Clearly the net zero push to date has been a complete failure. But the green focus on renewables made this inevitable.
More bad news for the planet: greenhouse gas levels hit new highs
Tags: Greenhouse gases Published 26 October 2022 Press Release Number: 26102022
WMO records biggest increase in methane concentrations since start of measurements
Geneva/New York, 26 October (WMO) – In yet another ominous climate change warning, atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide all reached new record highs in 2021, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reported the biggest year-on-year jump in methane concentrations in 2021 since systematic measurements began nearly 40 years ago. The reason for this exceptional increase is not clear, but seems to be a result of both biological and human-induced processes.
The increase in carbon dioxide levels from 2020 to 2021 was larger than the average annual growth rate over the last decade. Measurements from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network stations show that these levels continues to rise in 2022 over the whole globe.
Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%, with carbon dioxide accounting for about 80% of this increase.
Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million (ppm), methane at 1908 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide at 334.5 ppb. These values constitute, respectively, 149%, 262% and 124% of pre-industrial levels before human activities started disrupting natural equilibrium of these gases in the atmosphere.
“WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin has underlined, once again, the enormous challenge – and the vital necessity – of urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global temperatures rising even further in the future,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
“The continuing rise in concentrations of the main heat-trapping gases, including the record acceleration in methane levels, shows that we are heading in the wrong direction,” he said.
“There are cost-effective strategies available to tackle methane emissions, especially from the fossil fuel sector, and we should implement these without delay. However, methane has a relatively short lifetime of less than 10 years and so its impact on climate is reversible. As the top and most urgent priority, we have to slash carbon dioxide emissions which are the main driver of climate change and associated extreme weather, and which will affect climate for thousands of years through polar ice loss, ocean warming and sea level rise,” said Prof. Taalas.
“We need to transform our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life. The needed changes are economically affordable and technically possible. Time is running out,” said Prof. Taalas.
Given the need to strengthen the greenhouse gas information basis for decisions on climate mitigation efforts, WMO is working with the broader greenhouse gas community to develop a framework for sustained, internationally coordinated global greenhouse gas monitoring, including observing network design and international exchange and use of the resulting observations. It will engage with the broader scientific and international community, in particular regarding land surface and ocean observation and modelling.
WMO measures atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases – what remains in the atmosphere after gases are absorbed by sinks like the ocean and biosphere. This is not the same as emissions.
A separate and complementary Emissions Gap Report by UN Environment will be released on 27 October. The Emissions Gap report assesses the latest scientific studies on current and estimated future greenhouse gas emissions. This difference between “where we are likely to be and where we need to be” is known as the emissions gap.
As long as emissions continue, global temperature will continue to rise. Given the long life of CO2, the temperature level already observed will persist for decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.
Highlights of the Bulletin
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 149% of the pre-industrial level in 2021, primarily because of emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and cement production. Global emissions have rebounded since the COVID-related lockdowns in 2020. Of the total emissions from human activities during the 2011–2020 period, about 48% accumulated in the atmosphere, 26% in the ocean and 29% on land.
There is concern that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increase. In some parts of the world the transition of the land sink into CO2 source is already happening.
Atmospheric methane is the second largest contributor to climate change and consists of a diverse mix of overlapping sources and sinks, so it is difficult to quantify emissions by source type.
Since 2007, globally-averaged atmospheric methane concentration has been increasing at an accelerating rate. The annual increases in 2020 and 2021 (15 and 18 ppb respectively) are the largest since systematic record began in 1983.
Causes are still being investigated by the global greenhouse gas science community. Analysis indicates that the largest contribution to the renewed increase in methane since 2007 comes from biogenic sources, such as wetlands or rice paddies. It is not yet possible to say if the extreme increases in 2020 an 2021 represent a climate feedback – if it gets warmer, the organic material decomposes faster. If it decomposes in the water (without oxygen) this leads to methane emissions. Thus, if tropical wetlands become wetter and warmer, more emissions are possible.
The dramatic increase might also be because of natural interannual variability. The years 2020 and 2021 saw La Niña events which are associated with increased precipitation in tropics.
Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas. It is emitted into the atmosphere from both natural sources (approximately 57%) and anthropogenic sources (approximately 43%), including oceans, soils, biomass burning, fertilizer use, and various industrial processes. The increase from 2020 to 2021 was slightly higher than that observed from 2019 to 2020 and higher than the average annual growth rate over the past 10 years
The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch Programme coordinates systematic observations and analyses of greenhouse gases (GHG). The Bulletin includes measurement data from 55 WMO Members. This data is archived and distributed by the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) at the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s authoritative voice on Weather, Climate and Water
For further information contact: Clare Nullis, WMO media officer, cnullis@wmo.int. Tel 41-79-7091397
Obviously I think the WMO’s CO2 alarmism is a joke. But the bigger joke is greens have had a proven means of reducing CO2 emissions at their fingertips since the mid 20th century, but chose not to use it.
If the world had focussed on affordable nuclear power, if the world had converted most electricity production to zero carbon nuclear, like France did in the 1970s, greens probably would have made at least a small dent in those graphs.
Greens claim nuclear is too expensive, but that is simply not true – otherwise how could France have done it? Either you embrace the idea that the French are the foremost engineering geniuses in the world, or you accept that the factor which is making nuclear power too costly in most countries is something other than the cost of constructing and operating the nuclear plants.
Nuclear Power in France. Public domain, source Wikipedia.
I think the point he’s making is all gains break down into sugar and spike glucose in the body, thus large quantities aren’t good for long term health, hence our health crisis in the US. Meats and vegetables would be a better diet for humans. Grains and grasses for ruminants.
Sorry Peta but you are spouting pure crap.
My guess is that you are an organic grower in a small way .
Head line “Plough kills thousands and millions starve because of plough ban.”
You seem to have a real problem with grain growers .
Wheat is grown for flour that is the basic food for billions ,oats for porridge and Musili and horses . Barley for brewing beer and other drinks .
Ploughs used correctly do a good job of burying trash after harvest and they will deepen the soil profile over time .
Farmers a careful not to plough when the soil is wet as smearing can occur .
The worst implement is the power harrow which should be banned as they thrash the soil and beat it into a to fine powder which will move down hill in heavy rain.
without plowing farmers have to rely on Roundup and then use a strip till planterglysaphate
This is what happens with modern technology .My computer posted on its own accord as I was trying to edit this above .
Farmers can spray out with glysophate and then drill their crops with a strip till planter
.After 55 years we have changed to this practice as our maize paddocks are first planted in fodder beet and then a catch crop of oats or rye grass which is cut for silage then sprayed out and direct drilled into maize for silage or corn as you call it in the USA.
The Food Guide is based on feeble science like Climate Change.
Yes, industrial farming feeds billions, but we are learning that cheap carbs and seed oils are the cause of multiple modern health issues, and are not a healthy diet.
Really? Life was hard 200 years ago. Has there been no logevity contribution from modern sanitation, medicine, central heating, machinery doing the heavy work etc?
They always ignore the MOST important greenhouse gas — H2O. Which not only holds radiant energy. It also transfers and holds sensible and latent heat in three phases at 0 C to 100 C at 1 atmosphere pressure.
None of the other greenhouse gases have near the same impact as all of the water on the planet
The green alarmist crowd seems to have little concept of what parts per billion actually represents in decimal figures or atmospheric percentages. When you have close to nothing, it takes very little to make a huge increase in percentage.
Ironic that SST heating and Henry’s law of gas absorption in liquid are the simplest explanation for increased trace gasses in the atmosphere, yet the concept is completely ignored as far as I can tell.
Methane comes from the mining of fossil fuels.
