Spot the blip – any impact on CO2 from the Covid-19 shutdown is all but lost in the noise of natural variation
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Proof that ongoing expensive CO2 reduction efforts are utterly futile. Green hopes that the Covid-19 lockdown would have a significant impact on global CO2 have been dashed.
World Meteorological Organization data crush hopes that lockdowns across the world would have pushed emissions to a record low.
Carbon dioxide levels hit new highs last year and are expected to keep growing in 2020, despite coronavirus-related restrictions that forced a global industrial slowdown.
The alarming patterns were published on Monday by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), crushing hopes that lockdowns across the world would have pushed emissions, the main driver to climate change, to a record low.
…
The WMO said the change in carbon dioxide concentrations – the result of cumulative past and current emissions – is, in fact, no bigger than the normal year-to-year fluctuations in the carbon cycle and in the amount of carbon being soaked up by vegetation and oceans.
Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite COVID-19 lockdown
23 November 2020 Press Release Number: 23112020
Geneva, 23 November 2020 (WMO) – The industrial slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has not curbed record levels of greenhouse gases which are trapping heat in the atmosphere, increasing temperatures and driving more extreme weather, ice melt, sea-level rise and ocean acidification, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The lockdown has cut emissions of many pollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. But any impact on CO2 concentrations – the result of cumulative past and current emissions – is in fact no bigger than the normal year to year fluctuations in the carbon cycle and the high natural variability in carbon sinks like vegetation.
Carbon dioxide levels saw another growth spurt in 2019 and the annual global average breached the significant threshold of 410 parts per million, according to the WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The rise has continued in 2020. Since 1990, there has been a 45% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on the climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases, with CO2 accounting for four fifths of this.
“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now. But there weren’t 7.7 billion inhabitants,” said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas.
“We breached the global threshold of 400 parts per million in 2015. And just four years later, we crossed 410 ppm. Such a rate of increase has never been seen in the history of our records. The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph. We need a sustained flattening of the curve,” said Prof Taalas.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is not a solution for climate change. However, it does provide us with a platform for more sustained and ambitious climate action to reduce emissions to net zero through a complete transformation of our industrial, energy and transport systems. The needed changes are economically affordable and technically possible and would affect our everyday life only marginally. It is to be welcomed that a growing number of countries and companies have committed themselves to carbon neutrality,” he said. “There is no time to lose.”
CO2
Methane
Nitrous oxide
2019 global mean abundance
410.5±0.2 ppm
1877±2 ppb
332.0±0.1 ppb
2019 abundance relative to year 1750a
148%
260%
123%
2018-19 absolute increase
2.6 ppm
8 ppb
0.9 ppb
2018-19 relative increase
0.64%
0.43%
0.27%
Mean annual absolute increase of last 10 years
2.37 ppm yr-1
7.3 ppb yr-1
0.96 ppb yr-1
2020 Trends
The Global Carbon Project estimated that during the most intense period of the shutdown, daily CO2 emissions may have been reduced by up to 17% globally due to the confinement of the population. As the duration and severity of confinement measures remain unclear, the prediction of the total annual emission reduction over 2020 is very uncertain.
Preliminary estimates indicate a reduction in the annual global emission between 4.2% and 7.5%. At the global scale, an emissions reduction this scale will not cause atmospheric CO2 to go down. CO2 will continue to go up, though at a slightly reduced pace (0.08-0.23 ppm per year lower). This falls well within the 1 ppm natural inter-annual variability. This means that on the short-term the impact of the COVID-19 confinements cannot be distinguished from natural variability, according to the Bulletin.
New records in 2019
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin – one of WMO’s flagship reports – provides details on atmospheric abundance of the main long-lived greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The Bulletin is based on observations and measurements from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch and partner networks, which includes atmospheric monitoring stations in remote Polar regions, high mountains and tropical islands. These stations have continued to function despite COVID-19 restrictions hampering resupplies and rotation of staff in often harsh and isolated locations.
