Reposted with permission from Bizpacreview
Proponents of the Green New Deal (GND) tell us that increasing human carbon dioxide emissions are fueling a dangerous rise in worldwide temperature. This temperature rise is then linked to a laundry list of climate-related catastrophes like droughts, floods and fires that are ongoing and only going to get worse unless drastic measures are taken.
Their solution? Force consumers and industries away from the consumption of the fossil fuels and toward carbon-free energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal. Glaringly missing from most of these green proposals is an embrace of the only non-fossil fuels that could provide abundant and reliable energy – nuclear and hydro-electric projects (but that is a story for a different day).
All the Democratic candidates, including the last man standing – Joe Biden, embraced some version of the GND, only differing in whose proposals would deindustrialize the United States the fastest. Make no mistake, a deindustrialization of America would be the result of moving our economy away from the affordable, abundant and reliable energy derived from the fossil fuels that power the country.
The overarching goal of the GND and the Paris climate accord is to lower atmospheric greenhouse gas by halting these emissions across all sectors of the global economy. With the economic collapse induced by COVID-19 stay-at home orders across much of the globe, we have been conducting a painful experiment that closely resembles the massive reductions envisioned by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the many aligned green advocacy groups.
No hard data is yet available on exact numbers of the recent emission reductions, but the reduction will likely be significant from decreased oil demand, air travel and industrial activity. Reductions in CO2 emissions from China have been estimated to be as much as 25% lower in the last month.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the primary sources of greenhouse gas in the United States are transportation (29%), electricity generation (28%) and industry (22%). Of these three sectors, electricity generation is likely to be least affected by the shutdown, as more people are staying home and increasing the residential load by cooking, watching Net Flicks and the like, partially offsetting the decline in industrial demand. Demand is down across the New York Control Area only 2% to 18%, while some countries in the EU like Spain, Ireland and France are reporting slight increases in electric demand.
Meanwhile, both the transportation and industrial sectors will likely exhibit quite substantial reductions in CO2 emissions. Nearly all non-essential travel has been curtailed and many industrial activities have been reduced. The result has been an unprecedented worldwide lab experiment on how shutting down global CO2 emissions would impact atmospheric concentrations and how quickly.
One would surmise that the result from the self-imposed lockdown and consequent reduction in CO2 emissions would be a noticeable decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide, or at the very least a reduction in the rate of increase of the gas. On April 8th, the Mauna Loa Observatory released their report on the previous month’s (March 2020) concentration, and the data was shockingly contrary to what I and others had expected. Not only was there no decrease in the level of atmospheric CO2, the rate of increase continued unchanged. The most recent daily measurement as of the time of this post on April 9th set a new record high concentration (417.85 ppm).
The lack of an effect whatsoever on global CO2 levels after the huge decline in emissions should be a wakeup call to any of the politicians advancing economically crippling measures like the Green New Deal or the Paris climate accord. In particular, those Republicans that have recently embraced carbon taxation or Cap and Trade schemes in a misguided attempt to control the uncontrollable (global temperature) should seriously rethink this folly.
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The shelter in place is doing more than decreasing CO2 – I wonder if we count all the lives saved both from a lack of car accidents and murders and then add to it the number of people dying from seasonal flu, would they combined be more than killed due to COVID19 in US?
That number will pale compared to the number of people who are currently having cancer Undiagnosed and therefore untreated. Add to that the number of people who are unable to have important, but theoretically elective surgery unperformed. And finally add to this the number of medical practices which have permanently gone out of business, and how that will affect public health. All this for a virus that in the end will be shown to have the mortality rate of the common flu. Madness
They wont abandon CO2, to much invested. Instead you’ll get someone like Mann to wave his hands, go on about man made atmospheric carbon momentum and how it will take a couple decades to see it turn around once we killed man made emissions. Mere months of shutdown is meaningless so we best get to shutting everything down now or we’re all doomed!
It is the trend in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, irrespective of what percentage is due to human activity, sinks etc., that is attributed mostly to humans:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20MonthlySince1958.gif
It will be interesting to see if there is a significant change in that trend.
It’s good to see a useless and defunct wind-turbine being put to a practical and biological use as a nesting site by an observant bird. This is much better than when the wind-turbine was rotating and killing other birds.
It has been revealed that Blackrock financial, a “shadow bank”, was used by Canada Pension Fund (CPP) to purchase Industrial Wind Turbines in Ontario, Canada.
https://blackrocktransparencyproject.org/2018/08/27/how-canadas-infrastructure-bank-was-created-by-and-set-up-to-benefit-blackrock/
It seems likely that “shadow banks” are a new way to steal pension fund money. The question is can we get it back.
Blackrock is also purchasing US debt. Is it possible that Blackrock is using carbon credits as collateral/security for these purchases?
