That Went Well, Eh?
July 10, 2021
40 Comments
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“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
You could superimpose a chart showing the similarity of growth of coal usage in India and China. Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation
You forgot COP26.
Yes, I know it hasn’t happened yet but it doesn’t matter if you have an arrow pointing at autumn 2020 or autumn 2021 – the effect will be similar.
The rate at which atmospheric CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere was unchanged during 2020-2021. This is when the Northern Hemisphere, with 88% of the world’s population was in lockdown during Spring/Summer/Autumn.
No flights, cars off the road, central heating off in homes, businesses closed, manufactured goods severely reduced, no tourism. Yet the alarmists keep telling us that human beings are responsible for an increasingly warm climate!
If one good thing can come from Covid, it is to disprove the false narrative, that mankind is responsible for a warming climate.
I’ve put up a guess on a way that AGW might happen without the CO2 mechanism. We need more suggestions for warming mechanisms. It’s on Independence Daily.
JF
A succinct take-down of warmisters pseudo-science
What we need is a plot of the rate of greening due to enhanced leaf area.
Charles Moore is getting on the right lines in the Sunday Telegraph today.
Sunday?
Are you psychic?
Telegraph web site publishes earlier than the paper copy!
Yes, I thought he was beginning to channel Chris Booker, for a moment. He started off well, even calling it Carbon Dioxide, but he soon reverted to the intellectually lazy ‘carbon’. But there’s hope for him yet if only a few waverers read it and begin to see the light (something they won’t have if the CCC get their way.
BTW. There is a rule in parliament that no government can bind a future parliament, yet it seems the CCC and COPxx can bind entire generations. As Moore said, most of the politicians pushing the NZC policies will be dead long before they see the catastrophic results of their hubris and gold-digging.
A bit off-topic but I’m going to throw it in anyway. At this moment wind is providing 0.25GW to a UK demand of 30GW. 10 times as many windmills would (with luck) provide 2.5GW or still less than 10% of a pretty meagre demand.
Fast forward to mid-January 2031 when let us assume those extra windmills have been built. It’s 1800GMT and the demand is 70GW, (including the additional needed to cope with the planned increase in EVs and other similar conversions from gas/petroleum). Coal-fired stations have been closed as have a handful of gas ones at the end of their natural life. No new nuclear has come on stream. Minimum overnight forecast for Central England is -4°. Wind strength, Force 2. And ….?
When is the message going to get through? Intermittent energy supply cannot EVER fuel a complex civilisation such as we have today. In the current state of scientific knowledge there is no alternative to gas/coal/nuclear to keep the lights and people warm, safe, and employed. The eco-maniacs and the International Caucus of Climastrologists and their useful idiots may not care as long as the grant cash comes rolling it but the rest of us do and when the penny does drop there is going to be an awesome day of reckoning!
Dear Mike. Electric heat pumps and rewiring every house for the extra draw needed. It’s even worse than you stated.
“Intermittent energy supply cannot EVER fuel a complex civilisation such as we have today.”
That’s right, Mr Jackson.
The decision has been made. Move to South Carolina.
https://www.sccommerce.com/buildings-sites
Charles says that he reads thThe Chemical Engineer reguarly. That surprises me because I didn’t think he was a technical man. But, and its big but, I cancelled my membership to I Chem Eng (and surrendered my Fellowship) precisely because I utterly disagreed with the institute’s approach to climate and carbon dioxide as represented through the editorship of the aforesaid magazine. So there’s a long way to go yet.
I did likewise.
I think a lot of the green corruption came from the folk they employed in communications roles, rather than professional engineers. My move was triggered many years ago after attending a conference where, during the “networking” session, I made a flippant remark about climate to one of the organisers. He then harangued me, supported by a colleague. That was enough to push me out as I was already uncomfortable with the society’s position.
I had a dispute with the editor a few years ago and also left. I wonder how many left over the editorial censorship.
What’s particularly striking as far as I’m concerned, is that whilst seasonal variations in CO2 emissions can be plotted, there is no mention of human emissions. They should be clearly distinct from natural emissions as there is no seasonal variation.
Of course, the reason being is that they are minuscule, so much so they wouldn’t show on a plot, but they are vitally important to the health of the planet. So here’s my little attempt at demonstrating how inconsequential they are and all one needs to remember are two numbers, 280 and 410, and two dates, 1850 and 2021:
This is the calculation. It’s basic Arithmetic, nothing fancy, no hidden agenda, just something you can do by taking your socks and shoes off.
