As many of you know, the Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) in Hawaii is slated for closure by the Trump Administration. Multiple reports indicate that the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 NOAA budget includes plans to defund the MLO. This would essentially lead to the closure of the observatory. The proposal also aims to shut down other atmospheric monitoring stations and eliminate a significant portion of climate research conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In addition to being ground zero for global atmospheric CO2 measurements, it does many other things that are useful.
My friend, Forrest M. Mims III (One of the “50 best brains in science.” Discover magazine.) writes by email:
While I fully understand how the CO2 record begun there has led to the ongoing climate battle, MLO does far, far more than measure CO2. During my many stays at MLO (225 nights) I have never heard the long-time director, Darryl Kuniyuki, say a single word for, against, or about the CO2 record. He has far more responsibilities up there.
From my email to the Hilo Chamber of Commerce, which played a lead role in the establishment of MLO in the early 1950s, and which is stunned by the closure announcement:
The major factor in the closure of MLO is its pioneering role in measuring carbon dioxide since 1958 and the exaggerated publicity by climate change activists. This is unfortunate, for water vapor, not CO2, is the primary greenhouse gas. I have measured total column water vapor with instruments calibrated at MLO since 1990, and the trend is absolutely flat. (See A 30-Year Climatology (1990–2020) of Aerosol Optical Depth and Total Column Water Vapor and Ozone over Texas in: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Volume 103 Issue 1 (2022).
Moreover, MLO does far more than measure CO2. For example:
1. MLO is the ultimate site to calibrate a wide range of instruments (including mine since 1993) that measure sunlight, ozone, water vapor, aerosols and various gases. Many organizations calibrate their instruments at MLO, including the Navy Research Lab, PREDE, Solar Light, MRI, NASA, PNNL, etc.
2. MLO data is invaluable for comparison with US, European, Japanese, and Indian satellite data, which drifts over time.
3. MLO’s remote location supports emergency communications during hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other emergency events. (I know this well, for I was staying overnight at MLO when a hurricane arrived.)
4. MLO supports a wide variety of Federal and State government communications (Army, Navy, Civil Air Patrol, FAA, Hawaii Civil Defense, post office, etc.).
5. MLO provides an important site for seismometers and tiltmeters that monitor potential volcanic activity of Mauna Loa.
6. MLO’s helicopter landing zone is used for a variety of scientific studies and emergencies.
7. MLO is a base of operation to rescue hikers on Mauna Loa.
8. MLO has been used as an overnight rest site for military teams that search for and recover the remains of US military veterans lost in high-altitude airplane crashes. (I was staying there overnight when two such teams arrived.)
9. MLO is an important site for visits by scientists and students studying a wide range of topics from alpine vegetation to rare alpine fauna. (I am among the few persons to see a Hawaiian hoary bat flying upslope while I was staying at MLO.)
10. MLO has become a vitally important site for my ongoing development and calibration of twilight photometers that measure the altitude of aerosols blowing from China to the US, high-altitude water vapor above the height of weather balloons, and both meteor smoke (85-90 km) and cosmic dust (100 km and above). (My twilight research began at MLO in 2013 and was compared with the MLO lidar.)
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MLO is about science. And good science.
Unfortunately the data collected is weaponized for political purposes.
Without independent verification, the points made in this article indicate a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
I do have unanswered questions about the CO2 measurements. MLO is atop an active volcano and surrounded by oceans. It is at 11,000 feet (give or take). How representative of the whole of earth atmosphere are these measurements? So far I have only found handwaving and appeals to authority.
They likely could reduce its operating costs. I know people that travel there from Boulder to do whatever they have to do there, in addition to picking up frequent flyer and hotel points. It’s amazing how often they finish their onsite work in a day and a half but spend a few days more on “personal” time.
They only take measurements when the winds are blowing off the oceans. They don’t take them when the winds are blowing over the volcano.
When the winds are blowing in from the oceans, there are no sources of CO2 for thousands of miles upwind. Technically, no place is “representative” of the entire planet, because everyplace is different. Sometimes wildly so.
What MLO data represents, is the background level, undisturbed by urban sources.
Outgassing from the tropical ocean is the largest natural source of CO2. At 20º North, Mauna Loa is inside the tropics. There is no direction that is upwind of a CO2 source.
In other words, the ocean is a constant source and need not be discounted when relative changes are what matter.