Nitrous oxides come from the heat of combustion, causing the nitrogen in the atmosphere to combine with oxygen in the atmosphere.
Comparing the concentration of methane to a volume of air has little value and is misleading. While 1 PPB sounds like nothing significant it would represent about 10^15 power of molecules in a cubic meter. Now add 10^25 power of photons per second travelling through that cubic meter and the numbers look a bit more interesting.
Yes, much ado about nothing. Two more human-caused climate change alarmist scare stories that are not scary once you dig into the details. Zero impact is correct.
surely it’s the condensing of water vapor into clouds that has a major effect on both reflection of heat back to earth (heating effect) and more importantly, reflection of much more heat in sunlight away from the earth when more clouds are present. Even IF there is a shift in greenhouse gasses, then surely WATER must play a huge part in the stabilization of the earths habitable zone by its presence. There are many ways water assists in stabilizing the temperature. Reflection from clouds is a big one, adjusting solar input AND heat out to the night sky. Phase change ICE>water>ICE and water>vapor >water all store or give off massive amounts of heat as part of the temperature stabilization process. So WHY is it NOT taken into account ???
Not only that, it means James Hanson’s dreams of turning good ‘ol Gaia into Venus are actually baseless. Naming this planet “Earth” only showed the perspective of humanity at the time.
This is a water planet.
Ruled by the behaviours of water, not trace gasses.
Due to the continual replenishment of that condensing gas, any increase in CO2 beyond 20ppm is meaningless in terms of any “effect” on temperature. Of course, it is vital for life on Earth for atmospheric levels to be high enough for photosynthesis to occur…
As the climate record shows us, much higher CO2 levels than today not only could not cause the “runaway greenhouse effect” of the Climate Fascist wet dreams, but couldn’t stop temperatures from plummeting from ‘hot house’ to ‘ice house’ climate at ten times today’s level.
Well mixed GHGs have almost no warming effect whatsoever once their surface absorption bands are saturated. The reason is based on two key physical facts.
1) Increases in concentration do not affect the flow of upward energy through the atmosphere to space. The flow is a constant.
2) Boundary layer feedback cancels almost all of the increases in downwelling IR.
You get a small increase in warming from additional absorption in the wings of the main CO2 frequency bands. However, you also get more evaporation and photosynthesis to counteract it.
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY June 15, 2019 https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/ “Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past.”
“Temperature drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.”
Nonsense
A +1 degree increase of the ocean temperature might cause a +10ppm to +20ppm atmospheric CO2 increase (Note that nature has always been a net CO2 absorber)
Manmade CO2 emissions caused almost a +50% increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1850.
If the CO2 increase since 1850 caused any global warming, then the CO2 increase from manmade CO2 is responsible.
Since CO2 has no effect on temperature increases since 1850 then Allan’s statement is correct and not nonsense. You even leave that door open by using the word “if” in your last sentence.
Please link to proof of manmade CO2 emissions in the period of 1850 to 1940 on a year by year basis. Please also link to measurements of atmospheric CO2 in that period. And finally, please link to the over all “carbon cycle” worldwide for the same period.
Now give me the proper error bars for all of that.
Nothing we have done appears to have made even the slightest impact on the amount of CO2 increase – burn fossil fuels, don’t burn ’em; nada, zip. How people can maintain that lie that “manmade CO2 is responsible” in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is the most ridiculous and stupid idea imaginable.
Note how the alarmists have discarded any attempts at logic and now claim that greenhouse gas emissions are pretty much entirely responsible for climate change/global warming. The fact that the planet has had numerous ice ages and warming periods that occurred long before human activity could have had any effect on the climate is no longer even mentioned, so is it any wonder that people greet most environmental proclamations with skepticism and derision?
As I have said before, I always say to alarmists, “Welcome to the Holocene Inter-Glacial, sadly it’s not as warm as the previous four Inter-Glacials dating back half a million+ years, they were warmer by around 2-4 degrees Celcius!!!
In my experience nothing will silence them. They may change the subject but they never shut up.
They are not interested in rational argument or debate. They have a largely political ‘green’ goal in sight and will use whatever words they think necessary to get there.
Over 500ppm was at least 5 million years ago. The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk on two legs. DID YOU DO A SURVEY OF THEM BEFORE MAKING YOUR DATA FREE CLAIM?
Irrelevant statement
You are talking about natural causes of temperature changes.
They have nothing to do with adding manmade CO2 into the atmosphere.
That is a different process.
The alarmists are claiming that CO2 drives the climate changes we are seeing them.
Pointing out that the climate changed without concurrent changes in CO2 levels is not irrelevant.
Peta of Newark
October 27, 2022 6:28 pm
Those gases (CO2, CH4 ad NOx) are all produced by the processes of decomposition.
i.e. When something, that was once alive, is no longer alive
Might be a good idea to find out what, before it is us.
More co2 from ocean outgassing leads to increased biological activity which then increases decomposition and all those gases increase further.
An increase in bugger all is still bugger all.
There is a chance that a goodly fraction of the N2O increase is indirectly due to humans, mediated by denitrifying organisms acting on nitrogenous compounds of agricultural origin.
I’m given to understand that nitrogen fixation by humans is now significant when compared to ‘natural’ nitrogen fixation processes, though when they re-estimate the scale of these processes it is upwards.
I think it was not that many years ago when they discovered that under certain conditions oceanic photosynthesising cyanobacteria will start reducing N2 when other substrates fall out of optimal ranges.
Regarding methane sources and their quantities, they are still making it up as they go along. They may be relatively well informed about the basic geo-biochemical processes but far less about the quantities and controlling mechanisms in proper context. It allows for real wild-west speculation. A climate scientist’s wet dream.
Olen
October 27, 2022 6:42 pm
Best not to listen to people operating in a continuous panic mode with a history of predictions that don’t happen and blaming you. Especially when the science is based on social change and redistribution of wealth.
High Treason
October 27, 2022 6:52 pm
Time for the catastrophists to hyperventilate. Oh dear, this will raise CO2 levels even more.
The big question is- what adverse effects are there from increasing the levels of such trace gases?
Where is the evidence? Where is a free debate?
As a general rule, one must NEVER believe anything where debate is not allowed, especially if it claims to be science.
If there is no debate allowed, the red flags MUST be raised. If there’s is no debate and no evidence presented that higher levels of CO2 cause any harm, then it is proof positive of pseudoscience with malfeasance.
This is exactly the point. We have wasted trillions of dollars on the lunacy of global warming that could have been spent on actual environmental issues (or, gasp, simply left in taxpayer’s wallets) for absolutely nothing. The incredibly consistent slope of the CO2 line in the first graph should make it obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ that something other than human emissions is in charge of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Humans are having no discernable impact on the curve. I have to believe the leaders of this scam know this and it is merely a front for economic and political control, as they have let slip many times. This is not surprising as there have always been sociopaths wanting to rule humanity. What really scares me is the huge number of useful idiots that are happy to be ruled.
The problem was that they didn’t shut down activity, they just moved it. A few factories and office buildings partially shut down. At the same time millions of homes now had to be heated 24 hours a day. Over all, the change in the amount of energy being used was very small.
Now work out how many trillions of dollars have been spent on ‘green solutions’. And then realise that they achieved absolutely nothing. I don’t even mean Climate Change ™, they haven’t even reduced CO2 by a tiny amount.
What a colossal waste of a civilization. It was nice while it lasted…
Yes once again “ever” = during the instrument record, a geologic eyeblink.
Aka MEANINGLESS.