Atmospheric radiative forcing, relative to 1750, of long-loved greenhouse gases and the 2019 update of the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index
CO2
Carbon dioxide is the single most important long-lived greenhouse gas in the atmosphere related to human activities, contributing about two thirds of the radiative forcing. The annual globally averaged level of carbon dioxide was about 410.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2019, up from 407.9 parts ppm in 2018, having crossed the 400 parts per million benchmark in 2015. The increase in CO2 from 2018 to 2019 was larger than that observed from 2017 to 2018 and also larger than the average over the last decade.
Emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and cement production, deforestation and other land-use change pushed 2019 atmospheric CO2 to 148% of the pre-industrial level of 278 ppm, which represented a balance of fluxes among the atmosphere, the oceans and the land biosphere. During last decade about 44% of CO2 remained in the atmosphere, while 23% was absorbed by the ocean and 29% by land, with 4% unattributed.
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin is based on global average figures for 2019. Individual stations have shown that the upward trend continues in 2020. Monthly Average CO2 concentrations at the benchmark station of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, were 411.29 ppm in September 2020, up from 408.54 ppm in September 2019. At Cape Grim in Tasmania (Australia), the respective figures were 410.8 ppm in September 2020, up from 408.58 ppm in 2019.
Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which remains in the atmosphere for less than a decade, was 260% of pre-industrial levels in 2019 at 1 877 parts per billion. The increase from 2018 to 2019 was slightly lower than that observed from 2017 to 2018 but still higher than the average over the last decade.
Methane contributes about 16% of the radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases. Approximately 40% of methane is emitted into the atmosphere by natural sources (e.g., wetlands and termites), and about 60% comes from anthropogenic sources (e.g., ruminants, rice agriculture, fossil fuel exploitation, landfills and biomass burning).
Nitrous Oxide, which is both a greenhouse gas and ozone depleting chemical, reached 332.0 parts per billion in 2019, or 123% above pre-industrial levels. The increase from 2018 to 2019 was also lower than that observed from 2017 to 2018 and practically equal to the average growth rate over the past 10 years.
Several other gases are also presented in the Bulletin, including the ozone depleting substances regulated under the Montreal protocol.
Notes for Editors
The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch Programme coordinates systematic observations and analysis of greenhouse gases and other atmospheric constituents. Greenhouse gas measurement data are archived and distributed by the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) at the Japan Meteorological Agency which celebrates its 30thanniversary in 2020.
A separate and complementary Emissions Gap Report by UN Environment will be released on 9 December. The Emissions Gap report assesses the latest scientific studies on current and estimated future greenhouse gas emissions; they compare these with the emission levels permissible for the world to progress on a least-cost pathway to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. This difference between “where we are likely to be and where we need to be” is known as the emissions gap.
The Global Carbon Project will release its annual update of the global carbon budget and trends in December.
The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s authoritative voice on Weather, Climate and Water
For further information contact: Clare Nullis, media officer. Email cnullis@wmo.int. Cell 41797091397
What kind of extreme lockdown would be required to level the curve? No nation would tolerate the medieval privations which would be required to significantly change the trajectory of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Greens have repeatedly suggested that the Covid-19 lockdown is a trial run for the coming climate lockdown. I suspect greens were hoping the CO2 curve would respond to the Covid-19 lockdown in a way they could present as proof that a viable path to a dramatically lower CO2 trajectory was within reach.
But now we’ve all seen proof that the kind of extreme cutbacks greens are proposing as part of a permanent solution to climate change don’t make a lot of difference.
“now we’ve all seen proof that the kind of extreme cutbacks greens are proposing as part of a permanent solution to climate change don’t make a lot of difference”
Zero response in a sad excuse for scientific data is not proof.
Richard Courtney
November 25, 2020 12:36 am
Eric Worral,
It is not news that annual CO2 emissions from human activities have no relationship to annual change in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
For decades I have been pointing out that if the extra CO2 emission of human origin was the only emission, then in some years, almost all of it seems to be absorbed into the sinks, and in other years almost none.
Accounting differences and errors probably account for some of this discrepancy. For example, if a record of some national CO2 emission is delayed from one year to the next then the total global CO2 emission from human activity will be lowered in the first of those years and increased in the other year. However, all such problems would be overcome by a three-year running mean of the annual data.