The very active volcano Kilauea is 20 miles away.
The world’s oceans do not “outgas” CO2 as if they were a carbonated beverage in response to minor (ppm-level) changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Study and understand the Revelle factor (a buffer factor) and the Bjerrum plot of saltwater quasi-equilibrium chemistry at an average pH of around 8 (i.e., a basic solution) and average ocean water temperatures over depth.
“CO2 in Seawater: Equilibrium, Kinetics, Isotopes: Volume 65”, Richard E. Zeebe, et.al., Elsevier Science, ISBN: 0444509461, released Oct 2001, is an excellent reference for understanding this.
WHAT ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCES OF CO2?There are both natural carbon dioxide (CO2) sources and man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 sources.
NATURAL CO2 SOURCES
Natural CO2 sources account for the majority of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Oceans provide the greatest annual amount of CO2 of any natural or anthropogenic source. Other sources of natural CO2 include animal and plant respiration, decomposition of organic matter, forest fires, and emissions from volcanic eruptions. There are also naturally occurring CO2 deposits found in formation layers within the Earth’s crust that could serve as CO2 sources.
https://netl.doe.gov/carbon-management/carbon-storage/faqs/carbon-dioxide-101
I would say that generally works, but the anomaly that starts with the 1984 Mauna Loa eruption suggests bias for about 5 years.
CO2 is NOT and has never been a well mixed gas (the satellites prove that) … we could take a CO2 measurement almost anywhere and call it a baseline …
Global average of over 420ppm. The fact that there is a 3 to 5 ppm variance depending on where you are measuring, does not disprove the claim that CO2 is well mixed.
Some places it is 10 ppm variance.
That aside, NASA satellite results determined it is not well mixed.
There is also another factor, a rain forest that is down slope from the edge of the volcano and the MLO. The rain forest consumes a great deal of CO2 to skew the MLO’s reading. Depending on the way the wind is blowing, if the hourly readings are too high or too low (=>0.3ppm), due to the volcano burping CO2 or the rain forest eating it, they are thrown out. Grok estimates about 20-30% of the hourly readings are discarded. The discarded data is archived for other research.
“ I have measured total column water vapor with instruments calibrated at MLO since 1990, and the trend is absolutely flat.”
Water columns?
CO2 measurements can be made by satellites, all over the world, in real time, and more accurately
MLO is a huge anachronism, plus it suffered from mission creep.
“Column water vapor” is the total water vapor in a vertical column from the ground to the top of the atmosphere.
at 11000 ft?
While that’s above about a third of the atmosphere by weight, the tropopause is is still a long ways up. Being above local effects is probably a good thing for calibrating instruments and studying those local effects. (There’s a road up to MLO, so measurements can readily be made from seal level to 11,000 ft.)
Balloons measure CO2, temps, pressure, humidity, etc., as they go up from 0 to at least 30,000 ft, all over the world
No excuse for having MLO
And how do you calibrate those satellite measurements?
Willis Eschenbach wrote a very good description of how MLO deals with nearby volcanoes and typical mountain air currents. Your thoughts may vary.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
I was unaware of that 2010 report.
I have studied MLO and they do very good work and should continue to do very good work.
The problems always occur when politics dominates and weaponizes science.
Thank you. Much more informative than what I found on the MLO website.
Having read and digest it, I have come to the conclusion that a few factors were inadvertently omitted.
Pitcairn Island is more remote and closer to sea level for measurements. The people there would welcome a CO2 station for modest compensation.
The population of Pitcairn is about 35 people. How do you plan on maintaining a weather station?
By steamer.
Why don’t they publish data on both man made and natural CO2 emissions?
We are assured by the climate loonies that the difference is easy to detect, so why not publish both?
Yes, closing Mona Loa is not a good idea. They’re on top of a Hawaii’s highest mountain not Tom’s Restaurant in Manhattan
On edit Mauna Kea is higher
Seriously, my fellow Tejano has made a good case that the Observatory is valuable.
[I thought it had been relocated already to another Mauna, because of lava / volcanic ash but nevermind.].
Here is a list of Practical Questions:
————
Who owns it?
Who paid for it?
Who will purcha$e it from the Feds?