Terry
October 27, 2022 7:57 pm
We’re going to fight this to the last man standing – WMO
Bob
October 27, 2022 8:31 pm
Looking at the graphs showing the increased concentration of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide from 1985 to 2020. I realize that they are from WMO and they are most likely very accurate but they are misleading in my view. Every time they use a graph that looks like these we need to accurately redraw them but use a more honest scale. I redrew the graph for CO2 the X axis showed the years 1985 to 2020, the Y axis CO2 concentration but I started at zero and went to 800 ppm. I chose 800 because the green devils are always whining what is going to happen to us if the CO2 concentration doubles. My graph is not very scary, it barely climbs more than two lines on my notebook paper. My graph gives the same information but is not that useful for scaring the crap out of people.
Last edited 7 months ago by Bob
Clyde Spencer
October 27, 2022 8:48 pm
Atmospheric methane is the second largest contributor to climate change and consists of a diverse mix of overlapping sources and sinks, so it is difficult to quantify emissions by source type.
Recently looking for some numbers to work with, I discovered that the EPA is fond of teratons as a metric of measurement for methane, rather than the more commonly used parts per million for other Greenhouse gases. So, one has to invest some time and effort in making comparisons. It also seems that the estimate for the natural percentage has decreased recently. And, many of the graphs end about 2015. So, the data are in a state of disarray.
However, I did find a source that suggests that recent annual growth in atmospheric methane is about 17ppb, which is equivalent to 0.017ppm. Since most are in agreement that the long-term (~10 yr) impact of CH4 is about 25X that of CO2, that means the annual growth is equivalent to about 25 x 0.017 = 0.43ppm CO2. For the sake of argument, lets assume that all of the annual increase is anthropogenic, which should give us an upper bound on the human influence. The goal agreed to by COP-26 was a reduction in anthropogenic methane. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said recently, “Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming.” After spending billions of dollars, in a few years (We have at least 7 or 8 left!) we might be able to reduce anthro’ emissions by half. That is, after that effort, the annual increase in methane might only be about 0.2ppm CO2-equivalence per year. Compare that to a current increase in CO2 of about 2.5ppm. In other words, less than 10% of the CO2 increase. Once again, the alarmists are demonstrating a lack of mastery of the issues. Oh yes, there is also a contingent that wants to re-introduce beaver to all its former range. That should easily counter any decreases in actual anthro’ CH4.
You’re missing the point; the “estimates” of the supposed “effect” of methane on temperature are pure fiction; the absorption bands overlap with water vapor which would absorb all of those bands of IR even in a total absence of methane.
Methane us a red herring used to push the anti-meat and anti-fossil fuel propaganda, just like everything else the Climate Fascists blather on about.
No, I’m not missing the point. I’m undermining their claims by pointing out that, even if their facts are true, their conclusions are ridiculous. If, using their assumptions of the impact of methane, they cannot achieve the intended goal, the question of the relative importance of methane is moot.
“Methane us a red herring used to push the anti-meat and anti-fossil fuel propaganda”
Absolutely right!
Chris Hanley
October 27, 2022 10:07 pm
Atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 149% of the pre-industrial level in 2021 …
The CO2 concentration is just on halfway to doubling the pre-industrial level (280 ppm) so if the warming effect were linear since ~1850 (+~1C HADCRUT4) another ~1C would be expected by ~2080 when CO2 is expected to reach 560 ppm.
However the known effect of CO2 is logarithmic so the expect temperature rise would be less than 1C all else being equal.
Of course that is a worst case estimate assuming CO2 is the only cause of global warming. I think the official number is +1.2 degrees C, although the starting point in the 1800s is just a guess. And greenhouse warming is mainly TMIN, not TMAX. And mainly in colder nations, not in the tropics.
How does CO2 know when to start doing its thing and where? It’s awfully convenient for something to affect only part of the world but leave the rest alone, don’t you think?
The most important part being “all else being equal,” without which CO2 does nothing to the Earth’s temperature beyond levels far too low to support life as we know it.
The feedbacks are negative, on balance, and the actual, as opposed to hypothetical, effect on temperature is essentially zero -which is what observations support.
Hans Erren
October 27, 2022 10:09 pm
Warming is also caused by cleaner air,
yes the air is cleaner
Funny how they say “the years from 2015 to 2021 were the seven warmest on record”. What they don’t say is that there hasn’t been any global warming at all for seven years. They also don’t say that 2021 was colder than both 2015 and 2016 – see https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2015. Of course this doesn’t fit the narrative and might get people asking how come “extreme” weather has got worse when then hasn’t been any global warming?
Well, what’s really “inconvenient” (pardon the pun) is that “extreme ” weather has NOT” gotten “worse.”
The only thing getting worse about the weather is the HYPE about the weather.
Redge
October 27, 2022 10:45 pm
If western countries have reduced their CO2 by 20%, 30%, whatever %, why are CO2 levels still rising (not that it really matters except to plants)?
ralfellis
October 28, 2022 12:22 am
But Dr John Christy of UAH says that the feedback effect of CO2 is only a 1.1 degree temperature rise, for a doubling of CO2. In which case, this amount of CO2 is not a problem.
And sorry, but that is STILL only a PURELY HYPOTHETICAL “effect” of CO2, because it is still grounded in the foundational assumption “all other things held equal.”
Which they have never been, are not now, and will never be. The feedbacks are negative, offsetting feedbacks on balance, and the ACTUAL, as opposed to HYPOTHETICAL “effect” cannot be distinguished from ZERO, which is what observations support.
Not entirely hypothetical.
This is the result of ACTUAL measurements of warming in the Tropical Troposphere (TTTs) – so it is REAL data. And it is these TTTs that warm the surface, giving increased surface warming.
But the effect is only 1/4 of what the IPCC predicts and claims.
And still fails to establish any connection whatsoever between warming temperatures and CO2. OK so he’s measuring temperature increases in the tropics then employing wild speculation to attribute it to something without using proper scientific rigour to find out and clearly establish what is causing it. It could just as easily be coconuts as CO2 for all he knows.
Steve G
October 28, 2022 12:53 am
“The reason for this exceptional increase is not clear” –
So why publish anything?…Well we know why, it has nothing to do with climate..
Rod Evans
October 28, 2022 1:23 am
Quote “We need to transform our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life. The needed changes are economically affordable and technically possible. Time is running out,” said Prof. Taalas.
He could have just used the simpler term the Greens have championed?.
All he had to say was, “we need a Great Reset”
They might as well tell people to shoot themselves in the head because of the “threat” of allergies.
Ted
October 28, 2022 1:30 am
“Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%“
The alarmists should take this as great news. The WMO says temperatures have gone up half a degree C in the same time frame. If increasing the effect of GHG’s 50% results in half a degree warming, then it takes a 200% increase (a tripling in forcing) to reach the ‘dreaded’ 2 degrees. Because the amount of forcing from each ppm concentration diminishes as concentrations increase, then it means concentrations would have to be at least quadruple pre-industrial levels, probably much more, before we force two degrees of warming.
By their own claims, we are nowhere close to causing a crisis.
And their own claims are nothing more than hypothetical, speculative bullshit.
And the notion that a warmer climate is worse is absolute nonsense. Note that THE SAME CLAIMS about weather becoming “more extreme” were made in reference to the “Global COOLING” crisis of the 1970s. And note THAT was ALSO supposedly the fault of fossil fuel use, despite the fact that it occurred during a period of RISING CO2 levels. That period of REVERSE CORRELATION tells us that the ACTUAL, as opposed to HYPOTHETICAL, “effect” of CO2 on temperature is ZERO.
“Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%“
Doubling something that is barely measurable is still a very tiny number.
