Highest CO2 emissions bring hottest years.

The CO2 mean levels are in for 2005 at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, and they are, well, mean. 2005 saw the third largest increase in the Annual CO2 Mean Growth Rate since records began in 1959. The year's rate of increase was 2.53 parts per million (ppm) of CO2, and the only larger increases were in 1998 (2.95 ppm), and 2002 (2.55 ppm).

All too close, in years, for comfort.

Doesn't 2005 also have the distinction of being the hottest year yet? And wasn't 1998 the second hottest? I wrote a few posts about the rising mercury last year. Atmospheric CO2 levels and global mean temperature seem so obviously linked but I would like to see a graph comparing the two over a few decades. It seems James Hansen, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director has recently made the correlation.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations. The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to
discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

Unmistakably strong wording. Must be why that Bushite 24 year old punk allegedly tried to censor Hansen. Good on him for staying true to science. The NASA report has more:

Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.

It is time to act. To live a life that aims at achieving carbon neutrality. To teach our kids about how this planet works, and to either hand the planet on to them in a better shape than it is now, or hand our kids on to the planet having taught them a better attitude to long-term survival than we have now.

More links: NOAA ESRL: Recent Global Monthly Mean CO2

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