-The State of Hawaii
-Of California
-Scripps Institute
-The Nation of Japan (whose citizens already own 3/4 of Honolulu)
Any of a variety of billionaires (cf. the Texas Bass family building BioSphere2)
—————
Seriously, why does everything always come down to a plea to the Feds to save his Sacred Cow from a goring?
It was relocated some 200 miles away due to local volcanic activity.
The fundamental question you omitted is, how much does it cost to maintain the MLO?
Seriously, why does everything always come down to spending tax payer dollars?
It seems to me that it performs a vital service to many organizations, public and private US and non US. It’s running costs do not seem excessive. It should be able to charge for its services and pay it’s own way if not turn a profit and therefore ensure its ongoing existence independent of Government
Get the environistas out of it, simple fix.
Let them keep MLO open in exchange for getting rid of RCP 8.5 in all future modeling scenarios.
But how would they conjure up their scary scenarios without 8.5?
Just because people have misused the data, is not evidence that the date is useless.
I agree. I used MLO data to show that [CO2] lags and is integrally related to temperature. I think the data should continue to be collected.
MarkW wrote, “Just because people have misused the data, is not evidence that the dat[a] is useless.”
I agree.
Robert Cutler replied, “I used MLO data to show that [CO2] lags and is integrally related to temperature.”
That’s a great example of misusing the data to “show” nonsense.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere does increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The rise in CO2 level is not caused by a contrived, unphysical function of global temperatures.
1 ppmv CO2 = 7.8024 Gt CO2 = 2.1294 PgC. So if you release 7.8024 Gt of CO2 into the air, that immediately increases the average CO2 concentration by exactly 1 ppmv (though months might elapse before it reaches MLO & Cape Grim).
This report gives multiple proofs of the fact that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising simply because we’re adding CO2 to it:
Engelbeen F, Hannon R, Burton D (2024). The Human Contribution to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. CO2 Coalition. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/het6n
The slight warming trend since the Industrial Revolution (mid-1700s) did not cause the 145 ppmv (52%) rise in atmospheric CO2 level. With enough arbitrary parameters you can “fit an elephant,” so the fact that with three arbitrary parameters (A, B, K) you can you can nearly match the CO2 concentration curve with a contrived function of temperature is not evidence that global warming is causing the CO2 level rise. (Wet roads do not cause rainstorms, either.)
The key facts are very simple:
[1] Mankind is adding CO2 to the atmosphere (5.2 ±0.8 ppmv/year).
[2] Nature (the net sum of all natural sources & sinks) is removing CO2 from the atmosphere (2.7±0.9 ppmv/year).
[3] The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently increasing (by 2.5 ±0.1 ppmv/year) because mankind is adding CO2 faster than nature is removing it.
That also means that:
[4] If mankind were to cease adding CO2 to the atmosphere, or if our CO2 emission rate were reduced to less than the rate at which nature is removing CO2, then the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would decrease, rather than increase.
(Aside: the error bars in the figures for [1] and [2] are increased by the large uncertainties associated with “land use change emissions.” Most anthropogenic CO2 emissions are from burning fossil fuels, and they’re known with pretty good accuracy. Land use change emissions (from clearing forests and draining swamps) are typically estimated to currently be about 1/10 of fossil carbon emissions, but that estimate is very approximate.)
To understand the carbon cycle you must first understand those four facts.
One more fact, which is also very important, but which is less obvious, is this:
[5] The rate at which nature removes CO2 from the atmosphere (currently 2.7±0.9 ppmv/year) depends mostly on the atmospheric CO2 level, and in fact is an approximately linear function of the atmospheric CO2 level: it accelerates by about 1 ppmv/year for each 50 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 level. Another way of saying the same thing is that the “adjustment time” (effective atmospheric lifetime) of added CO2 is about 50 years, which makes the effective half-life of added CO2 about 35 years.
Most scientists understand [1], [2] and [3] (though a handful do not).
Fact [4] follows from [3], yet a surprising number of climate alarmists do not understand it.
The vast majority of climate alarmists do not understand [5]. In fact, the “net zero” campaign depends on confusion about [4] and [5] (among other things).
Fact [5] has been noted by many researchers, and it was even acknowledged in the IPCC’s SAR (WGI TS B.1 p.16), though they’ve failed to mention it in subsequent Assessment Reports.
