By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
By the time you read this, the monthly Mauna Loa CO2 concentration will probably have been published. The profiteers of doom have been delighted by the global Chinese-virus lockdown, which many of them would like to be permanent.
As John Christy reported here yesterday, in March the UAH dataset maintained by Roy Spencer shows the second-biggest month-to-month drop in global mean lower-troposphere temperature since the record began in December 1978.
But, as Anthony Watts pointed out in a comment, the fall in temperature owes nothing to a decline in CO2 concentration, whether or not caused by the lockdown. The keepers of the Mauna Loa record agree with him:
Let us assume that there has indeed been a 25% decline in our sins of emission, and that it will persist until the pandemic ends in 18 months’ time, as some epidemiologists have predicted. Let us also assume that there will be a further 0.2 ppmv reduction in CO2 concentration for each of the next 18 months. Then the CO2 concentration will have fallen by a dizzying 3.6 ppmv.
Maybe. For IPCC says CO2 persists in the air for about 125 years, in which event nothing we do this century will make much difference to CO2 concentration.
However, just for fun, let us imagine that over the next 18 months the concentration does indeed fall by 3.6 ppmv. Let us work out how much global warming the tens of trillions that the Chinese-virus lockdown has cost us will have bought.
In March, the Mauna Loa CO2 concentration C0 was 414.5 ppmv. At the end of the pandemic, then, C will be 410.9 ppmv. Let us pretend that, as the Thermageddonites wish, it would not bounce back to where it is now, but that the pandemic will reduce all subsequent CO2 concentrations, whatever they might otherwise have been, by 3.6 ppmv. Let us also pretend that the reduction will occur immediately, rather than in 125 years’ time.
The coefficient k in the CO2 forcing equation is 5 (derived from Andrews et al. 2012). The Planck or zero-feedback sensitivity parameter P is 0.3 K W–1 m2 (ibid.). The system-gain factor G from feedbacks is the absurdly exaggerated 3 imagined by IPCC et hoc genus omne (it is in truth more like 1.2, which means there is no climate “emergency”, but let us be generous to the cult).
Eq. (1), informed by these quantities, gives the global warming reduction arising from the drastic emissions reduction caused by the pandemic, on the generous assumption that it is a permanent reduction.
Gee wow golly-gosh! Mirabile dictu!! One whole twenty-fifth of a degree!!! Hold the front page!!!!
All the numbers fed into Eq. (1), as well as the equation itself, are “mainstream science”. And that’s the whole problem with this global warming nonsense. The cost of mitigation is as large as the benefit is small. Even if we stop emitting CO2 altogether by 2050, if IPCC is right the corresponding small reduction in global temperature will take 125 years to come through.
For that reason alone, even before allowing for official climatology’s glaring error in the definition of temperature feedback, an error in which IPCC intends fraudulently to persist in its Sixth Assessment Report even though it has been told in writing that its definition is incorrect, it makes no economic sense to do anything whatsoever about global warming except to let it happen, adapt to it and enjoy the sunshine.
Will someone tell world followers?
Today’s graphs show a continuing decline in active cases, but the mean daily compound growth rate in cumulative deaths remains high. The reason is that at this stage in the pandemic the case fatality rate is very high. Take the United States.
There have been 66,000 reported deaths at the time of writing, but the Centers for Disease Control concluded a couple of days ago that, based on excess mortality data, deaths have been under-reported by about 15%. So there have really been about 76,000 deaths.
Assuming a mean 17 days from case report to death, the deaths reported now arose on or about April 13, when there were 715,000 cases. So the U.S. case fatality rate, at a rough estimate, is about 10.5%, compared with a global 7.5% (and more like 24% in the UK).
But there are now 1.131 million cases in the United States. Allowing for the current gentle slowing in both reported cases and deaths, even if there were no more cases (and at present there are 30,000 new ones a day), by mid-June and perhaps sooner there will have been 125,000 U.S. deaths associated with the Chinese virus – and counting.
To put this in context, the CDC has estimated that the past winter’s flu season caused somewhere between 20,000 and 62,000 deaths. Already the Chinese-virus deaths have exceeded the high-end estimate within just a few weeks. Unfortunately, there are many more deaths to come.
Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in estimated active cases of COVID-19 for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 1 to April 30, 2020.
Fig. 2. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative COVID-19 deaths for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 8 to April 30, 2020.
Ø High-definition Figures 1 and 2 are here.
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Are we living out a tragedy or a comedy? Modern, instant mass communication has made possible, perhaps even unavoidable, mass hysteria, mass interest, mass concerns about many various issues. All these issues (of which you will find examples in whatever you read, see or hear in the media, in films or on radio) are about sex, food and and fear of enemies – humankind’s eternal centres of concern.
At present we are all consumed with fear of a very ordinary, not even particularly dangerous, infectious illness (this suddenly took over from the equally panicky fear of climate change– remember Greta Thunberg?).
One of the most influential novels ever written was Cervantes’ tale about Don Quixote, the illustrious Spanish gentleman who thought himself great and courageous and rode out in search of enemies to practice his valour on. Finding none, he attacked windmills. He was very sincere and certain he was right – likewise you will find no end of thoroughly sincere, intelligent people who are completely convinced that the world’s battle to conquer this virus is wholly justifiable.
Over the 400 years since this novel was written people have been arguing whether Cervantes meant it to be a comedy or a tragedy. Therein lies its greatness.
“Andy Espersen May 2, 2020 at 10:47 pm
Modern, instant mass communication has made possible, perhaps even unavoidable, mass hysteria, mass interest…”
BINGO!
Imagine the mass hysteria you could have had if the fact that this was biolab leak and possibly a bioweapon had been know as it hit the West back in February!
CofB should have stopped with the CO2 calculation which he does at least seem to roughly understand.
Last years seasonal flu was a generally mild flu year. A better “context” would be 2017/18 which was a bad flu season.
