Another DOGE/Trump Casualty: Crucial Carbon Dioxide Monitoring At Hawaii Site

This is the record dating back 67 years of atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, as
measured on Mauna Loa, Hawaii.  Trump and his
Musk/DOGE crowd apparently want to end these decades-
long observations. The excuse is saving money, but
likely just as much climate denial.

 Another likely casualty of Trump and the DOGE morons: A historic, closely watched, important constant measurement of global atmosphere carbon dioxide could be about to go by the wayside. 

Elon Musk and his DOGE minions want to shut down the more than six decade long science experiment  conducted on a Hawaii volcano.  

Per USA Today:

"Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is considering terminating the lease of a tiny office that supports a huge climate science experiment - one that's been ongoing for 67 years." 

Only eight people work at the office, Suite 102 at the Kilauea Financial Plaza in Hilo.  Once a week or so, one of the employees takes a quick helicopter ride up to a spot 11,135 feet above sea level on a high slope of the Mauna Loa volcano.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, but this is.  The scientists  do several observations of the atmosphere, and one of these regular observations is one of the most precise and long running, and most watched climate experiments in the world. 

The scientists have been tracking carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 60 years. This long-running experiment provided the first significant, concrete evidence that the earth' CO2 levels were steadily rising, as USA Today reported.

The Mauna Loa site is perfect for these measurements, as NOAA tells us: "The observatory protrudes through the strong marine temperature inversion layer present in the region, which separate the more polluted lower portions of the atmosphere from the much cleaner free troposphere. 

"The undisturbed air, remote location, and minimal influence of vegetation and human activity at MLO are ideal for monitoring constituents in the atmosphere that can cause climate change."

The DOGE people say closing the Hilo facility would save $164,000 or so. That's not much given the size of the overall federal budget.  My conspiratorial mind wants to think it's because climate change i central to the Mauna Loa site, and we all know how Trump hates it when somebody dares to say climate change is an actual thing. 

I'm not the only one thinking this way. In it's journalistic way, the Washington Post beat around the bush a little but you'll get the point in this excerpt from their article:

"Data collected from the observatory have shown global carbon dioxide levels - the most significant driver behind record planetary warming - are rising faster than ever recorded. Trump has been dismissive of that data and the consensus around climate change and his allies who wrote the policy playbook Project 2025 proposed dismantling NOAA, calling it a source of climate alarmism." 

Climate scientist Michael Mann, posted his reaction to all this on Bluesky was, as usual, more blunt.   "See no climate change, hear no climate change, and speak no climate change."

As usual, the Trump/DOGE crowd don't seem to be coordinating things or understanding what is going on. 

If the Hilo office closes, the Mauna Loa observatory would still be there, but with the office gone and the staff fired, if Musk gets his way, there will be nobody to do the actual work up there. 

There's another testing site on Mauna Kea, another volcano nearby, but again, that site needs NOAA staff to maintain the equipment. 

Not only is the climate data from Mauna Loa valuable, and a resource we might be about to lose, but the move to shut this all down gets rid of history, too.

Back in 1958, scientist Charles David Keeling began the measurements in 1958.  His measurements made two important discoveries. He was the first person to record Earth's breathing  - a regular rhythm of peaks and valleys in carbon dioxide concentrations.  

This proved that seasonally, plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they're growing, and release it back when the growing season is over and the plants died.

Even more importantly, he was the first to prove that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were rising due to fossil fuel emissions. This discovery really laid the foundation to the detailed climate change science we have today. 

Before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at around 280 parts per million. When Keeling first started measuring in 1958, it was up to 313 parts per million. Now, we're up to 427 parts per million and still going up. 

That amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sounds like a trifle to the untrained eye. But the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was about 3 million years ago. At that time, sea levels were as much as 30 feet higher than they are now, and camel-like animals roamed the forested high Arctic, which is nowadays covered in ice.  

That's part of the future we face at least someday due to our sky-high emissions of fossil fuels over the past 150 years or so. 

Mauna Loa Eruption Shuts Down Key Climate Monitoring Site

The Mauna Loa Observatory, the world's premier site for
measuring carbon in the atmosphere, has been shut
down by the volcano's eruption. 

 You might have heard that the big Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is erupting for the first time in 38 years.  

One big problem this eruption has caused is it has temporarily shut down the worlds premier atmospheric carbon monitoring site. 

As Yahoo News reports:

"The Hawaiian station goes back to 1958 and is the main site for the famous Keeling Curve that shows rising carbon dioxide levels from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that tracks with rising temperatures. Levels of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa have increased 33 percent since 1958."

The monitoring station is at an elevation of 11,300 feet and has a 131-foot tower that collects air to measure levels of carbon dioxide, radiation and other substances, reports Yahoo News. 

The lava flows are not threatening the actual monitoring station, but the eruption cut power lines further down the mountain. Also, lava crossed the road leading to the observatory. 

The world has something like 300 carbon monitoring stations, so measurements will continue. But Mauna Loa is regarded as the most accurate and cleanest. That's because there's no big population centers nearby. There's not much vegetation around, either. 

And the elevation is so high that it really helps grab a good sample of the atmosphere. It's too high up to contaminate measurements with day to day pollution from cars, houses, factories and such. 

 I'm seeing conflicting reports about whether this is the first time the volcano has screwed up carbon measuring on Mauna Loa. Another Mauna Loa eruption in 1984 halted measurements for 36 days, but that time away was short enough so that it didn't really mess up records, says Yahoo News. But Hawaii News Now says this is the first time in 60 years or more that measurements were interrupted.

The Keeling Curve is named after Charles David Keeling, who in 1958 started taking carbon dioxide measurements atop Mauna Loa.  The Keeling Curve demonstrates the carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere are currently higher than they've been in 3 million years. 

His son, Ralph Keeling, told Axios that scientists are scrambling to find a similar location to Mauna Loa to take CO2 readings, at least on a temporary basis. 

"In the long run, but I don't know how long, the station will be up again. So the record will continue as before, and we'll have some kind of gap where the data is slightly different or missing," Keeling said. 

Incidentally, some very large volcanic eruptions can temporarily change the climate. Tambora, in 1815, caused a world-wide chill down, leading to New England's "Year Without A Summer" in 1816.

To a lesser extent, Pinatubo in 1991  cooled the world by 1 degree Fahrenheit for a year or two after its eruption.  That almost, briefly wiped out all the heating from climate change at that point in history. 

Most volcanoes, when they do affect the Earth's climate, cool it. But last January's massive Tonga eruption might have the opposite effect. It injected lots of water into the dry stratosphere, which might temporarily accelerate global warming for the next couple of years or so. 

Mauna Loa's eruption is producing lots of lava, but smoke and ash are not rising particularly high in the atmosphere, so this event won't affect the world's climate in any measurable way.