So, if the CO2 level were merely 125 ppmv higher than now, net natural CO2 removal processes would be 125/50 = 2.5 ppmv/year more rapid. Since the CO2 level is rising about 2.5 ppmv/year, at the current anthropogenic emission rate the atmospheric CO2 level can only rise about 125 ppmv more before plateauing.
It also means that if we achieved “net zero” then the CO2 level would be falling, initially at 2.7±0.9 ppmv/year.
That’d be bad. Mankind would gradually lose the benefits of elevated CO2, such as global greening, improved crop yields, slightly longer growing seasons at high latitudes, and slightly milder winters.
11) Keep MLO open so as not to give the haters any unnecessary reason to claim the current administration is “anti-science.”
I am certainly in favor of keeping MLO open.
I also agree that closing MLO has terrible optics and gives massive fuel to the fire to oppose anyone that might be “anit-science”.
effectively it would all AGW science, no matter how extreme and junk science immune from criticism.
“terrible optics”
Maybe clean your glasses?
It’s a damn shame that politics took over the science community. So many once great and virtuous organizations have been destroyed or corrupted to the point of no return. The few bastions of integrity left are going to be swept up in the purge that is coming. Trillions waisted, billions of lives affected and not one damn good thing to show for any of it. This is what socialism and globalism brings, when the ends justify the means you get nothing but destruction. It’s unfortunate that some of what’s left of what was once good and virtuous is going to get swept up in the correction. Maybe next time so many “scientist” won’t sell out and destroy the golden goose that was their lives of following their dream while the rest of the world finances them in the hope of gaining knowledge that anyone can benefit from, instead they decide they are the elite and above everyone else and are deserving and entitled.
‘Politics Ruins Everything: [list]‘*
By Politics, one really means Ideology, which is the very opposite of pragmatic or experience-based thinking.
*… reads the T-shirt, seen once at sunrise in the PHX airport, deep in pandemic lockdown. I complimented the guy wearing it, and offered to add a few items to the list [Education, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Religion…] His rich-mans-hobby was to drive his race-cars on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and to teach other SLC-area women (mainly) to do the same.
If you can’t trust your doctor, who can you trust?
Ideology ruled the docs, too … sadly
You might be worth more dead than alive.
Organ harvesting comes to mind.
So how much does it cost?
Funny no one else asks that question.
How much does it cost, or more importantly, can we do the same jobs more efficiently in a distributed manner, especially now that we have very good and very inexpensive communications, computers, and sensors.
Operating in a remote area such as this is very very expensive, and more so that the nearest major city is Hilo, HI. Not that Hilo is a bad place, its a lovely place which is one of my favorite vacation spots. However the small town of Hilo is not a hub of education, manufacturing, nor especially scientific equipment such as say San Jose, California, where any esoteric scientific apparatus can be found. And if it cannot be found, it can be designed and manufactured by any of a dozen or so well equipped firms found within a few miles.
I bet, if they went out for bids to have defined job done, it would be at a tenth of the price and better
Closing the MLO observatory would be a very bad idea as there is plenty of good research ongoing there and people there are neutral in their work which is idea for any publicly financed organization.
Thanks very much to WUWT for posting my comments about Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory. I have just proposed to the Chancellor of the University of Hawaii (UH) at Hilo that UH consider taking over MLO. If the Federal government begins to disassemble or destroy any of MLO’s 100+ ongoing experiments and measurements, I have recommended that Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural DLNR) immediately cancel its grant to the land on which MLO resides and block all access to the site to persons not approved by the University of Hawaii.
Perfect. This reminds that the University of Arizona (Tucson) had taken over operations (ownership?) at the BioSphere2 (near Oracle AZ) — it was ~ 1990 US$250mn estimated construction costs — from the Texan Bass-Family investors. It runs as conference center / tourist attraction / research center, although I rather doubt that it does much to continue its original mission. [ Prepare for a self-sufficient settlement, Lunar or Martian. ]
Half those points are purely local concerns. How much is Hawaii paying for them? 3-7 at least. Some of the others are not clear.
a hurricane in the Pacific … ?
Strangely they’re called Hurricanes in the east-Pacific, until / unless they cross 180W, then the very same Cyclone is referred to as a Typhoon and given an E.-Asian renaming. Check the one connected to the Maui wildfires, even though it passed well south.
any measurement at a location that has to take into account the direction the wind is blowing is by definition improper siting …
In other words, all meteorological data is taken at improper sites. Personally, I really, really like the NW wind flow here in New Hampshire the past couple of days – and we have data that explains why.