I have been listening to X22Report.com. The host there suggests that the debts of the Fed may come under scrutiny in the Trump administration.
Perhaps the “bad debts’, due to climate change and other schemes, can be written off. Let us hope so.
“climate-related catastrophes like droughts, floods and fires”
None of those are climate-related, they are weather and weather-related.
New phrase for the PC culture — Avian justice.
@ur momisugly Ferdinand, in response to your upthread comment to me:
BTW, the temperature at Barrow and Mauna Loa go up in summer, not down, but CO2 goes reverse…
The next image link left panel of annual zonal pCO2 flux means shows year-round positive pCO2 flux across the tropics, favoring the southern ocean, where the January insolation spike happens, followed by the subsequent insolation-driven warm-water wave from my first comment first image that either is travelling north in the NH summer or south in their summer, warming the respective polar waters every year. The subpolar oceans respond annually to the lag(s) from the tropics, ultimately driving the phase between ML and BRW pCO2 fluxes.
The annual warm pulse is also evident in the effect of Nino34 on sea ice extent at both poles:
Which means my first image and point was right. You also said
The second graph has it right: for fast variations the CO2 sensitivity for temperature is 2-4 ppmv/K. Thus the 120 ppmv CO2 increase can never be caused by temperature…
The third graph is right too: over the past 800,000 years some 8 ppmv/K for Antarctic temperatures.
Thus you have proven yourself that less than 1 K sea surface temperature increase never can cause a 120 ppmv CO2 increase and that this extra pressure pushes more CO2 into the oceans…
Ferdinand, you didn’t properly apply the CO2 sensitivity factors I derived that you said you agreed with, so you came to the wrong conclusion.
The CO2 sensitivity to temperature is over time, which means atm CO2 is largely an accumulation function integrating outgassing responses over long time periods from up and down temperature changes that can cancel out at times, faking equilibrium. There is no meaningful ‘CO2 equilibrium’ to talk about.
Repeated from above:
Bob Weber,
Sorry for the late reply…
As far as I know, Mauna LOA and Barrow are in the NH above sea level, thus their insolation gets stronger in the NH spring until the end of June, while CO2 goes fast down (!) in specific Barrow, when all tundra starts to grow in the few summer months above freezing they have… Your explanation is for what happens in seawater and of course that is mainly up with temperature, except in the far North East Atlantic where the THC sinks winter and summer with a lot of CO2.
Thus CO2 in the atmosphere goes down while temperature goes up. That is a reverse relationship…
Then indeed there is a lag between temperature and CO2 levels on short (ENSO) to very long periods and in between (MWP-LIA).
Despite that lag, there is a definitive maximum of CO2 in the atmosphere for a fixed temperature jump: 16 ppmv/K, measured in all oceans with over 3 million seawater samples. That is what Henry’s law says: for a given temperature, there is a fixed ratio between CO2 in solution and CO2 in the atmosphere.
That brings us to the current CO2 increase: the warming ocean surface since the LIA is good for about 13 ppmv extra in the atmosphere and nothing more. That is all. All the rest is from human contributions, which are about twice as high as the observed increase.
The increased CO2 level in the atmosphere pushes more CO2 in the oceans than reverse from the increased temperature.
Feely e.a. have made an inventory of over 900,000 measurements of ocean pCO2 and compared them with the pCO2 of the atmosphere (BTW, the differences in the atmosphere are small, less than 8 ppmv globally over the oceans, except for seasonal changes). The average difference is 7 μatm higher in the atmosphere than in the ocean surface. Thus again the average flux of CO2 is into the oceans, not reverse:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Then about DIC: if the oceans were responsible for the increase in the atmosphere, then DIC should decrease over time, but all six fixed marine stations show an increase of DIC over time, see Fig. 3 in:
https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/27-1_bates.pdf
Again, the average CO2 flux is from the atmosphere into the ocean surface, not reverse…
You made the same mistake as Bart/Bartemis:
The CO2 sensitivity to temperature is per unit time.
Of course not, the CO2 sensitivity to temperature is a fixed ratio per Henry’s law (*). As the mixing speed of CO2 in water is very low, one need a lot of wind to mix it into the “mixed” upper ocean surface (100-200 meter), but the speed of uptake or release is in direct ratio to the pCO2 difference between atmosphere and water and when in equilibrium (if ever), then any flux stops. The pCO2 of the oceans changes with about 16 μatm/K around 15 degC. If the pCO2 of the atmosphere increases with 16 μatm, both are again in (dynamic) equilibrium…
(*) See the engineering solubility for 1 atm for different gases at different temperatures at:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html
The graphs are for fresh water, that is the same for pure CO2 gas in seawater, but as that reacts with the buffer salts to (bi)carbonates, the real solubility in seawater is about 10 times higher than in fresh water.