The IPCC uses a FIVE-year running mean to the data because that is the amount of smoothing required to obtain agreement between the global CO2 emission from human activity and the rise of atmospheric CO2 predicted by its carbon cycle model (the Bern model).
In 2008 at the first Heartlands Climate Conference I expanded on findings in one of our papers published in 2005 (ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
I then said,
“This presentation reports attribution studies that have used three different models to emulate the causes of the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century. These numerical exercises are a caution to estimates of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The three models used in these exercises each emulate different physical processes and each agrees with the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. They each demonstrate that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of the anthropogenic emission or may be solely a result of, for example, desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it. Furthermore, extrapolation using these models gives very different predictions of future atmospheric CO2 concentration whatever the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Each of the models in this paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.
So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration. This finding agrees with the statement in Chapter 2 from Working Group 3 in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) that says; “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”.(9)””
And I explained those findings saying,
“”Figures 1 and 6 provide an apparent paradox. The annual anthropogenic emission of CO2 should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is causal of the other but Figure 1 shows these two parameters do not correlate. However, Figure 6 shows that – using each of these different models – we were able to model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as being a function solely of the annual anthropogenic emission of CO2. It is important to note that we did not use any ‘fiddle factors’ such as the 5-year-averageing used by the IPCC (that cannot be justified because there is no known physical mechanism that would have such effect).
The apparent paradox is resolved by consideration of the calculated equilibrium CO2 concentration values, Ce. These are shown in Figure 7. Each model indicates that the calculated CO2 concentration for the equilibrium state in each year is considerably above the observed values. This demonstrates that each model indicates there is a considerable time lag required to reach the equilibrium state when there is no accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. In other words, one has to reckon with a considerable time lag to reach the equilibrium state Fa = 0 when Fin increases to a certain value with increasing Fem.
As Figure 2 shows, the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic emission in a year. But, according to these models, the total emission of that year affects the equilibrium state of the entire system. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to the new equilibrium. And Figure 6 shows the models predicting the atmospheric CO2 concentration slowly rising in response to the changing equilibrium condition that is shown in Figure 7.”
And in that presentation I also said ,
“Qualitative consideration of the carbon cycle suggests the carbon cycle cannot be very sensitive to relatively small disturbances such as the present anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the system could be quite sensitive to temperature. Indeed, the considerations suggest that the relatively large increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century is likely to have been caused by the increased mean temperature that preceded it. The main cause may be desorption from the oceans. The observed time lag of half a century is not surprising. Assessment of this conclusion requires a quantitative model of the carbon cycle, but such a model cannot be constructed because the rate constants are not known for mechanisms operating in the carbon cycle.”
“No nation would tolerate the medieval privations which would be required to significantly change the trajectory of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.”
No nation indeed, but ask Klaus from the World Economic Forum.
CheshireRed
November 25, 2020 4:26 am
In keeping with previous events that have cast doubt / eviscerated / falsified AGW theory, expect a ‘peer-reviewed rebuttal paper’ to be rushed out by early spring.
It’ll be ‘comprehensive’, ‘authoritative’ and ‘definitive, and shall ‘demonstrating beyond doubt that the total failure of CO2 to do as its told in line with AGW theory doesn’t cast doubt on the sacred AGW theory, let alone disprove it at all’.
Philip
November 25, 2020 6:56 am
“CO2 emissions may have been reduced by up to 17%… will not cause atmospheric CO2 to go down.”
The WMO’s admission is an understatement. The IPCC claims that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to man’s emissions. What matters isn’t the annual average that the WMO describes, but the increase during the period when man’s emissions were reduced. Not only was the CO2 increase during the 2020 lockdown (when man’s emissions were smaller by about 20%) not reduced, the CO2 increase then was actually greater than it was during 2019 (when man’s emissions were larger).
The contradiction indicates that whatever role man’s emissions play in rising CO2, it must be small.
Richard M
November 25, 2020 7:37 am
Another thing to keep in mind is that increases in ocean salinity lead to both increases in temperature (caused by less evaporation) and increases in outgassing of CO2 (fresher water holds more CO2). Hence, a lot is explained by a simple increase in ocean salinity.
Both of these are due to the basic physics of good old H2O.