JOHN S CHISM
October 28, 2022 1:42 am
Eric Worrall as you campaign for nuclear energy as “zero carbon dioxide neutral” nuclear plants use tremendous amounts of cement to create them. An EPR 670 TWh nuclear reactor takes 200,000 tons of concrete and 40,000 tons of steel, whereas a 0.053 TWh windmill takes 1,000 tons of concrete and 150 tons of steel, that to equal the 670 Tara Watt of a EPR nuclear reactor would take over 7,547,169 windmills or 7,547,169,000 tons of concrete and 1,132,075,350 tons of steel. While both of these electrical power sources takes the second greatest source of Human Caused CO2 of mining the base calcium and roasting into cement the manufacturing and the release of CO2 as the concrete sets up is very high. The steel used in both requires mining and the processing to turn it into the steel forms used in each structure is also very high.
You really cannot say that nuclear is “carbon dioxide neutral” when so much carbon dioxide is created to create them. All forms of electric energy in the past has created this higher CO2 today by the manufacturing of the raw elements into usable products to building them. While as given above the nuclear energy plants are by far the better choice in terms of the amounts of concrete and steel used per TWh. These may not create Carbon Dioxide to make the electricity after they’re built, but it has added CO2 to the atmosphere none the less.
Modern Gen IV and Gen V nuclear reactors take about as much cement as a house, don’t need cooling water, use spent fuel as fuel and, are modular and can be moved to site by a truck. There should be massive effort to complete the engineering and get them in the field. I understand China has done so in a desert area.
Not doing so proves climate change is not the problem, it is the excuse.
Yes that’s great. But most are not mobile types. They are gigantic concrete structures setting on more concrete floors or bases that cover large areas with concrete water ponds and other structures too. That people have jumped over the initial construction aspect that creates CO2 to the creation of CO2 during generating electricity ignores that CO2 is being added before they are in operation.
Personally I want more Carbon Dioxide not less of it and believe that CO2 doesn’t have much effect/affect on the climate. CO2 is the molecule of all life and without an abundance of it we wouldn’t survive very long. Our Earth is much greener and more populated now because of the increasing CO2 since the 1850s and the innovation’s that fossil fuels and electricity have provided.
Your observation could also be applied to dams used to create hydroelectric power, and the bases of wind turbines.
It has been found that the concrete absorbs CO2 out of the atmosphere for decades, eventually reclaiming most of what was released during the calcining of the lime.
The calcinating of lime is just the beginning as it sets to concrete more CO2 is released, and yes once it is cured it absorbs CO2 from the air – if it’s exposed to the air like the stacks of a nuclear plant, but not what is not exposed to the air when under ground like windmill tower bases, underneath sidewalks, etc. Darshil Shah a senior researcher at the Center for Natural Material Innovation at Cambridge University in says a dezeen article 31 August 2021 titled Cement and concrete “are not carbon sinks says Cambridge materials scientist excerpts from it he says “Cement Carbonation requires humidity between 40 and 80% and open air conditions” “… and is extremely slow at of 1 – 2 millimeters per year.” and “Submerged or buried concrete does not undergo carbonation.”
Well, since even after building all those windmills (requiring FAR MORE “emissions” not that they matter), YOU STILL NEED THE NUKE PLANT (or fossil fuel plants) to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow, you’re just ADDING both quantities of (meaningless) “emissions” together when you waste resources building wind and solar subsidy and mandate and tax credit farms.
My point was simple, because the manufacturing of cement and setting of cement to concrete releases carbon dioxide it cannot be called Carbon Dioxide Neutral as he was saying. The same applies to steel that the minerals are mined, processed through manufacturing into the steel creates Carbon Dioxide that goes into the reactors construction. Absolutely nothing that is used in the creation of electrical energy is Carbon Dioxide neutral if it is adding Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere before it generates any electricity. And I pointed out that nuclear was the best choice by the TWh over windmills TWh.
UK-Weather Lass
October 28, 2022 2:15 am
Let the facts speak for themselves.
Since we discovered how to generate electricity we have been concerned to find reliable, clean and efficient fuels to augment the dependable less clean stock fuels we had (and have) in abundance (e.g. coal) for generating power. Hydro produces very clean power but largely relies upon natural sites and on stable replenishment of reservoirs. Nuclear offered the best of all worlds apart from the need to dispose of waste something Professor Taalas’s native Finland has been leading the way on.
“There is a climate emergency” we were told decades ago and “we have to break our dependency upon less clean fossil fuels”. A big drum roll for nuclear should have followed but it didn’t.
Why wasn’t there a nuclear drum roll except for the very limited exceptions (as the article says)? Let’s hear the reasons why we cannot do nuclear now instead of tossing good money after solar and wind neither of which can match nuclear on any data claims not even on environmental damage and destruction on very large scales on land and at sea.
There is no logic to what the west is doing now and so why are we doing it? Solar and wind are adding heavily to the use of fossil fuels but are not giving value for money on the electricity generation front and so why are we doing it, Professor Taalas? EVs and their batteries are also less efficient and more destructive to the environment than ICEs and so why are we even contemplating the shift, Professor Taalas, let alone doing it?
Let us have some real science from these people and stop them spouting propaganda for propaganda sake because otherwise they may not hold onto their jobs.
Why wasn’t there a nuclear drum roll except for the very limited exceptions …
That is a complicated question to answer. However, the crux is that a few scientists ignored the obvious ability of organisms to tolerate (even require) small amounts of what becomes toxic in large doses. They denied a threshold effect in radiation and claimed that any and all radiation was detrimental, despite all life being bathed in natural background radiation. This was jumped on by most ‘Greens,’ and used to discourage nuclear power.
All too true. If people walked around in their daily life wearing a sensitive radiation badge, they’d be surprised at how much radiation they’re exposed to. Having lived in a mining camp in pre-Cambrian granite mountains for four years that had a constant Geiger Counter buzzing any time it was on without pointing it at anything…
Coeur de Lion
October 28, 2022 2:48 am
Looking very closely at the Moana Loa sawtooth one notices that the Thunbergian experiment of the COVID CO2 downturn did not even affect their idiosyncratic shape let alone their amplitudes. Watch for the Putinesque experiment now.
The maximum decrease in CO2 emissions was less than 10% and that occurred for only a month or two. Over all, the decrease in yearly emissions was just a few percent. You aren’t going to be able to see that in a chart as noisy as the Moana Loa chart.
strativarius
October 28, 2022 3:41 am
“More bad news for the planet: greenhouse gas levels hit new highs”
Thereis good news…. We had the best year for figs evah. But that is in the real world.
More CO2 in particular is GOOD NEWS for the “planet.” Unless, of course, you want to see the eradication of LIFE.
Adam
October 28, 2022 3:59 am
I like how every graph starts at 1985, where is the rest of the history? Get the feeling those graphs wouldn’t correlate temperature rise to CO2 or methane
Please show me the year by year H2O graph. Oops – that’s too hard.
Andy Pattullo
October 28, 2022 8:40 am
The continued rise of misnamed “greenhouse” gases in a world where the oceans refuse to boil, glaciers wax and wane, life thrives and temperatures do nothing very interesting is proof the theory of CAGW is just another infantile “cry wolf” scenario.
ResourceGuy
October 28, 2022 9:25 am
We take cash, checks, or sovereign budget transfers. Sorry, we don’t accept sovereign debt or green credits. Make your payment on time or there will be a 30 percent penalty, at least for the U.S. where leaders are stupid enough to pay it.
Greeboz6
October 28, 2022 11:48 am
“the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide” You should check this garbage factoid for yourself so you will KNOW who is manipulating & duping you. Water vapor is the greatest “greenhouse gas” by a huge percentage. The entire “Greenhouse Gas” warming THEORY is baseless if you study it in any depth whatsoever. It is a propaganda program intended to dupe the masses who BELIEVE instead of Fact Checking. Don’t be a believer, be some one who KNOWS & cannot be gas-lighted into helping enslave humanity.