CDC seems rather coy about publishing an estimation for that year but does say this:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm
So IF CofB’s estimated CFR of 10.5% is about right, that places COVID-19 on a par with a bad flu year.
He has sadly, after briefly flirting with legible png formatted graphs, now gone back to fuzzy, illegible jpeg images and expecting folks to download his PowerPoint presentation. That’s probably my fault for reminding him that I suggested png 3 weeks ago in my list of helpful suggestions to his first post.
My personal belief is if we calculate mortality based on total cases, this virus is less deadly than the flu. We won’t know for sure until we get accurate data. By many accounts, deaths are overestimated. People who were never tested should not be included. People who recovered from Covid-19 but later died of something else should not be included.
But I suspect we should be calculating the death for the entire population. The death count may be much higher.
But we should keep these numbers in perspective. The vast majority of the population are not at high risk. Yes, people under 60 with no known corbidity factors are dying, but these are a small percentage of Covid-19 deaths.
Patrick MJD
It has also given sceptics the opportunity to respond. Something hitherto, almost unheard of.
Does this make Don Quixote history’s first recorded climate denier?!
Phil, inasmuch that the Don wanted to do to windmills what many of us would like to do, I guess he serves the definition.
But I was really taken by this, from Chris’s post:
To which, my answer is, No! They will not tell them, neither will they listen. If you have a scam running that will not be discovered for another 125 years and you can enrich yourself beyond the dreams of Croesus, you are not going to bother: you’ll be long gone before you’ve been twigged. We are being played, and people like Gore are (IMHO) are profiteering – which, during the war was a capital offence, if memory serves.
But we are not “climate deniers”, the most assinine descriptor used by climate quacks to describe climate realists. What sort of a moron uses the term “climate deniers”? How is it possible to deny that there is a climate?
Maybe Phil can tell us what kind of a moron?
I think Phil was joking.
I absolutely agree, the use of the term “climate denier” is wrong for two reasons:
1. It’s pure poison, clearly designed to sound like “holocaust denier”.
2. It’s completely false. Sceptics do not deny the reality of climate change, that would be ridiculous. Ironically an important sceptical argument is that the climate is always changing.
Another irony: if you think about it, the Mannian hockey stick really is climate denial. The whole point of that fraudulent “science” was to show that there was no significant climate change until the 20th century. The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were wiped away – or “got rid of” to quote an infamous email – as if they had never existed. Now if that isn’t climate change denial I don’t know what is!
Chris
Well let’s see, he attacked windmills that represented no danger. Today’s climate quacks attack fossil fuels that likewise represent no danger. In addition, he was obviously off his nut in a big way.
Clearly Don Quixote was an earlier incarnation of Grrrrreta Thunberg.
To scheme … the improbable scheme …
To lie … and pretend that we know …
To err … about Kilimanjaro …
To shun … where the data might go …
To slight … all who prove we are wrong
(Sorry. That’s as far I got in a hurry.)
No Phil. His tilting at windmills made Don Quixote a Climate Alarmist. Why do you think they regaled it in song as the Impossible Dream?
The impressionable Greta’s are all running about attempting to right the un-rightable wrong.
Without the dumb mass hysteria positive feedback from the Social Justice Networks there would be no pandemic pandemonium.
NASA’s Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) should be able to provide samplings of regional CO2 with far greater resolution than inferring global effects from Mauna Loa data.
I think OCO-2 is a monthly average. With Northern Hemisphere uptake with approaching summer, I doubt if you can pick up minor variations.
I think you will find that OCO-2 is in the A-train of satellites that orbit the earth with a 14 day repeat cycle. One measurement, over you, then another in 14 days times!!
Satellite measurements are a great technology assist in the measuring earth parameters, they do have notable limitations.
Worse than I thought. A pretty picture every month or so that is weather dependent. I hope they do something else with the satellite.
Paul Johnson-
Even if the satellites give you the resolution you want, that isn’t going to prove anything regarding the relationship between CO2 concentrations and fossil fuel emissions. We would really need to see many months – probably a year or two- of data at 25% emission reduction to be able – perhaps – to discern how this might be modulating the huge natural exchanges of the gas that utterly dwarf the emissions themselves. The balance of opinion, even on the sceptical side, is that it does have this effect, but demonstrating it by this unintended experiment is going to be difficult.
For the same reason, the Mauna Loa team’s statement that “most of the emissions come from urban areas, so that it may be easier to see the effect downwind of cities” is also quite irrelevant and, indeed, misleading.
Just as error, deceit, and manipulation of temperature leads to the nonsense that “we live in a warming world”, the Covid 19 deaths are apparently subject to the same mendacities.
Mr. O’keefe’s Project Veritas has come up with some pretty solid information that deaths are attributed to Covid 19 simply because it improves the greedy grab for money.
I have not confirmed the truth of this story relayed to me yesterday, but I’ll put it out there anyhow for possible consideration as truthful: A nurse at a retirement-living complex got sick. I don’t know where she went to be assessed, but the story, as related to me, is that she was refused a COVID-19 test, but given a diagnosis of “probably COVID-19”.
And I continue to see people everyday — the mask-wearing pod people — completely misusing their face coverings, … some ignorantly, others in defiance (i.e., only wearing them when management is looking). So, lots of people generally are NOT using face masks properly, even if masks could have a marked effect. This is why, I think, the original recommendation was that apparently healthy people should not wear masks. Many people end up risking contaminating themselves by re-breathing contamination on the mask that they themselves have put there or have failed to properly remove, before putting the mask on again.
It has turned into a big show — a circus.
Masks reduce the amount of droplet dispersion FROM infected Individuals by up to 80%…which would otherwise be deposited on surfaces everywhere or inhaled by others directly (up to 10 feet away) from coughs or sneezes.