I disagree with the comment about meteorological data collection given wind speed and direction is part of the data collected and used.
Trump: the science data has been misused, so let’s stop the science
Genuine scientists: if we stop the genuine science, the misinformation will get worse.
TDS alert
Government might be discovering now what some corporations discovered decades ago. A sensor attached to a computer attached to the internet should cost…
Put it in the basement of the new hotel.
MLO does a lot more than that just for CO2 measurements.
True, SpartaN4.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6882a9eb8cfc81918a2e44d18e7177db
I bet the administration will keep it open. They’re just saying this to jerk their chains. Trump likes to keep people on edge and keep’em guessing. It’s his style. Took me years to understand this. Now I like it- I think it’s effective.
I came to that same conclusion.
The tariffs verified my assessment.
WUWT kindly published my article “Sorry, but hard science is not done this way” on 20th April, 2022. It gives examples of cherry picking observations at Mauna Loa to satisfy local rules about volcanic CO2 contamination. I have not seen corrections adopted.
There are many weather stations now routinely measuring atmospheric CO2. Results over many years now show systematic differences between stations. For example, a South Pole station shows much smaller variation over a year than Mauna Loa does.
Because no station has an inherent signature “better” than others, the loss of any station including Mauna Loa is inconsequential. Any of several existing stations can take over. The loss of Mauna Loa would be more an emotional loss regarding the good scientists who set it up in the first place. This affects mainly a few people who have been close to the project and its people.
The lab instruments for CO2 measurements are off the shelf and their use is standard analytical chemistry. Mauna Loa has no magic other than nostalgia.
It is now common for high scientific standards to be eroded by emotional factors or beliefs, particularly in climate research where serious damage has been done to the ways that the public views science. Sorry Forrest Mims III, but you are not helpful with your emotional appeal.
Geoff S
A number of valid points and if MLO was only about CO2 I would agree, but it is not.
It is NOT true that “no station has an inherent signature ‘better’ than others.” They didn’t put MLO at an elevation of 2.1 miles (3.4 km) for the scenic view. They put it there because the site is inherently better than most others.
If you want to know about the “average” atmosphere, you need to measure far from major sources and sinks of the things you’re measuring. If you don’t do that, you get bad data (like most of the CO2 measurements which Ernst-Georg Beck famously compiled).
The south pole is also a good location, but it has other challenges, and any complaint you might have about the cost or remoteness of MLO is surely far worse at South Pole Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO).
Nor is it true that the equipment used at MLO for precise measurements of CO2 and other gases is “off the shelf” instruments for “standard analytical chemistry.” I have a CO2 meter which can tell me the CO2 level in my house or yard to within a few ppmv, but the processes used at MLO are far beyond that. ChatGPT can find you some references to learn about it:
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6882a9eb8cfc81918a2e44d18e7177db
There are certainly NOAA and NASA departments which do more politics and activism than scientific research, and serve mainly as conduits for propaganda or disinformation. Those departments should be shut down. JPL’s “Earth Science Communications Team,” and NASA’s GISS in NYC come to mind.
But MLO is not one of them, and it should not be flushed along with that dirty bathwater. They do rigorous, important scientific research there. The closure of MLO would be a real loss.
That does not mean there’re no savings to be had, though. Last year the Biden Administration’s ever wasteful Dept. of Energy allocated $5 million to help MLO “go net-zero,” by purchasing (Chinese-made) solar panels and battery storage:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/feed/department-energy-help-noaas-mauna-loa-observatory-go-net-zero
That’s idiotic.
Another example of savings to be had…
The eruption of Mauna Loa volcano cut off the road to MLO in 2022, and buried a mile of paved road under slow lava flows. But the eruption ended December 10, 2022, and the road still isn’t open.
I understand that the rocks can remain hot for months, but it has been more than 2½ years, and they apparently still haven’t even begun road reconstruction. Instead, the MLO staff are using weekly helicopter rides to reach the observatory. That seems wasteful, to me.
Dave, it seems that you did not read my WUWT article that I noted at the start.
Try here –
Sorry, But Hard Science is Not Done This Way. – Watts Up With That?
