by Tanada » Sat 25 May 2019, 11:03:07
As far as I can tell that is the record week so far. This is the time of year when we typically sit at the top of the arc for three or four weeks before we start the annual decline in late June.
As for yoy, this is an El Nino year, if you remember these years are always around 1 ppmv higher than the 'normal' years because so much less cold water is driven to the ocean surface where it would absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Even so the decadal rate has been steadily rising for the last 30 years due to the massive increase in world coal and other fossil fuels consumption.
As for the world coal consumption rate, I have repeatedly warned here on the board that claims of a decline were overly optimistic. Not only is China still adding a new coal burning unit every 7 to 10 days, India is on a massive building program of their own and most of the rest of the world population in Asia, Africa and South America that were left behind technologically are working hard to catch up. After all, what point buying a smart phone if there is no electricity to keep it charged and no cell tower or computer servers for it to contact? Every large city that does not already have a fully electrified culture is busting its chops to build one. A lot of those Chinese engineers who were building power plants at a rate of one every 3.5 days a few years ago are now working in other countries because the Chinese no longer need as high of a construction rate. IOW the Chinese are still building 2 coal burning plants a week, but now they are building them all over the nominally called 'third world' instead of all of them being in China itself.
For some examples, Turkey has doubled its coal consumption in the last 20 years. Mexico has doubled its coal consumption in the last 20 years. Peru has Tripled its coal consumption in the last 20 years. China has increased its coal consumption 2.5 times in the last 20 years. India has doubled its coal consumption in the last 20 years. Indonesia has tripled its domestic use and quadrupled its exports of coal over the last 20 years.
None of these figures are in dispute, you can find them on the EIA, BP, or IEA websites. I did have to do a little math to divide the most recent figures by figures around 20 years ago, but if you passed 6th grade you can handle that level of effort.
What frequently seems to happen is people focus on Western Europe/northern North America and point out that coal consumption has decreased somewhat while totally ignoring the other 6/7ths of the world population. This European/European descended focus is both short sighted in the extreme, it is unjust as if people outside of the lilly white population do not count in terms of desires or climate impacts. You could get away with that in 1960 when only Japan outside of Europe and North America was broadly technologically advanced. But this is 2019, putting 1960 attitudes over half a century out of date with reality.
I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.