The biggest downside is that the masks collect viruses from droplets by filtration of the air. If the mask is touched with the hands while the viruses are still viable and then the hands touch the face, viruses can be introduced into the eyes or the respiratory system.
So especially if you are sneezing and coughing (during which times YOU SHOULD NOT go out into public spaces) a mask should be worn. But remove it without touching the mask part…then wash your hands before touching anything else (turn on the spigot before removing the mask).
When N95’s become widely available, they should be used by hair dressers and barbers and others in constant contact with the public. Be ready for a “respiratory workout”. Up to 80 extra calories an hour is expended in just sucking air through some high efficiency masks. “Weight loss mask” infomercials should be expected soon.
DocS,
In theory, the mask should work, as you say, but human behavior is NOT going along with this strict method of handling the mask. Many people simply are NOT doing it correctly — they have no clue.
What if a person is NOT symptomatically “infected”? — does such a person harbor a viral load of sufficient size to expel it from their lungs in sufficient quantity to cause a contamination issue?
Where is the virus now on a contaminated mask that the wearer mishandled?– lingering on the outside of the mask? — in line with the breathing of the mask’s wearer? — possibly getting encased withing micro-droplets or repeated moist breath, now ready to be slingshot off the mask’s fibers into the air once again, from the pressure of air during conversation or just breathing normally?
I’m not convinced that just any old mask will reduce initial droplet dispersion, as you say. Most common fabrics have spaces between the woven threads that are far larger than the virus. When a portion of the droplets containing the virus hits threads, what are the actual dynamics of the droplets after impact? What is the cumulative effective of repetitive droplet/mask collisions over a two-hour time span, in a real-world setting? — a setting where the masks are NOT handled under pristine, lab-controlled guidelines?
The studies that I have read on masks never quite commit to the level of certainty that would offer the assurance that most popular accounts have prevailed in communicating. I see a lot of “may”, “might”, “need more research”, “unknown” … in the wording, and yet the conclusions of such studies seem to contradict this uncertainty by erring on the side of hope in their final statements.
I see no reason for asymptomatic people to walk around like pod people, with symbolic erasures of their individual voices and identities captured in a further symbolic display of compliance with a decree that robs their choices and freedoms to make independent judgments.
Smokers can make an individual choice to light up, with little regard for people thirty feet away who are forced to endure the drifting residue of their exhalations, while people are criticized for exercising freedom to make similar choices regarding unnatural coverings that restrict normal breathing and conversation.
It’s hard enough to understand some cash-register operators in stores, as they speak, and now you put a mask over their faces AND place them behind a plastic barrier, … to further distort their speech, making communication unreasonably more difficult at a point of sale. It’s ridiculous. If we are that afraid to interact, then either shut down the world entirely, everybody avoid everybody else, collapse into a black hole of economic suicide, … or just get back to living.
If you CHOOSE not to interact with people, then fine, that’s your choice. If you CHOOSE to wear a mask, … again fine. If you choose to go to work, to take the risk of driving, walking under a dangling tree limb, among a hoard of people who forgive each other for engaging in habits that give them lung cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc., then fine.
My choice is not to wear a mask, and not to be afraid of other people not wearing masks, and to go about living, without constant fear of dying.
Not good enough.
It is well known that airborne droplets can infect people through their eyes, so Glasses are also needed along with gloves.
Don’t believe the bull about not wearing masks and gloves. I provide a simple example about no mask and gloves.
You are in contact with airborne virii, they settle on your face, nose, lips and eyes as well as on yours hands from touching objects.
They tell you to just wash your hands when you get home, but not your face which could be covered in virii.
You wash your hands touch your face and immediately re-infect your hands and if anyone else touches your face, ie with a cheek or lip kiss, they are also infected.
With your face covered by a mask and glasses there is very little of your face to be infected.
You take off your glasses and mask, deposit any shopping etc in the house and then remove the gloves and wash both hands & face.
If you are using the car remove a glove to open doors, boot etc and then remove them and place in the boot otherwise you have to wipe down everything you touch inside the car.
Put the gloves back on to deposit shopping etc in the house and then remove them and wash hands & face.
It requires thought to do everything necessary and stay safe wearing them, but if your life depends on it it is not that hard.
Those wearing PPE for 8-12 hours have a real problem to remember all of that the whole time, that is why face visors as well as a mask are essential.
When the Covid dust settles there is no doubt that the US Deep State will have purposely killed 10s of thousands by discouraging the use of Hydroxychloroquine and zinc in a timely fashion. This was not an accident but murder. There are no ifs ands or buts here, a known treatment was denied to the sick for political and corporate reasons.
the lockdowns will kill ten times that number easily … nobody wants to tally those deaths …
In South Africa under a massive lockdown, with a huge number of low-level jobs lost – perhaps for good – the unemployed poor are complaining that it’s better to face the RISK of catching the virus than the certainty of starving to death!
” Finding none, he attacked windmills. ”
What if the windmills were being secretly used to power money printing presses ? 🙂
He attacked the windmills because they were giants. He didn’t attack the windmills because there were no giants.
He attacked the windmills because he needed them to be giants. When Sancho persuaded him that they were actually windmills he rationalized the situation by declaring that they had been giants but had been turned into windmills by a wizard.
Who else is a bit like that ?
Dunno. All of us?
Jim Acosta? Chuck Schumer? Wait, is it Obama?
We must stop global warming, soon snow will be a thing of the past.
Record snowy winters: yes but snow is global warming that was turned into snow by a wizard.
Significance of the numbers makes the alarm. Exponential rate of change is important because it can make tolerable numbers significant.
Current rough numbers from worldometers does not justify (IMHO) drastic actions. People under 65 should go safely back to work. Daily deaths in the World are about 5 000, UK 500 and Sweden 50. Last two weeks of the latter two look stable. Multiple these with 400 (=365 in one significant number) we get 2 000 000 (0,03%), 200 000 (0,3%) and 20 000 (0,2%). Of course we assume daily deaths to decline.