In Figure 2 of Thirumalai et al (2018) you can see increases in salinity match closely the increases in SSTs. SSTs match well with the temperature of the mixed layer of the oceans. While this does not show all of the oceans of the planet it does show how temperature and salinity correlate.
What causes changes in salinity over long periods of time is very likely the large insertions of fresh water from glacial melting at the beginning of interglacial periods. This creates parts of the oceans that have different salinity features. As the overturning of the oceans occur these features are alternately brought to the surface affecting both the temperature and CO2 levels.
A very simple explanation for long term variations in temperature which are evident during the Holocene. Occam’s Razor comes to mind.
Marcus
November 25, 2020 8:35 am
“CO2 will continue to go up, though at a slightly reduced pace (0.08-0.23 ppm per year lower). This falls well within the 1 ppm natural inter-annual variability.”
This is the key sentence. Based on the standard carbon cycle models, a reduction of 4.2 to 7.5% of one year’s emissions gets you 0.08 to 0.23 ppm of reduction relative to business as usual. ENSO variability leads to a variation of 1 ppm above or below a trend. ENSO variability tends to average out over a 5 year period, so a reduction of this size carried out for 5 years would likely emerge from the noise in terms of a trend change.
That does say something about how drastic emission reductions need to be to make a difference. It says nothing about whether the standard carbon cycle models are wrong or not: this is consistent both with the standard models and with the theory that human emissions have no impact, it doesn’t help distinguish between them.
Loren C Wilson
November 25, 2020 9:56 am
As far as I can tell, all gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons produce as much or more water on a molar basis than carbon dioxide. Only coal releases more molecules of CO2 than water when it is burned. The molar basis is important because infra-red radiation is absorbed and emitted by a molecule, not a mass. See the table below. Since water is a stronger green-house gas, they should be much more worried about water released into the atmosphere via combustion, let alone the billions of tons of water evaporated via farming, irrigation, watering my lawn, breathing, plant respiration, reservoirs, etc. Why focus on #2 instead of #1? If they want greenhouse gases to go down, we have to kill a lot of wildlife and humans and make the planet a desert.
C H CO2 H2O
CH4 1 4 1 2
C8H18 8 18 8 9
C30H62 30 62 30 31
Coal 0.6 0.4 0.6 0.2
Geoff Sherrington
November 25, 2020 3:37 pm
The big problem is yet to come.
Suppose that zealots like John Kerry get to have a formal say on CO2 reduction. More coal shut down, more windmills built … but how are the regulators going to measure the effect of CO2 reductions in the air? How are they going to penalise an emitter when the emitter can show that similar shutdowns already have no effect discernable in CO2 air concentrations?
It is like the p[olice giving tickets for speeding, when their radar guns no longer respond to speeding cars.
Eric
This result is not unexpected as it is in line with what happened after 2002, when human emissions tripled, and during 2009 when they collapsed under the strain of the GFC. Neither of these huge changes in human emissions appeared in either the Moana Loa CO2 record – or in any of the different global temperature data sets
Tom Abbott
November 26, 2020 10:52 am
From the article: “Since 1990, there has been a 45% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on the climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases, with CO2 accounting for four fifths of this.”
Of course, we don’t really know what a 45% increase in total radiative forcing would amount to, because we don’t know how much warmth a given amount of CO2 adds to the Earth’s atmosphere. All we currently have are guesses as to what that number would be.
So, although a 45% increase might sound scary, it is really meaningless in this context. You get a lot of this kind of thing (scary sounding but meaningless) with Alarmist Climate Science.
goracle
November 27, 2020 7:33 pm
who would’ve thought human beings had so little impact on CO2… myself and
quite a few others, it seems…. except of course for the scientists getting taxpayer-funded grants to say that we have a huge impact… pathetic
“now we’ve all seen proof that the kind of extreme cutbacks greens are proposing as part of a permanent solution to climate change don’t make a lot of difference”
Zero response in a sad excuse for scientific data is not proof.
Eric Worral,
It is not news that annual CO2 emissions from human activities have no relationship to annual change in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
For decades I have been pointing out that if the extra CO2 emission of human origin was the only emission, then in some years, almost all of it seems to be absorbed into the sinks, and in other years almost none.