Tom Abbott
October 28, 2022 11:57 am
From the article: “As long as emissions continue, global temperature will continue to rise. Given the long life of CO2, the temperature level already observed will persist for decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.”
There is no reason to believe global temperatures will continue to rise if CO2 levels rise, and there is no evidence that CO2 has a long life in the Earth’s atmosphere.
These are just more unsubstantiated assertions by climate change alarmists.
CO2 is currently rising, yet global tempertures are cooling. How does the WMO explain this?
But having cheap and abundant power is like giving an idiot child a machine gun! Paul Ehrlich in an Abalone Alliance pamphlet opposing nuclear power.
Would (what currently passes for) food be describable as ‘power’
Repeat myself:”Ploughs are gonna kill vastly more people than swords ever will”
No-one needs a plough to produce animal food products, ploughs are needed to grow sugar
Wheat, oat, corn, etc. are not farmed using plows?
I think the point he’s making is all gains break down into sugar and spike glucose in the body, thus large quantities aren’t good for long term health, hence our health crisis in the US. Meats and vegetables would be a better diet for humans. Grains and grasses for ruminants.
It’s high time we taxed ploughs.
Taxation reduces CO2, so it will probably reduce the numbers of ploughs.
AND – we’ll all be saved!!!! AGAIN!!!
You have never worked on a farm before, have you?
Well, alrighty then. Never learned much about farming in school, eh? Not surprised, they don’t seem to teach much these days.
Sorry Peta but you are spouting pure crap.
My guess is that you are an organic grower in a small way .
Head line “Plough kills thousands and millions starve because of plough ban.”
You seem to have a real problem with grain growers .
Wheat is grown for flour that is the basic food for billions ,oats for porridge and Musili and horses . Barley for brewing beer and other drinks .
Ploughs used correctly do a good job of burying trash after harvest and they will deepen the soil profile over time .
Farmers a careful not to plough when the soil is wet as smearing can occur .
The worst implement is the power harrow which should be banned as they thrash the soil and beat it into a to fine powder which will move down hill in heavy rain.
without plowing farmers have to rely on Roundup and then use a strip till planterglysaphate
This is what happens with modern technology .My computer posted on its own accord as I was trying to edit this above .
Farmers can spray out with glysophate and then drill their crops with a strip till planter
.After 55 years we have changed to this practice as our maize paddocks are first planted in fodder beet and then a catch crop of oats or rye grass which is cut for silage then sprayed out and direct drilled into maize for silage or corn as you call it in the USA.
Ploughs have made it possible for billions of people to exist. !
Its only really by sheer accident or carelessness that they ever actually kill someone.
The Food Guide is based on feeble science like Climate Change.
Yes, industrial farming feeds billions, but we are learning that cheap carbs and seed oils are the cause of multiple modern health issues, and are not a healthy diet.
Most modern health issues are caused by us all living much longer because of the far healthier diets we have now compared to the past.
Really? Life was hard 200 years ago. Has there been no logevity contribution from modern sanitation, medicine, central heating, machinery doing the heavy work etc?
The typical grocery cart is full of sugar and highly processed carbs.
These “far healthier diets” are making children more obese.
https://www.bariatric-surgery-source.com/child-obesity-statistics.html
The keto diet, based on saturated fats, animal protein and whole natural foods is the healthiest diet.
Have a sugar cube Peta and calm down.
Generally speaking, “A” does not lead to “B”, neither in children nor adults.
They’re also needed to grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc., at least in any large quantity.
Giving Ehrlic a typewriter is like giving an idiot child a machine gun.
A typewriter or a keyboard of any type.
They always ignore the MOST important greenhouse gas — H2O. Which not only holds radiant energy. It also transfers and holds sensible and latent heat in three phases at 0 C to 100 C at 1 atmosphere pressure.
None of the other greenhouse gases have near the same impact as all of the water on the planet
None of the other greenhouse gases have near the same impact as all of the water on the planet
___________________________________
The minimal impact of CO2 is exaggerated, and we are never told what the nearly zero impact of CH4 and N20 is.
The green alarmist crowd seems to have little concept of what parts per billion actually represents in decimal figures or atmospheric percentages. When you have close to nothing, it takes very little to make a huge increase in percentage.
Ironic that SST heating and Henry’s law of gas absorption in liquid are the simplest explanation for increased trace gasses in the atmosphere, yet the concept is completely ignored as far as I can tell.
I fail to see how combustion of fossil fuels could increase the amount of methane and nitrous oside in the atmosphere.
I’m guessing it’s talking about the blow off gasses from drilling a new well?
Not using them increases the amount of CH4 and N2O in the atmosphere,
Methane comes from the mining of fossil fuels.
Nitrous oxides come from the heat of combustion, causing the nitrogen in the atmosphere to combine with oxygen in the atmosphere.
Nitric oxide, NOT nitrous oxide is formed by high temperature combination of nitrogen and oxygen.
Comparing the concentration of methane to a volume of air has little value and is misleading. While 1 PPB sounds like nothing significant it would represent about 10^15 power of molecules in a cubic meter. Now add 10^25 power of photons per second travelling through that cubic meter and the numbers look a bit more interesting.
Maybe a LOT more nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in the atmosphere would calm everyone down?/sarc
Didn’t the film ‘Serenity’ cover that outcome?
“nearly zero impact of CH4 and N20”
Yes, much ado about nothing. Two more human-caused climate change alarmist scare stories that are not scary once you dig into the details. Zero impact is correct.
But water vapor is a condensing gas, so it’s OK.
surely it’s the condensing of water vapor into clouds that has a major effect on both reflection of heat back to earth (heating effect) and more importantly, reflection of much more heat in sunlight away from the earth when more clouds are present. Even IF there is a shift in greenhouse gasses, then surely WATER must play a huge part in the stabilization of the earths habitable zone by its presence. There are many ways water assists in stabilizing the temperature. Reflection from clouds is a big one, adjusting solar input AND heat out to the night sky. Phase change ICE>water>ICE and water>vapor >water all store or give off massive amounts of heat as part of the temperature stabilization process. So WHY is it NOT taken into account ???
Because if they took water into account they would realise the other greenhouse gasses are irrelevant and they’d be out of a job.
Not only that, it means James Hanson’s dreams of turning good ‘ol Gaia into Venus are actually baseless. Naming this planet “Earth” only showed the perspective of humanity at the time.
This is a water planet.
Ruled by the behaviours of water, not trace gasses.
BINGO!
Due to the continual replenishment of that condensing gas, any increase in CO2 beyond 20ppm is meaningless in terms of any “effect” on temperature. Of course, it is vital for life on Earth for atmospheric levels to be high enough for photosynthesis to occur…
As the climate record shows us, much higher CO2 levels than today not only could not cause the “runaway greenhouse effect” of the Climate Fascist wet dreams, but couldn’t stop temperatures from plummeting from ‘hot house’ to ‘ice house’ climate at ten times today’s level.
CO2 doesn’t “drive” Jack Shit.
Well mixed GHGs have almost no warming effect whatsoever once their surface absorption bands are saturated. The reason is based on two key physical facts.
1) Increases in concentration do not affect the flow of upward energy through the atmosphere to space. The flow is a constant.
2) Boundary layer feedback cancels almost all of the increases in downwelling IR.
You get a small increase in warming from additional absorption in the wings of the main CO2 frequency bands. However, you also get more evaporation and photosynthesis to counteract it.
Mother nature is the master of balance.
Please examine the second figure in this article – “CO2 growth rate ppm/year”.
This is interesting – told you so – 14 years ago.