Reality check, where are the dead and the patients we expected?
Some countries are in denial but are digging mass graves for many ‘unexpected deaths’.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-president-jair-bolsonaro-dismissive-as-overwhelmed-brazilians-dig-mass-graves-11981428
One should always expect the unexpected. It is most likely when least likely.
Right, so a quarter of a million dead in 6 weeks is not enough for you?
And that is before it really gets going in 3rd world countries.
Business as usual. With 8 000 M people living 80 years, I would expect 100 M deaths per year. Wordometers gives 20 M deaths this year so far. COVID’s 250 000 is 1,3% of that.
Brasil gets going and fares quite much like others. Hope that 3rd world has learned something from our mistakes.
The monthly mean CO2 level from Mauna Loa as reported by Scripps/NOAA shows the same Northern Hemisphere Growth season sponsored rise over 2019 as all the previous years do : (414.50/411.97 ppm). The industrial shutdown has had no measurable effect on the CO2 cycle as the amount of CO2 that is manmade is only 4% of Nature’s grand effort. The annual variation cycle of CO2 level is about 5/6 ppm and peaks after the NH growing season and bottoms after the SH growing season. The present temperature slide is not driven by any fall in CO2 levels. It is driven by something else, as yet undefined. The trees continue to enjoy the increased CO2 levels but do not approve of the lowering temperatures but are at least, for them, it is offset by the increased CO2 nutrient.
Thanks Tesdorf for the update.
I had an email discussion with Monckton about 11 or 12 years ago, where I insisted on 5% human contribution to the CO2 increase. Monkton agreed with me, but stated that it was difficult to prove, so he reckoned it was more feasible to state that all or most of it comes from human’s fossil fuel burning.
If it can be proven that the lock-down has significantly reduced the consumption of fossil fuel, it appears to me that we now have a confirmation of the 3 to 5%.
A question I have always wondered about. How much of the CO2 comes from human respiration? I have never seen this mentioned but, as the population increases, so will the CO2 output. Is it of any significance or it is so small as to be inconsequential? Doubling the population must double the output.
About 3 billion tonnes annually, but it’s good CO2 because its converted plant material, just like the Methane we produce. This different from the methane and CO2 produced by the animals we eat because it means the GHG gases they produce are in fact produced twice. This is clear evidence for becoming Vegan and ploughing up the grassland currently being used to produce meat.
Thank you for your reply. All CO2 is part of a cycle even though some are longer than others and it is all good, ask any plant!. I wouldn’t agree with your comments about the evidence for becoming Vegan as the human body has clearly not evolved for that. Interesting anyway.
Not sure about the actual numbers.
However, termites are said to be the most significant land based CO2 producing animal.
With respect to humans: Humans convert about 100W of energy in our body. Much of this energy transformation releases CO2. Additionally we transform around 1000W or so via mostly fossil fuel, wind turbines, etc., which all produce significand amounts of CO2 and comfort.
There are really so many CO2 sources – we are and live in a carbon world, a world the Greens do not want us to be part of.
Thanks. Interesting about the termites.
“The present temperature slide is not driven by any fall in CO2 levels. It is driven by something else, as yet undefined.”
I’ve seen it speculated on WUWT that it is due to a diminution of high cirrus clouds, since airplane flights have been reduced so drastically. (Their contrails form such clouds.)
“IPCC says CO2 persists in the air for about 125 years, in which event nothing we do this century will make much difference to CO2 concentration.”
And nothing we have done ….
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/
“IPCC says CO2 persists in the air for about 125 years”
What they actually say is that each year half the CO2 in annual fossil fuel emissions sticks to the atmosphere and hangs around there for 125 years. It goes up every year but it doesn’t come back down as quickly as it went up.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/31/the-carbon-cycle-measurement-problem/
I’ve been curious for some time regarding the residence time of atmospheric CO2. I have read/heard of claims anywhere from 7 years to 200,000 years, with the IPCC figure being 125 years. I recently read somewhere that, based on measurements of atmospheric CO2 with Carbon-14 resulting from nuclear testing in the 1950’s, the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 16 years. However, I have no knowledge of the veracity of that claim.
So, can any of the WUWT readers/contributors offer any cogent insight into the residence time of CO2? At this point it seems to me that this is just another facet of climate that we just don’t understand very well, and that such claims are largely just conjecture.
This was my understanding as well, based on previous research I’ve done. I know that early on it was widely accepted that residency time was probably over 100 years. There are still people saying this, but the newer information I’ve found in the past is what you said. I would love to see if anyone here has knowledge of any newer studies.
Dennis Kelley ,
There is a lot of confusion on what the residence time means.
The official formula is:
residence time = mass in the atmosphere / throughput
or mass / input
or mass / output
As long as input = throughput = output, which is true within a few %.
For the current atmosphere that is 830 GtC (as CO2 mass in the atmosphere) and a throughput of ~150 GtC/year (mainly seasonal) thus gives:
830 GtC / 150 GtC/year = 5.53 years.
That is all about exchanges of CO2 molecules between reservoirs, whatever the sources, and mainly temperature driven. That doesn’t change the amount in the atmosphere at all, as long as inputs equal outputs.
The average ocean surface temperature gives a quite stable dynamic equilibrium between atmosphere, oceans and vegetation of about 290 ppmv for the current average sea surface temperature.
If some source (humans, volcanoes) emit more CO2, the CO2 pressure (pCO2) in the atmosphere increases and less CO2 is emitted by the oceans from the upwelling zones near the equator and more is absorbed in the cold sinking waters near the poles. It is that difference which removes CO2 mass out of the atmosphere. The amounts are in direct ratio with the extra pCO2 in the atmosphere above the equilibrium.