Accounting differences and errors probably account for some of this discrepancy. For example, if a record of some national CO2 emission is delayed from one year to the next then the total global CO2 emission from human activity will be lowered in the first of those years and increased in the other year. However, all such problems would be overcome by a three-year running mean of the annual data.
The IPCC uses a FIVE-year running mean to the data because that is the amount of smoothing required to obtain agreement between the global CO2 emission from human activity and the rise of atmospheric CO2 predicted by its carbon cycle model (the Bern model).
In 2008 at the first Heartlands Climate Conference I expanded on findings in one of our papers published in 2005 (ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
I then said,
“This presentation reports attribution studies that have used three different models to emulate the causes of the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century. These numerical exercises are a caution to estimates of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The three models used in these exercises each emulate different physical processes and each agrees with the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. They each demonstrate that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of the anthropogenic emission or may be solely a result of, for example, desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it. Furthermore, extrapolation using these models gives very different predictions of future atmospheric CO2 concentration whatever the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Each of the models in this paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.
So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration. This finding agrees with the statement in Chapter 2 from Working Group 3 in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) that says; “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”.(9)””
And I explained those findings saying,
“”Figures 1 and 6 provide an apparent paradox. The annual anthropogenic emission of CO2 should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is causal of the other but Figure 1 shows these two parameters do not correlate. However, Figure 6 shows that – using each of these different models – we were able to model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as being a function solely of the annual anthropogenic emission of CO2. It is important to note that we did not use any ‘fiddle factors’ such as the 5-year-averageing used by the IPCC (that cannot be justified because there is no known physical mechanism that would have such effect).
The apparent paradox is resolved by consideration of the calculated equilibrium CO2 concentration values, Ce. These are shown in Figure 7. Each model indicates that the calculated CO2 concentration for the equilibrium state in each year is considerably above the observed values. This demonstrates that each model indicates there is a considerable time lag required to reach the equilibrium state when there is no accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. In other words, one has to reckon with a considerable time lag to reach the equilibrium state Fa = 0 when Fin increases to a certain value with increasing Fem.
As Figure 2 shows, the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic emission in a year. But, according to these models, the total emission of that year affects the equilibrium state of the entire system. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to the new equilibrium. And Figure 6 shows the models predicting the atmospheric CO2 concentration slowly rising in response to the changing equilibrium condition that is shown in Figure 7.”
And in that presentation I also said ,
“Qualitative consideration of the carbon cycle suggests the carbon cycle cannot be very sensitive to relatively small disturbances such as the present anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the system could be quite sensitive to temperature. Indeed, the considerations suggest that the relatively large increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century is likely to have been caused by the increased mean temperature that preceded it. The main cause may be desorption from the oceans. The observed time lag of half a century is not surprising. Assessment of this conclusion requires a quantitative model of the carbon cycle, but such a model cannot be constructed because the rate constants are not known for mechanisms operating in the carbon cycle.”
That is important because recent work by Ed Berry provides a solution to the problem of needing to know the rate constants for individual mechanisms. That solution is a breakthrough in understanding which I and all others failed to make. The book by Ed Berry is commended by Allan MacRae above at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/24/wmo-the-covid-19-lockdown-had-very-little-impact-on-global-co2/#comment-3133163 .
Richard
“No nation would tolerate the medieval privations which would be required to significantly change the trajectory of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.”
No nation indeed, but ask Klaus from the World Economic Forum.
In keeping with previous events that have cast doubt / eviscerated / falsified AGW theory, expect a ‘peer-reviewed rebuttal paper’ to be rushed out by early spring.
It’ll be ‘comprehensive’, ‘authoritative’ and ‘definitive, and shall ‘demonstrating beyond doubt that the total failure of CO2 to do as its told in line with AGW theory doesn’t cast doubt on the sacred AGW theory, let alone disprove it at all’.
“CO2 emissions may have been reduced by up to 17%… will not cause atmospheric CO2 to go down.”
