead to more global warming as a greenhouse gas.

That's the simple explanation.

So, six ppm from May 2023 to May 2025 means 12 billion tons and change more CO2 in the air in two years.

When Charlie Keeling began direct observation of trace gases like CO2 in 1958, we were at 315 ppm, though large-scale increases in atmospheric CO2 through human activities really got going back in the 19th century.

The last time there was this much CO2, the seas were 75' higher, spruce and pine forests grew at the North Pole, alligators swam in the Midwest, and even Antarctica had expanses of shrub/grass tundra where glaciers exist today.

MAGAts will go back to rolling coal in their big diesel trucks. Return to office mandates are great for traffic and air pollution.

Global warming will help warm us up in winter.

But seriously, MAGAts want arctic ice to melt faster so they can use the shipping lanes.

Oil companies love it when people use more oil.

It's "only" 3.61 ppm higher than the average for May 2024.

It's not as bad as May 2016, which was 3.76 ppm higher (407.70 ppm) than the average for May of 2015 (403.26 ppm).

Ain't nothing that a few hyped hydrogen stations in China couldn't fix, is it?