The formula for a linear response then is:
e-fold decay rate (tau) = cause / effect
tau = extra CO2 pressure / net sink rate
For the year 2010, that gives:
tau = 110 ppmv / 2.15 ppmv/year = 51.2 years
Thus two different decay rates are involved: the residence time which describes the fate of an individual molecule in the atmosphere (thus the isotopic composition) and the decay rate for any extra CO2 pressure above equilibrium (whatever the cause).
The IPCC uses the Bern and similar models, which has several separate decay rates towards different reservoirs (oceans, vegetation,…), but also implies that a large part of the sinks get saturated, thus assuming that large parts of our emissions (as mass, not the original molecules!) remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.
That is only true for the ocean surface, not for the deep oceans or vegetation. Until now, the decay rate still is the same as 60 years ago, no sign of saturation visible…
Carbon-14 is a different story. In principle, the excess decay rate would be about the same as for the bulk of CO2 (mostly 12CO2 and a small % of 13CO2). But there is a problem: what goes into the deep oceans is the isotopic composition of today, what comes out of the deep oceans is the composition of ~1000 years ago, long before any huge human influence.
That makes that in 1960, at the peak of the 14CO2 from the bomb tests some 97.5% of all sinking 12CO2 returned the same year out of the deep, but only 45% of the amount of 14CO2.
That makes that the excess 14CO2 decay rate was much faster than for any excess 12CO2…
Hope this helped a little…
“As John Christy reported here yesterday, in March the UAH dataset maintained by Roy Spencer shows the second-biggest month-to-month drop in global mean lower-troposphere temperature since the record began in December 1978.”
This stuff is just silly. No, JC did not report that. He reported the second biggest drop in temperature over a two month period, in the Northern Hemisphere, not global. That is a really contrived “record”.
But of course these fluctuations are not caused by CO₂ variation. Whoever said they were? The NH lower trop temp went up to the Feb peak, then went down (a little faster). None of that variation had anything to do with CO₂. Our emissions have a steady, cumulative effect. The variation in CO₂ due to the events of the last month or so is too small to even show up on the Mauna Loa record, let alone in the noisy temperature record.
Variations of atmospheric CO2 never show up in the real temperature record, Nick !
They have to be “adjusted” into it, so much so that in the USA, the “adjustments” are a near perfect correlation to CO2 rises
So some variations a natural. What level of variation becomes un-natural? How does one distinguish between natural and un-natural variation? Work with me Nick.
How does one distinguish between natural and un-natural variation?
============
The Church has always been keen on unnatural acts. Unnatural variation would be the deviation or perversion from the mean unnatural acts.
You can see the natural variations, the small wiggles around the steadily increasing levels, caused by the carbon cycle.
Sensible comment!
Feel free to point out every ‘contrived record’ that appears in the media from the climate change propaganda sausage machine over the next year – but you won’t have much free time on your hands.
**Our emissions have a steady, cumulative effect.**
Sure. Measurements???
Gerald,
CO2 increase in the atmosphere near perfectly tracks human emissions at around half the emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
Even if that is pure coincidence: human emissions increased slightly quadratic over the years and so did the increase in the atmosphere and thus the net sinks (which are in direct ratio to the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere).
The point is that the sinks over the past 60 years were near always smaller than what humans emitted, thus nature was a net sink for CO2, not a source, but not fast enough to remove all human extra CO2 (as mass, not the original molecules!) in the same year as released…
If humans would halve their emissions, there was no increase of CO2 in the atmosphere anymore…
Some way down the track the productive sectors of society must pay the piper – all through a mass failure by governments to implement contingency plans in case of a pandemic. They had plenty of warning. They are to blame, let there be no doubt. Now they buy redemption by using their subjects’ reserves and mortgaging their future
Why did just one country swim against the tide? The Swedish are possibly the highest taxed on Earth. Did their government realize that there was simply too little fat in the system to withstand higher taxes in the future?
The future is a socialist’s dream: high taxes and state intervention, nationalised services such as airlines, rail; perhaps even fuel supplies. Add a throng of families with inadequate incomes: left-leaning voters.
The unemployed, the unemployed. Just look at the numbers and be honest. In the US the highest since the Great Depression. Some are saying 20 %
Don’t blame the virus. The real catastrophe is man-made and irreversible, the damage done. We are saving some lives and the reputation of health services (note services). Is it really worth it?
Second waves come. What then? Will Governments have the stomach, credit and public support to lock down again? I am saying nope. The family jewels and their credibility have all been pawned
On a brighter note, I am enjoying this outbreak. It is saga extraordinaire
Don’t blame the virus. The real catastrophe is man-made and irreversible… We are saving some lives and the reputation of health services …
Quite so, but we will hear after this is all over, how government action saved the day, rather like the proverbial Vietnamese village.
I sincerely believe we were panicked into this course of action, the attempt to isolate the whole population rather than the infected and infirm. We will discover the cure was worse than the disease
The nursing homes give evidence that a very poor job was done protecting the vulnerable.
Rather than isolation, nursing homes were practicing herd immunity by grouping health and infected patients and staff.
Was each patient given an isolated air supply? Or were they sharing air with infected patients and/or staff?
Why was this not put into effect years ago to protect against flu and other communicable diseases?
Independent air supply for each patient in a nursing home would even allow family and friends to visit.
There’s a common misconception that “assisted living” facilities are nursing homes. The latter are health care facilities, the former are not but are counted as nursing home deaths. It would be impossible to provide individual air supply (whatever that means) to the millions of people in assisted living facilities, wherein residents move about more or less freely.
Where do you get the idea that Sweden are the only ones swimming against the tide?
Try Czechia who are doing much better than Sweden.
Socialism Kills More Babies than War, ergo the Soylent Green New Deal.
https://fee.org/articles/socialism-kills-more-babies-than-war/
50% of black babies in the US are aborted, largely as a result of policies put in place by the very same party that says it represents black voters.