Temperature drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
The integral of dCO2/dT is CO2 change, and CO2 changes lag temperature changes at all measured time scales (MacRae 2008).
dCO2/dt vs UAH LT Temperature (MacRae, January 2008)
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.18/offset:0.17
dCO2/dt vs Hadcrut SST3 Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly (MacRae, 26Aug2022)
SST is warming according to this data.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1979/scale:0.6/offset:0.1
dCO2/dt vs Hadcrut SST3 Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly, Detrended (MacRae, 26Aug2022)
Detrended to show the close correlation.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1979/scale:0.6/offset:0.1/detrend:0.25
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY June 15, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
“Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past.”
“Temperature drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.”
Nonsense
A +1 degree increase of the ocean temperature might cause a +10ppm to +20ppm atmospheric CO2 increase (Note that nature has always been a net CO2 absorber)
Manmade CO2 emissions caused almost a +50% increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1850.
If the CO2 increase since 1850 caused any global warming, then the CO2 increase from manmade CO2 is responsible.
Since CO2 has no effect on temperature increases since 1850 then Allan’s statement is correct and not nonsense. You even leave that door open by using the word “if” in your last sentence.
Please link to proof of manmade CO2 emissions in the period of 1850 to 1940 on a year by year basis. Please also link to measurements of atmospheric CO2 in that period. And finally, please link to the over all “carbon cycle” worldwide for the same period.
Now give me the proper error bars for all of that.
Nothing we have done appears to have made even the slightest impact on the amount of CO2 increase – burn fossil fuels, don’t burn ’em; nada, zip. How people can maintain that lie that “manmade CO2 is responsible” in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is the most ridiculous and stupid idea imaginable.
Richard – Illogical, innumerate response.
Note how the alarmists have discarded any attempts at logic and now claim that greenhouse gas emissions are pretty much entirely responsible for climate change/global warming. The fact that the planet has had numerous ice ages and warming periods that occurred long before human activity could have had any effect on the climate is no longer even mentioned, so is it any wonder that people greet most environmental proclamations with skepticism and derision?
As I have said before, I always say to alarmists, “Welcome to the Holocene Inter-Glacial, sadly it’s not as warm as the previous four Inter-Glacials dating back half a million+ years, they were warmer by around 2-4 degrees Celcius!!!
The question which silences Alarmists is, “Why was there no ecological catastrophe last time CO2 was over 500ppm?”
In my experience nothing will silence them. They may change the subject but they never shut up.
They are not interested in rational argument or debate. They have a largely political ‘green’ goal in sight and will use whatever words they think necessary to get there.
Over 500ppm was at least 5 million years ago.
The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk on two legs. DID YOU DO A SURVEY OF THEM BEFORE MAKING YOUR DATA FREE CLAIM?
Pray tell us about the mass extinction event or ecological catastrophe which occurred at that time.
Whether or not humans were present is irrelevant to the question of whether or not 500ppm is capable of causing a climate disaster.
Irrelevant statement
You are talking about natural causes of temperature changes.
They have nothing to do with adding manmade CO2 into the atmosphere.
That is a different process.
The alarmists are claiming that CO2 drives the climate changes we are seeing them.
Pointing out that the climate changed without concurrent changes in CO2 levels is not irrelevant.
Those gases (CO2, CH4 ad NOx) are all produced by the processes of decomposition.
i.e. When something, that was once alive, is no longer alive
Might be a good idea to find out what, before it is us.
There are living biological sources for them also, like plants, bacteria, fungi.
More co2 from ocean outgassing leads to increased biological activity which then increases decomposition and all those gases increase further.
An increase in bugger all is still bugger all.
There is a chance that a goodly fraction of the N2O increase is indirectly due to humans, mediated by denitrifying organisms acting on nitrogenous compounds of agricultural origin.
I’m given to understand that nitrogen fixation by humans is now significant when compared to ‘natural’ nitrogen fixation processes, though when they re-estimate the scale of these processes it is upwards.
I think it was not that many years ago when they discovered that under certain conditions oceanic photosynthesising cyanobacteria will start reducing N2 when other substrates fall out of optimal ranges.
Regarding methane sources and their quantities, they are still making it up as they go along. They may be relatively well informed about the basic geo-biochemical processes but far less about the quantities and controlling mechanisms in proper context. It allows for real wild-west speculation. A climate scientist’s wet dream.
Best not to listen to people operating in a continuous panic mode with a history of predictions that don’t happen and blaming you. Especially when the science is based on social change and redistribution of wealth.
Time for the catastrophists to hyperventilate. Oh dear, this will raise CO2 levels even more.
The big question is- what adverse effects are there from increasing the levels of such trace gases?
Where is the evidence? Where is a free debate?
As a general rule, one must NEVER believe anything where debate is not allowed, especially if it claims to be science.
If there is no debate allowed, the red flags MUST be raised. If there’s is no debate and no evidence presented that higher levels of CO2 cause any harm, then it is proof positive of pseudoscience with malfeasance.
Stop chit chatting here. The prof said we don’t have much time, we need to act now.
This is all so tiresome.
Wasn’t what the Peoples Font of Judea declared?
Don’t be ridiculous
Everyone knows it was the Judean Peoples Front
The JPF?
SPLITTERS!
Odd that the planet shut down great swathes of CO2 activities for Covid, yet it didn’t affect the weather. Hmm.
Good point, I should have added “Covid lockdown”. Fascinating how no human interventions seem to noticeably change the trend.
This is exactly the point. We have wasted trillions of dollars on the lunacy of global warming that could have been spent on actual environmental issues (or, gasp, simply left in taxpayer’s wallets) for absolutely nothing. The incredibly consistent slope of the CO2 line in the first graph should make it obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ that something other than human emissions is in charge of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Humans are having no discernable impact on the curve. I have to believe the leaders of this scam know this and it is merely a front for economic and political control, as they have let slip many times. This is not surprising as there have always been sociopaths wanting to rule humanity. What really scares me is the huge number of useful idiots that are happy to be ruled.
The problem was that they didn’t shut down activity, they just moved it. A few factories and office buildings partially shut down. At the same time millions of homes now had to be heated 24 hours a day. Over all, the change in the amount of energy being used was very small.
No, the homes are heated regardless, of course.
Almost everyone I know turns down the furnace when they leave for the day.
The same goes for the A/C during the summer.
Now work out how many trillions of dollars have been spent on ‘green solutions’. And then realise that they achieved absolutely nothing. I don’t even mean Climate Change ™, they haven’t even reduced CO2 by a tiny amount.
What a colossal waste of a civilization. It was nice while it lasted…
CO2 EMISSIONS DID NOT DECLINE THAT MUCH
They did decline, however. Not even a blip on the Mona Loa CO2 measurements. Cause and no effect?
The decline was small compared to the annual changes.
But, according to the climate zealots, it was visible in the emissions plot yet completely invisible in the atmospheric concentration readings.
“all reached new record highs in 2021”
CO2 has never been higher than the current level?
The planet’s plant life has been rescued from CO2 starvation (or bare subsistence levels)
And its loving it !!
For the very short time that WMO has been measuring.
Yes once again “ever” = during the instrument record, a geologic eyeblink.
Aka MEANINGLESS.
We’re going to fight this to the last man standing – WMO
Looking at the graphs showing the increased concentration of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide from 1985 to 2020. I realize that they are from WMO and they are most likely very accurate but they are misleading in my view. Every time they use a graph that looks like these we need to accurately redraw them but use a more honest scale. I redrew the graph for CO2 the X axis showed the years 1985 to 2020, the Y axis CO2 concentration but I started at zero and went to 800 ppm. I chose 800 because the green devils are always whining what is going to happen to us if the CO2 concentration doubles. My graph is not very scary, it barely climbs more than two lines on my notebook paper. My graph gives the same information but is not that useful for scaring the crap out of people.