It answers most of the objections you raised. It is based upon numbers released from Mauna Loa, not numbers that I have invented or adjusted.
If I fail to understand the problems, please show me where I made a mistake.
Tip: You cannot.
Geoff S
If MOA provides valuable services and data, why can’t it be run commercially? If no one is prepared to pay for these great value products, they can’t actually be of great value. Government funding turns science into a policy-based-evidence operation like so much else.
It would be a shame to lose Atmospheric Transmission, I have found it to be highly predictive of Summer and Winter conditions for the US.
67 years of Mauna Loa CO2 measurements have marked the upward climb of CO2 alongside the ascendance of climate fiction. Up to 2024, funding agencies seemingly could not get enough ground-based measurements of CO2 – usually at remote sites, but none remotely as delightful as the Big Island, as well as CO2 measurements from space.
The space-based measurements have shown two things clearly. CO2 is not distributed as the best models predict, not even remotely, and CO2 sinks are not understood, although the ‘greening of the Earth’ has made at least one part clear. Those two results are buried beneath tons of word salad, but those are the inconvenient results of CO2 studies from orbit. It is ‘carbon weather’, not ‘carbon climate’- their label, not mine.
A single atmospheric e-folding time of a CO2 molecule has been repeatedly computed to lie between 5 and 40,000 years (MANY references). That estimate seems safe. Since the Keeling measurement began, the measured airborne fraction of emitted CO2 has remained 0.46 ± 0.05 (IPCC, 2022), even though the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 has increased from ~1 ppm/year to ~2 ppm/year since 1960, fluctuating from year to year. These are the third and fourth results: a single e-folding time for CO2 is convenient, but is a fiction, and the biosphere plus ocean are keeping up with the added CO2.
Cleverly, Net Zero 2050 enthusiasts ignore the over 50% annual CO2 removal, and assume that their mandate will remove 100% of the carbon (as CO2), starting from 36 billion tons/year in 2020, rather than the 16.5 billion tons remaining after one year in the atmosphere. In this manner, the NZ2050 goal is already half-way home. Spending $trillions on useless CCUS and renewable energy is just a sidelight. Nothing to see there!
The upshot of the above is that MLO has performed its task, as defined in the pre-space era, perhaps too well, and unless it is to become a inheritable monarchy, it is time to let something new get started.
whsmith wrote, “atmospheric e-folding time of a CO2 molecule has been repeatedly computed to lie between 5 and 40,000 years…”
There are several different kinds of “lifetimes” for atmospheric CO2, and nobody claims such a broad range for any one of those lifetimes.
Here’s the IPCC saying in 2000:
More recently, residence time estimates of 3-5 years have been typical. But the residence time (a/k/a “turnover time”) is irrelevant for climate. It is shortened by temporary removals of CO2 from the air (in which the same carbon returns to the air soon after its removal, e.g., if it is absorbed by rainwater which then evaporates), and also by exchanges of carbon between “carbon reservoirs,” neither of which change the amount of CO2 in the air.
What matters is the “adjustment time,” which you can think of as the effective lifetime of our CO2 emissions. It’s about 50 years (which makes the half-life about 35 years), and it’s determined from measurements. That approximate fifty year figure has been reported by many researchers, and it was even acknowledged in the IPCC’s SAR (WGI TS B.1 p.16), though they’ve failed to mention it in subsequent Assessment Reports.
For discussion of the four (4) commonly mentioned “lifetimes” of atmospheric CO2, see:
Burton, D. A. (2024). “Comment on Stallinga, P. (2023), Residence Time vs. Adjustment Time of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.” OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/brdq9 (and there’s supplementary material here)
whsmith wrote, “starting from 36 billion tons/year in 2020, rather than the 16.5 billion tons remaining after one year in the atmosphere”
Assuming a 50 year adjustment time, if 36 Gt of CO2 is released into the atmosphere, then one year later the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will be about 35.287 Gt greater than it would have been were it not for that release (though much of the original carbon will have been exchanged for carbon from other “carbon reservoirs,” such as the oceans). After 35 years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will still be about 18 Gt greater than it would’ve been were it not for the 36 Gt release.
If MLO is so important for the climate scam…
… surely one of the wind or solar subsidy miners can take over the expenses.
I would hope not. Too much malfeasance exists already.
I would not wish it invited into a facility that does actual science (amongst other things).