I find this ironic, as it greatly reduces the role of blacks in US society, by significantly reducing their annual population increase, such that blacks are now less populous than Hispanics.
And bang on que the CO2 levels just broke an all time high yesterday – 418.02ppm and there’s another 2 weeks or so before the annual high.
https://www.co2.earth/co2-records
Hmmm not heard this in the MSM, but I guess it doesn’t fit the Manmade narrative!
“There have been 66,000 reported deaths at the time of writing, but the Centers for Disease Control concluded a couple of days ago that, based on excess mortality data, deaths have been under-reported by about 15%. So there have really been about 76,000 deaths.”
Yes but at the same time even more people are counted that happened to die with CV19 present, that would have died anyway (institution acquired after end of life admission), and doctors have been doing death certificates with CV19 by symptoms (and politics) without actual testing – causing over counting too.
I pointed out before the way that in the 2015 flu in the UK old people that died of something else were merely noted as having the flu too (inconsequentially), but this year with CV19 the emphasis has been reversed.
It will be impossible to get to the true figures even when this is all over.
One thing for sure, the more testing that is being done globally, the faster the death rate is shrinking.
As pointed out above, the anthropogenic contribution to the CO2 budget is so tiny that, even if it is changed a lot, the effect disappears into the noise.
The other thing is that the CO2 books don’t balance. link The IPCC acknowledges that.
The only way CAGW works is for CO2 to have a very long residence time. Proving that requires that the CO2 budget is known with great precision, which it isn’t.
commieBob,
That article at WUWT was firmly commented, as I see tens of comments by myself…
Of course there is a balance: yearly human emissions are known by taxes and the increase in the atmosphere is measured, thus the difference between these two is what nature net has emitted or absorbed at the end of a full year, whatever the individual natural fluxes and their direction.
The e-fold decay rate of our emissions in the atmosphere is around 50 years. Indeed much shorter than what the IPCC uses via the Bern model and there is no saturation in sight…
No matter what assumptions you select from the menu of man made CO2 infecting the atmosphere, any plausible change is too small to be detected above the +/- 1 ppm CO2 accuracy (2 sigma type of calculation with associated, customary assumptions). Geoff S
A few musings about excess deaths.
I don’t know about other countries, but here in Spain they cancelled all medical services except emergencies. From my toddler’s vaccines to my elderly neighbour’s chemo, all cancelled.
What’s considered an emergency? A burst appendix. The doctor won’t see you with, for example, an inflamed tendon. You are sent home to self-treat with paracetamol. How many extra deaths are due to six weeks of treatments cancelled, patients sent home, overuse or misuse of over-the-counter medication? Normal diseases haven’t gone away. Are there any numbers available? How many people are still treated for diseases that aren’t Covid-19?
Then there’s depression. How many old people live alone and haven’t seen anyone in weeks? And in retirement homes, how many are forced to eat alone now and spend their days in what amounts to solitary confinement? The caretakers spend as little time as possible with their charges, wearing gloves and masks and what not. Is this causing depression? Anecdotal evidence tells me that yes, it is. Does anybody have numbers?
In normal times, caretakers in retirement homes don’t wear masks. They use gloves only when treating wounds or changing diapers. It’s been long known that beyond a certain point, more hygiene measures get counterproductive: They lower the risk of infection, but depress the people.
How’s the situation in your countries? Does anybody have numbers? Anecdotal evidence? Anything?
Certainly people with chest pain are afraid to go to the ER, and if they also have so much as a sore throat, they will be sent to COVID testing. My daughter (adrenal insufficiency and 6 mos preganant with monozygotic twins, blood pressure issues and gestational diabetes) had a sore throat a month ago, so her OB appointment was cancelled, she was sent for a COVID test and put under house arrest for 4 days, not even allowed to walk the dog. Negative test, but sore throat continued. Triage nurse again sent her for another test rather than her OB appointment; would not even look in her throat for fear of catching SOMETHING. She has a long history of repeated tonsilitis, so having a stock of amoxicillin, she dosed herself and is feeling much better. This is what has happened to care in the high risk OB clinic in Montreal.
As regards depression, see
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032715310740
It is not even known yet if these effects on life expectancy can be countered by antidepressant treatment.
From Aclima …
Aclima Measures 10% Drop in Carbon Dioxide Across the Bay Area
As the COVID-19 response altered behaviors that generate emissions, toxic pollutants declined, especially those caused by driving in heavy traffic. At the same time, greenhouse gas emissions dropped. The Aclima mobile sensor network is actively measuring hyperlocal air pollutants and greenhouse gases in every county in the Bay Area, across a range of parameters including CO₂. By averaging our block-by-block measurements at the county level from February 6 to March 19, we can see the trend of CO₂ declining in a pattern similar to NO₂ starting in early March resulting in a 47 ppm or 10% decrease in CO₂ levels.
https://blog.aclima.io/bay-area-air-pollution-during-covid-19-2edd2946e759
EU + UK Reported Cases per 100 000 Population as of 3 May 2020 update
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/EuropeCV.htm
Sorry to throw a spanner in, but burning stuff usually produces a lot of water vapour which is generally acknowledged to be a far more significant GHG than is carbon dioxide.
Presuming we are in fact burning fewer stuffs, any CO₂ or temperature correlation is bound to be confounded by that as well, Shirley?
Does that not alter the amount of angels on this pinhead?
Water vapour has a residency time of about 9-10 days in the atmosphere, as compared to 20-50-125 years for CO2. Take your pick, I don’t know if anyone really knows the real residency time of CO2. But at former levels of increased fossil consumption, there would be more water vapour which would flow continuously through the atmosphere if it didn’t change much. Now that it has dropped a certain percentage, will it show up in any future temperature or rainfall record? I don’t know, and how would you ever know as compared to any simultaneous change in natural variation? It could be half, equal or double and no way to make sense of what was happening unless it was a permanent feature, this temporary reduction in fossil burning and water vapour creation. Maybe after 3-4 years there might be some gleanable data.