The WMO’s admission is an understatement. The IPCC claims that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to man’s emissions. What matters isn’t the annual average that the WMO describes, but the increase during the period when man’s emissions were reduced. Not only was the CO2 increase during the 2020 lockdown (when man’s emissions were smaller by about 20%) not reduced, the CO2 increase then was actually greater than it was during 2019 (when man’s emissions were larger).
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/covid-pandemic-has-little-impact-on-rise-in-co2/
The contradiction indicates that whatever role man’s emissions play in rising CO2, it must be small.
Another thing to keep in mind is that increases in ocean salinity lead to both increases in temperature (caused by less evaporation) and increases in outgassing of CO2 (fresher water holds more CO2). Hence, a lot is explained by a simple increase in ocean salinity.
Both of these are due to the basic physics of good old H2O.
In Figure 2 of Thirumalai et al (2018) you can see increases in salinity match closely the increases in SSTs. SSTs match well with the temperature of the mixed layer of the oceans. While this does not show all of the oceans of the planet it does show how temperature and salinity correlate.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02846-4
What causes changes in salinity over long periods of time is very likely the large insertions of fresh water from glacial melting at the beginning of interglacial periods. This creates parts of the oceans that have different salinity features. As the overturning of the oceans occur these features are alternately brought to the surface affecting both the temperature and CO2 levels.
A very simple explanation for long term variations in temperature which are evident during the Holocene. Occam’s Razor comes to mind.
“CO2 will continue to go up, though at a slightly reduced pace (0.08-0.23 ppm per year lower). This falls well within the 1 ppm natural inter-annual variability.”
This is the key sentence. Based on the standard carbon cycle models, a reduction of 4.2 to 7.5% of one year’s emissions gets you 0.08 to 0.23 ppm of reduction relative to business as usual. ENSO variability leads to a variation of 1 ppm above or below a trend. ENSO variability tends to average out over a 5 year period, so a reduction of this size carried out for 5 years would likely emerge from the noise in terms of a trend change.
That does say something about how drastic emission reductions need to be to make a difference. It says nothing about whether the standard carbon cycle models are wrong or not: this is consistent both with the standard models and with the theory that human emissions have no impact, it doesn’t help distinguish between them.
As far as I can tell, all gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons produce as much or more water on a molar basis than carbon dioxide. Only coal releases more molecules of CO2 than water when it is burned. The molar basis is important because infra-red radiation is absorbed and emitted by a molecule, not a mass. See the table below. Since water is a stronger green-house gas, they should be much more worried about water released into the atmosphere via combustion, let alone the billions of tons of water evaporated via farming, irrigation, watering my lawn, breathing, plant respiration, reservoirs, etc. Why focus on #2 instead of #1? If they want greenhouse gases to go down, we have to kill a lot of wildlife and humans and make the planet a desert.
C H CO2 H2O
CH4 1 4 1 2
C8H18 8 18 8 9
C30H62 30 62 30 31
Coal 0.6 0.4 0.6 0.2
The big problem is yet to come.
Suppose that zealots like John Kerry get to have a formal say on CO2 reduction. More coal shut down, more windmills built … but how are the regulators going to measure the effect of CO2 reductions in the air? How are they going to penalise an emitter when the emitter can show that similar shutdowns already have no effect discernable in CO2 air concentrations?
It is like the p[olice giving tickets for speeding, when their radar guns no longer respond to speeding cars.
Geoff S
Eric
This result is not unexpected as it is in line with what happened after 2002, when human emissions tripled, and during 2009 when they collapsed under the strain of the GFC. Neither of these huge changes in human emissions appeared in either the Moana Loa CO2 record – or in any of the different global temperature data sets
From the article: “Since 1990, there has been a 45% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on the climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases, with CO2 accounting for four fifths of this.”
Of course, we don’t really know what a 45% increase in total radiative forcing would amount to, because we don’t know how much warmth a given amount of CO2 adds to the Earth’s atmosphere. All we currently have are guesses as to what that number would be.
So, although a 45% increase might sound scary, it is really meaningless in this context. You get a lot of this kind of thing (scary sounding but meaningless) with Alarmist Climate Science.
who would’ve thought human beings had so little impact on CO2… myself and
quite a few others, it seems…. except of course for the scientists getting taxpayer-funded grants to say that we have a huge impact… pathetic