Recently looking for some numbers to work with, I discovered that the EPA is fond of teratons as a metric of measurement for methane, rather than the more commonly used parts per million for other Greenhouse gases. So, one has to invest some time and effort in making comparisons. It also seems that the estimate for the natural percentage has decreased recently. And, many of the graphs end about 2015. So, the data are in a state of disarray.
However, I did find a source that suggests that recent annual growth in atmospheric methane is about 17ppb, which is equivalent to 0.017ppm. Since most are in agreement that the long-term (~10 yr) impact of CH4 is about 25X that of CO2, that means the annual growth is equivalent to about 25 x 0.017 = 0.43ppm CO2. For the sake of argument, lets assume that all of the annual increase is anthropogenic, which should give us an upper bound on the human influence. The goal agreed to by COP-26 was a reduction in anthropogenic methane. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said recently, “Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming.” After spending billions of dollars, in a few years (We have at least 7 or 8 left!) we might be able to reduce anthro’ emissions by half. That is, after that effort, the annual increase in methane might only be about 0.2ppm CO2-equivalence per year. Compare that to a current increase in CO2 of about 2.5ppm. In other words, less than 10% of the CO2 increase. Once again, the alarmists are demonstrating a lack of mastery of the issues. Oh yes, there is also a contingent that wants to re-introduce beaver to all its former range. That should easily counter any decreases in actual anthro’ CH4.
You’re missing the point; the “estimates” of the supposed “effect” of methane on temperature are pure fiction; the absorption bands overlap with water vapor which would absorb all of those bands of IR even in a total absence of methane.
Methane us a red herring used to push the anti-meat and anti-fossil fuel propaganda, just like everything else the Climate Fascists blather on about.
No, I’m not missing the point. I’m undermining their claims by pointing out that, even if their facts are true, their conclusions are ridiculous. If, using their assumptions of the impact of methane, they cannot achieve the intended goal, the question of the relative importance of methane is moot.
“Methane us a red herring used to push the anti-meat and anti-fossil fuel propaganda”
Absolutely right!
The CO2 concentration is just on halfway to doubling the pre-industrial level (280 ppm) so if the warming effect were linear since ~1850 (+~1C HADCRUT4) another ~1C would be expected by ~2080 when CO2 is expected to reach 560 ppm.
However the known effect of CO2 is logarithmic so the expect temperature rise would be less than 1C all else being equal.
Of course that is a worst case estimate assuming CO2 is the only cause of global warming. I think the official number is +1.2 degrees C, although the starting point in the 1800s is just a guess. And greenhouse warming is mainly TMIN, not TMAX. And mainly in colder nations, not in the tropics.
How does CO2 know when to start doing its thing and where? It’s awfully convenient for something to affect only part of the world but leave the rest alone, don’t you think?
The most important part being “all else being equal,” without which CO2 does nothing to the Earth’s temperature beyond levels far too low to support life as we know it.
The feedbacks are negative, on balance, and the actual, as opposed to hypothetical, effect on temperature is essentially zero -which is what observations support.
Warming is also caused by cleaner air,
yes the air is cleaner
From Tony Heller:
A lot of first class travel, champagne and lots of partying!
Obviously, the Conference Of Parties is responsible for the increasing CO2. It must be all the private jets and yachts. 🙂
A proper correlation.
Funny how they say “the years from 2015 to 2021 were the seven warmest on record”. What they don’t say is that there hasn’t been any global warming at all for seven years. They also don’t say that 2021 was colder than both 2015 and 2016 – see https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2015. Of course this doesn’t fit the narrative and might get people asking how come “extreme” weather has got worse when then hasn’t been any global warming?
…. nor do they say that they are probably within the 5-10% COLDEST in the last 10,000 years.
Doesn’t matter what they say about the past, because they always say the future will be a crisis. They’ve been saying that for over 50 years.
Well, what’s really “inconvenient” (pardon the pun) is that “extreme ” weather has NOT” gotten “worse.”
The only thing getting worse about the weather is the HYPE about the weather.
If western countries have reduced their CO2 by 20%, 30%, whatever %, why are CO2 levels still rising (not that it really matters except to plants)?
But Dr John Christy of UAH says that the feedback effect of CO2 is only a 1.1 degree temperature rise, for a doubling of CO2. In which case, this amount of CO2 is not a problem.
Tropical Skies, by Christy et al.
https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/GWPF_JohnChristy_Tropical_skies.pdf
Ralph
And sorry, but that is STILL only a PURELY HYPOTHETICAL “effect” of CO2, because it is still grounded in the foundational assumption “all other things held equal.”
Which they have never been, are not now, and will never be. The feedbacks are negative, offsetting feedbacks on balance, and the ACTUAL, as opposed to HYPOTHETICAL “effect” cannot be distinguished from ZERO, which is what observations support.
Not entirely hypothetical.
This is the result of ACTUAL measurements of warming in the Tropical Troposphere (TTTs) – so it is REAL data. And it is these TTTs that warm the surface, giving increased surface warming.
But the effect is only 1/4 of what the IPCC predicts and claims.
R
And still fails to establish any connection whatsoever between warming temperatures and CO2. OK so he’s measuring temperature increases in the tropics then employing wild speculation to attribute it to something without using proper scientific rigour to find out and clearly establish what is causing it. It could just as easily be coconuts as CO2 for all he knows.
“The reason for this exceptional increase is not clear” –
So why publish anything?…Well we know why, it has nothing to do with climate..
Quote
“We need to transform our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life. The needed changes are economically affordable and technically possible. Time is running out,” said Prof. Taalas.
He could have just used the simpler term the Greens have championed?.
All he had to say was, “we need a Great Reset”
They might as well tell people to shoot themselves in the head because of the “threat” of allergies.
“Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%“
The alarmists should take this as great news. The WMO says temperatures have gone up half a degree C in the same time frame. If increasing the effect of GHG’s 50% results in half a degree warming, then it takes a 200% increase (a tripling in forcing) to reach the ‘dreaded’ 2 degrees. Because the amount of forcing from each ppm concentration diminishes as concentrations increase, then it means concentrations would have to be at least quadruple pre-industrial levels, probably much more, before we force two degrees of warming.
By their own claims, we are nowhere close to causing a crisis.
And their own claims are nothing more than hypothetical, speculative bullshit.
And the notion that a warmer climate is worse is absolute nonsense. Note that THE SAME CLAIMS about weather becoming “more extreme” were made in reference to the “Global COOLING” crisis of the 1970s. And note THAT was ALSO supposedly the fault of fossil fuel use, despite the fact that it occurred during a period of RISING CO2 levels. That period of REVERSE CORRELATION tells us that the ACTUAL, as opposed to HYPOTHETICAL, “effect” of CO2 on temperature is ZERO.
“Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%“
Doubling something that is barely measurable is still a very tiny number.
Eric Worrall as you campaign for nuclear energy as “zero carbon dioxide neutral” nuclear plants use tremendous amounts of cement to create them. An EPR 670 TWh nuclear reactor takes 200,000 tons of concrete and 40,000 tons of steel, whereas a 0.053 TWh windmill takes 1,000 tons of concrete and 150 tons of steel, that to equal the 670 Tara Watt of a EPR nuclear reactor would take over 7,547,169 windmills or 7,547,169,000 tons of concrete and 1,132,075,350 tons of steel. While both of these electrical power sources takes the second greatest source of Human Caused CO2 of mining the base calcium and roasting into cement the manufacturing and the release of CO2 as the concrete sets up is very high. The steel used in both requires mining and the processing to turn it into the steel forms used in each structure is also very high.
