In 2023, the CO2 growth rate was 3.37 +/- 0.11 ppm at Mauna Loa, 86% above the previous year, and hitting a record high since observations began in 1958, while global fossil fuel CO2 emissions only increased by 0.6 +/- 0.5%. This implies an unprecedented weakening of land and ocean sinks, and raises the question of where and why this reduction happened.
Despite the incredible, unprecedented work of The Most Progressive President of Our Lifetime in the US, global carbon emissions continue to accelerate. However, in general carbon that’s introduced into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels doesn’t always just stay there; in fact, most of the time most of that carbon gets absorbed by one or another carbon sink as part of normal geosystemic processes. These sinks include getting sucked up by plants as part of photosynthesis, dissolving into the ocean to marginally raise its pH (mostly this one), or reacting with rocks on the surface to from new minerals. The upshot is that a lot of the warming potential of the fossil fuels we’ve been burning has been averted by the natural carbon cycle absorbing much of our collective waste.
This natural absorption showed an alarming drop off in 2023, even as carbon emissions continued to rise. This is very, very bad and is setting us up for warning and other climate change impacts that may happen far in advance of what our models predicted–decades instead of centuries.
please god can we start killing the people in charge of the planetary apocalypse now
Turn them into involuntary laborers for re-wilding efforts
Weeks when decades happen but for climate change is going to be horrific
I always think about what will be left of Miami if a massive hurricane hits it directly or if even a slightly weaker one just lingers over it for too long
at some point we’re gonna see a storm that defies categorization, like, so much energy from so much hot water in the Atlantic, idk how much of the coastline will be left when the Eye of Fucking Jupiter forms and swallows it
but I’m not a meteorologist
IMO its much more likely we see the total collapse of the gulf stream which is more likely to hurt Europe more than the hurricane potential of the US.
There it is again, that funny feeling
Horrible stuff to contemplate.
thanks honkies
We are really hitting that point where the carbon sinks are about to invert and start becoming source of carbon emissions, aren’t we?
Already there for the Amazon