I would say anthro water vapour might be a feature locally in high urban population situation, perhaps adding to the rain intensity of a local thunderstorm for example, which would skew the record since the rain from that additional water vapour would be local and minimal. But it might cause a small local flood that jacks up insurance rates and then they blame climate change en masse. Even though it was all local and then extrapolated to be global. Hence the false global alarmism, IMHO.
The “residency time” for CO2 used in the models is not a physical parameter. It is a “fudge factor” used to make the correlation between burning of fossil fuel and the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Analysis of the naturally caused variation of CO2 in the Arctic proves that practically all CO2 emissions (both natural and fossil fuel burning) are removed from the atmosphere each year. The year to year increase is because natural emission concentrations have been increasing since the 1950s. I expect these natural increases to continue for several more years. A drastic decrease in fossil fuel burning will not show up in the rate of increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Natural emissions are at least 20 times greater than man made emissions. A 25% reduction in man made emissions would be expected to reduce the rate of increase by only 1%. The natural year to year variation in the rate of increase is greater than that.
There are a good number of papers that show CO2 lasts 5-7 years, but is ignored by the IPCC.
Gerald,
Ignored by the IPCC and several leading skeptics, as the residence time is irrelevant for the increase or decrease of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It is like the difference between the throughput (turnover) of materials through a factory and the gain (or loss) a factory makes at the end of the fiscal year…
The turnover of CO2 is 4-5 years.
The decay rate for any extra CO2 in the atmosphere above equilibrium is about 50 years…
Fred,
The residence time is roughly known on the base of the solubility of CO2 in the sea surface with seasonal temperature changes and the O2 and δ13C changes for vegetation over de seasons.
About 5 years, or 4 years if you include the diurnal CO2 exchanges in vegetation.
The human emissions and increase in the atmosphere are known and the difference makes that the “practically all emissions” are more sink than source over the past 60 years, so natural emissions may have increased or decreased or staid even, that doesn’t matter at all, as humans are the cause of the increase, not nature.
A human emissions decrease of 25% will show up if that is sustained over at least a full year, which is not what I hope for…
So you are saying that the sinks take up all the natural emissions but only about half the man made emissions. I don’t believe that. Natural emissions have been increasing for over 60 years along with the increases in man made emissions. The fact is that natural emissions are about 20 times natural emissions. The cold waters in the polar regions are always sinks. The sink rates are being controlled by the rate of delivery of CO2 to the sinks, not thermodynamics.
Fred,
The natural sinks did take up all natural emissions, because the natural fluxes are mainly seasonal and temperature driven. The seasonal cycle hardly changed over the decades:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_MLO_BRW.jpg
There is no reason to assume that the winter-summer temperature difference changed a lot over the past 60 years, thus neither the natural in/out fluxes between atmosphere and oceans or vegetation.
There is also no reason for nature to take any extra CO2 out of the atmosphere, whatever the cause, except that the increased CO2 pressure (pCO2) in the atmosphere pushes more CO2 in the oceans and vegetation. That is a different process, which is pressure driven, thus completely independent of the temperature driven huge seasonal CO2 fluxes.
The extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere makes that there is a slight difference between CO2 inputs and CO2 outputs, which is directly proportional to the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the ocean surface average temperature, which for the current ocean surface temperature is about 290 ppmv.
How much is net absorbed by oceans and vegetation is independent of the huge in/out fluxes or the momentary human emissions of one year, but only depends of the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
Yearly human emissions increased a fourfold in the past 60 years. Natural emissions should have increased a fourfold too to be the main cause of the increase in the atmosphere (that implies a fourfold decrease in residence time!), if the natural fluxes were pressure driven, but they are not…
Nick, burning stuff, like an ICE burning fossil fuels also generates heat. How much cooling can be attributed to simply reducing heat energy because of people driving less.
No idea if that man is right:
Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO2 residence time in the atmosphere
presuming only: The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.
Complete abstract:
Krishna,
Sorry but Dr. Berry is completely wrong.
1. He uses the residence time as base, but residence time which is about turnover of CO2 in the atmosphere and the time needed to remove some extra CO2 above equilibrium out of the atmosphere have nothing in common.
2. He uses the reverse of the residence time:
residence time = mass / output
He reverses that to:
output = mass / residence time.
You may do that if and only if all input and output fluxes are unidirectional, which is not the case at all: in spring/summer ocean CO2 is released and is absorbed by growing vegetation with the atmosphere as passing by station. In fall/winter the flux is reverse. The net effect in the atmosphere after a full year is a few ppmv increase for about 50 ppmv CO2 passing by in both directions, thus a throughput of 100 ppmv on 400+ ppmv mass. The residence time still is the same, as that is indifferent for the direction of the fluxes, but there is zero effect on the in/out fluxes, as these are not controlled by the CO2 mass in the atmosphere but by the temperature effect on vegetation and ocean surface…
How is India’s death toll from Covid?
With a billion or so people I would imagine they could lock that country down pretty tightly.
Richard Horton:
Useless, incorrect to blame China for coronavirus origin: Lancet editor-in-chief
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-01/Useless-incorrect-to-blame-China-for-COVID-19-origin-Lancet-expert-Q93DwqFYIg/index.html
He slams the UK and US delay of over a month after clear warnings. This editor happens to be a virulent promoter of the anthropogenic climate change hoax. But he has been outspoken about the British delay in taking action, and especially against the “herd immunity” concept of letting people die.