You really cannot say that nuclear is “carbon dioxide neutral” when so much carbon dioxide is created to create them. All forms of electric energy in the past has created this higher CO2 today by the manufacturing of the raw elements into usable products to building them. While as given above the nuclear energy plants are by far the better choice in terms of the amounts of concrete and steel used per TWh. These may not create Carbon Dioxide to make the electricity after they’re built, but it has added CO2 to the atmosphere none the less.
Modern Gen IV and Gen V nuclear reactors take about as much cement as a house, don’t need cooling water, use spent fuel as fuel and, are modular and can be moved to site by a truck. There should be massive effort to complete the engineering and get them in the field. I understand China has done so in a desert area.
Not doing so proves climate change is not the problem, it is the excuse.
Yes that’s great. But most are not mobile types. They are gigantic concrete structures setting on more concrete floors or bases that cover large areas with concrete water ponds and other structures too. That people have jumped over the initial construction aspect that creates CO2 to the creation of CO2 during generating electricity ignores that CO2 is being added before they are in operation.
Personally I want more Carbon Dioxide not less of it and believe that CO2 doesn’t have much effect/affect on the climate. CO2 is the molecule of all life and without an abundance of it we wouldn’t survive very long. Our Earth is much greener and more populated now because of the increasing CO2 since the 1850s and the innovation’s that fossil fuels and electricity have provided.
Your observation could also be applied to dams used to create hydroelectric power, and the bases of wind turbines.
It has been found that the concrete absorbs CO2 out of the atmosphere for decades, eventually reclaiming most of what was released during the calcining of the lime.
Any form of power is going to use a lot of concrete and steel when the plant is being built.
The calcinating of lime is just the beginning as it sets to concrete more CO2 is released, and yes once it is cured it absorbs CO2 from the air – if it’s exposed to the air like the stacks of a nuclear plant, but not what is not exposed to the air when under ground like windmill tower bases, underneath sidewalks, etc. Darshil Shah a senior researcher at the Center for Natural Material Innovation at Cambridge University in says a dezeen article 31 August 2021 titled Cement and concrete “are not carbon sinks says Cambridge materials scientist excerpts from it he says “Cement Carbonation requires humidity between 40 and 80% and open air conditions” “… and is extremely slow at of 1 – 2 millimeters per year.” and “Submerged or buried concrete does not undergo carbonation.”
Well, since even after building all those windmills (requiring FAR MORE “emissions” not that they matter), YOU STILL NEED THE NUKE PLANT (or fossil fuel plants) to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow, you’re just ADDING both quantities of (meaningless) “emissions” together when you waste resources building wind and solar subsidy and mandate and tax credit farms.
So I guess, what’s your point?
My point was simple, because the manufacturing of cement and setting of cement to concrete releases carbon dioxide it cannot be called Carbon Dioxide Neutral as he was saying. The same applies to steel that the minerals are mined, processed through manufacturing into the steel creates Carbon Dioxide that goes into the reactors construction. Absolutely nothing that is used in the creation of electrical energy is Carbon Dioxide neutral if it is adding Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere before it generates any electricity. And I pointed out that nuclear was the best choice by the TWh over windmills TWh.
Let the facts speak for themselves.
Since we discovered how to generate electricity we have been concerned to find reliable, clean and efficient fuels to augment the dependable less clean stock fuels we had (and have) in abundance (e.g. coal) for generating power. Hydro produces very clean power but largely relies upon natural sites and on stable replenishment of reservoirs. Nuclear offered the best of all worlds apart from the need to dispose of waste something Professor Taalas’s native Finland has been leading the way on.
“There is a climate emergency” we were told decades ago and “we have to break our dependency upon less clean fossil fuels”. A big drum roll for nuclear should have followed but it didn’t.
Why wasn’t there a nuclear drum roll except for the very limited exceptions (as the article says)? Let’s hear the reasons why we cannot do nuclear now instead of tossing good money after solar and wind neither of which can match nuclear on any data claims not even on environmental damage and destruction on very large scales on land and at sea.
There is no logic to what the west is doing now and so why are we doing it? Solar and wind are adding heavily to the use of fossil fuels but are not giving value for money on the electricity generation front and so why are we doing it, Professor Taalas? EVs and their batteries are also less efficient and more destructive to the environment than ICEs and so why are we even contemplating the shift, Professor Taalas, let alone doing it?
Let us have some real science from these people and stop them spouting propaganda for propaganda sake because otherwise they may not hold onto their jobs.
That is a complicated question to answer. However, the crux is that a few scientists ignored the obvious ability of organisms to tolerate (even require) small amounts of what becomes toxic in large doses. They denied a threshold effect in radiation and claimed that any and all radiation was detrimental, despite all life being bathed in natural background radiation. This was jumped on by most ‘Greens,’ and used to discourage nuclear power.
All too true. If people walked around in their daily life wearing a sensitive radiation badge, they’d be surprised at how much radiation they’re exposed to. Having lived in a mining camp in pre-Cambrian granite mountains for four years that had a constant Geiger Counter buzzing any time it was on without pointing it at anything…
Looking very closely at the Moana Loa sawtooth one notices that the Thunbergian experiment of the COVID CO2 downturn did not even affect their idiosyncratic shape let alone their amplitudes. Watch for the Putinesque experiment now.
Are you referring to all the CO2 and nitrous oxides released by explosives and diesel tanks?
The maximum decrease in CO2 emissions was less than 10% and that occurred for only a month or two. Over all, the decrease in yearly emissions was just a few percent. You aren’t going to be able to see that in a chart as noisy as the Moana Loa chart.
“More bad news for the planet: greenhouse gas levels hit new highs”
There is good news…. We had the best year for figs evah. But that is in the real world.
The Real World and the Climate Alarmist World are quite different.
More CO2 in particular is GOOD NEWS for the “planet.” Unless, of course, you want to see the eradication of LIFE.
I like how every graph starts at 1985, where is the rest of the history? Get the feeling those graphs wouldn’t correlate temperature rise to CO2 or methane
Green plants celebrate !
Please show me the year by year H2O graph. Oops – that’s too hard.
The continued rise of misnamed “greenhouse” gases in a world where the oceans refuse to boil, glaciers wax and wane, life thrives and temperatures do nothing very interesting is proof the theory of CAGW is just another infantile “cry wolf” scenario.
We take cash, checks, or sovereign budget transfers. Sorry, we don’t accept sovereign debt or green credits. Make your payment on time or there will be a 30 percent penalty, at least for the U.S. where leaders are stupid enough to pay it.
“the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide”
You should check this garbage factoid for yourself so you will KNOW who is manipulating & duping you. Water vapor is the greatest “greenhouse gas” by a huge percentage. The entire “Greenhouse Gas” warming THEORY is baseless if you study it in any depth whatsoever. It is a propaganda program intended to dupe the masses who BELIEVE instead of Fact Checking. Don’t be a believer, be some one who KNOWS & cannot be gas-lighted into helping enslave humanity.
From the article: “As long as emissions continue, global temperature will continue to rise. Given the long life of CO2, the temperature level already observed will persist for decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.”
There is no reason to believe global temperatures will continue to rise if CO2 levels rise, and there is no evidence that CO2 has a long life in the Earth’s atmosphere.
These are just more unsubstantiated assertions by climate change alarmists.
CO2 is currently rising, yet global tempertures are cooling. How does the WMO explain this?
By insisting that global temperatures are rising. I hope you didn’t expect honesty.
I’m holding out for 1,000 ppm which is the mid-point between 800 ppm and 1,400 ppm that plants have been found to do best in.
Yawn.
So Northern Europe won’t freeze to death this winter?