The herd immunity concept is not “letting people die”. That is an offensive misrepresentation. Unless the virus just disappears for no apparent reason – wishful thinking – it can only be defeated by the population acquiring herd immunity. There are 2 ways of achieving this. We can lockdown until a vaccine is discovered, trialled, licenced, manufactured in large quantities and administered. If this is going to take 12 – 18 months, can we really lockdown for that long without consequences that are worse than those of the pandemic itself ? Or we can allow infections amongst the young and healthy who would suffer no symptoms or only mild symptoms.
In my opinion, neither full lockdown nor “let it rip” was the correct option. We should have instigated a regime of very strict isolation and protection of the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. The young and healthy should have been allowed to continue normal life. Exposure of the young and healthy to the virus would have created the herd immunity necessary to eradicate the disease. Vulnerable groups cannot be totally protected, as we have seen from the full lockdowns around the world. A more targeted lockdown more rigorously enacted might have been better.
The
You don’t believe in taking medication to stopping it killing people then?
Yes, I do believe in giving medication to ill patients to stop them dying. Having a targeted partial lockdown does not imply otherwise.
In fact, I would advocate prophylactic medication for ‘at risk’ groups if there are such treatments available. Could HCQ + AZ be safely administered for this purpose ? I am also surprised that the government has not issued public information guidelines advocating the general use of vitamin D and zinc supplements.
That is not mentioned anywhere here “We can lockdown until a vaccine is discovered, trialled, licenced, manufactured in large quantities and administered. If this is going to take 12 – 18 months, can we really lockdown for that long without consequences that are worse than those of the pandemic itself ?”
If medication totally reduces the risk for everyone, which can be found with extra time given by lockdown then ergo you do not need lockdown.
In fact with Vitamin B12, C & D supplements along with HQC + Zinc, social spacing and PPE for the vunerable we are probably already there.
Whether there are enough drugs to do so is something else, because like everything else the world has been slow to ramp up on anything.
Pretty sure the Z-Pack should only be used if there an active case. Certainly should only be used on the very sick. But much anecdotal evidence that HCQ has a prophylactic effect.
Carbon Model Calculations by Peter Dietze
including open review.
Krishna,
Good work by Peter Dietze, who used a realistic decay rate, based on observations, not the theoretical Bern model which assumes that the ocean surface layer is similar in saturation everywhere and isolates the deep oceans from the surface. That is certainly not true for the sink places near the poles and the upwelling places near the equator.
It would have been better if this post had been split into two, since it treats two different subjects.
It would have. But Monckton’s base for credibility here is his global warming arguments. That credibility is being abused to give credibility to the economic shut downs.
Much like so and so actor is great at making movies. So their opinion is super valuable in global warming, abortion, and a myriad of other topical things. Super well known actor says global warming is a serious issue! Lord Monckton says economic suicide is the only way to fight the virus!
Have you ever considered the possibility that Lord Monckton might be right about global warming AND the corona virus?
But that one of his opinions pleases you and the other doesn’t?
Which makes you a victim of confirmation bias?
Just my two cents.
I’m with Ron.
Mr. Monckton is right about global warming and the corona virus. The economic shutdowns add to Mr. Monckton’s credibility. The virus models showed that anywhere from 1 million to 2.2 million Americans would die if nothing was done to mitigate the Wuhan virus, and that between 100,000 to 140,000 Americans would die if mitigation measures were taken.
The current death toll in the U.S. is 68,000 and climbing which means the virus computer models are certainly in the ballpark in their initial projections so claiming an economic shutdown is not called for is denying reality. Unless, of course, it is acceptable to the one making the clam that we allow 2 million people to die that we could have saved had we taken action.
What is not credible are all the virus computer model bashers who have gotten it all wrong and want us to make policy based on their delusions and misunderstandings of the virus computer models.
When can we expect those who have tried to destroy the credibility of the virus computer models and the authorities who use them, going to apologize for misleading the public and causing public consternation and confusion? When are you guys going to admit you were wrong and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx were right?
Three big problems with those models:
1) Bad data
2) Bad models
3) Assuming everywhere is US is Tuscany or NYC
Garbage In Garbage Out. Those models are useless.
“Garbage In Garbage Out. Those models are useless.”
Let’s see what you say in a couple of months. My bet is we won’t hear a peep out of you about how bad the computer models are. Or if we do, it will be baseless, as is this comment of yours.
>>
Let’s see what you say in a couple of months.
<<
Let’s do it now. The Imperial College-London model predicted that Sweden would have 40,000 deaths by May 1st. Current number is around 2,000 deaths. That’s off by a factor of 20. Usually in science, if you’re off by an order of magnitude or more, you don’t understand the problem.
Jim
Paper about the “accuracy” of commercial antibody tests:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.25.20074856v1.full.pdf
News article about it:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/28/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests-terrible/index.html?fbclid=IwAR29ZIztvimTAE28i2AJxof1eGTFgcOR0AozcDKgPYvJV7XuvDJG5xSomWk
Why is it whenever I see “…some epidemiologists have predicted” I think of those stories that begin, “Mathematicians say they’ve found a way to beat Vegas casinos”?
I’m still waiting for the 2.2 million dead in the USA as predicted by the Imperial College-London.
https://www.aier.org/article/imperial-college-model-applied-to-sweden-yields-preposterous-results/amp/
Why are you waiting?
Didin’t the USA take action to reduce those numbers, or do you think the lockdowns are for the fun of it?
AC were some of those model assumptions that Government would have NO lockdowns?
Of course they, but every model has it’s Baseline which in the case of epidemics is do nothing.
Which is where all the massive numbers come from.
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I’m still waiting for the 2.2 million dead in the USA as predicted by the Imperial College-London.
<<
Interesting. I thought it was the IHME University of Washington model that made that prediction. These models are atrocious. Anyway, we saved 2.2 million computer lives by destroying more than 30 million real lives–what a great trade!
Jim
More than 30 million people. Don’t forget family members. Those of us still working also see our retirement plans being flushed down the crapper. Instead of retiring in 10-12 years, it may be 20 or more for me.