Atmospheric CO2 levels in 1850 (beginning of the Industrial Revolution): ~280ppm (parts per million atmospheric content).
Atmospheric CO2 level in 2021: ~410ppm.
410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm
÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm of which man is responsible for ~3% = ~0.02ppm.
That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adds ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average.
At that rate mankind’s CO2 contribution to the atmosphere would take more than 20,000 years to double the CO2 content in the atmosphere which, the IPCC states, would cause around 2°C of temperature rise. That’s ~0.0001°C increase per year for 20,000 years.
One hundred (100) generations of humanity from now (assuming ~ 25 years per generation) would experience warming of ~0.25°C more than we have today.
The Manua Loa CO2 observatory (and others) can identify and illustrate Natures seasonal variations of atmospheric CO2, but does not distinguish between natural and man made atmospheric CO2. Hardly surprising really, despite mankind’s CO2 emissions being completely independent of seasonal variation. It should reveal itself as a straight line, but is so inconsequential, this ‘vital component’ of Global Warming is not illustrated.
The global fall in output of man made CO2 over the last 16 months of the Covid-19 pandemic, estimated at ~14% (14% of ~0.02ppm CO2 = 0.0028ppm) does not register anywhere on the Manua Loa data.
Why am I not surprised?!
Nice one, HS.
The issue with your maths Scotty is that the warmists will claim that substantially all of the c2ppm pa increase in CO2 shown in Paul H’s graph is down to mankind. If they are correct, your figure is out by a factor of 100 and we’re doomed.
For the avoidance of doubt, no, I don’t believe in the warmists’ argument at all but this does highlight yet another area of climate science (in this case how exactly the carbon cycle works at a global level) where matters are so complicated, and the data so patchy, that any conclusions drawn should be accompanied by large confidence intervals and associated warnings.
That would have been my observation.
So if the data is available for human co2 why isn’t it published.
Rather: any conclusions drawn should not be drawn.
HotScot… “410 ppm minus 280 ppm = 130 ppm.”
130 ppm times 7.8 gigaton per ppm = 1014 billion tons. Over 171 years. Equals ~6 tons per person per year?
Imagine trying to reach the NASA Net-zero “safe” goal of 350 ppm by 2050. That’s 60 ppm or 468 billion metric tons. Absurd.
Am I right in thinking that “net-zero” means freezing the atmospheric level of CO2 where it is now (or better still reducing it to McKibben’s favoured 350ppm)? If so it really is time to get real because while it might (mebbe!) be feasible to reduce anthropogenic output to nil — though I doubt it — we have no control over what nature has in store.
As you say the anthropogenic contribution is, in effect “lost in the error bars”! The big problem is that humanity in toto appears to be dead-scared of big numbers. A gigaton is a lot but not when you measure something (like the atmosphere) in teratons. One of the best “real world” examples for putting CO2 in context that I have seen was to imagine all the atmospheric gases laid out in rows on a football field. The first 78 metres would be nitrogen with oxygen the next 20 metres and so on. CO2 would occupy 4 centimetres! Mankind’s contribution? 1.2 millimetres.
Mike.. Net-zero has been defined…
“Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.”
Last year we added about 40 billion metric tons. Try removing that amount by 2050. And that is only the beginning as removing it would not move the temperature needle very far. As calculated elsewhere, 350 ppm would today mean removing ~60 ppm or about 468 billion tons. (60 times 7.8 (one ppm). Good luck.
Charles says that he reads The Chemical Engineer reguarly. That surprises me because I didn’t think he was a technical man. But, and its big but, I cancelled my membership to I Chem Eng (and surrendered my Fellowship) precisely because I utterly disagreed with the institute’s approach to climate and carbon dioxide as represented through the editorship of the aforesaid magazine. So there’s a long way to go yet.
This news from Reading Borough Council seems too have ‘gone equally well’….
https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/19429343.2bn-cost-making-every-reading-home-carbon-neutral/ … who’d have thought?
Not the councillors, clearly!
I’ll suggest that if all the houses in the UK are to be remodeled (retrofitted) in a short period of time the costs will rise dramatically.
Think ECON 101, or equivalent. Demand goes up, costs follow.
This happened in the USA this past year as folks were forced to stay home they went in to the do-it-yourself mode. Prices went up and help was hard to get. Supply chains were disrupted and all manner of goods were back-ordered.
Reading will need to complete an average of nearly 8,000 homes per year or 32 per day (assume working 50 weeks x 5 days/wk). That might be possible if no place else needed workers and materials.
Anyway – – costs are going to explode.
According to UK Gov there are 24.7m domestic properties in England with a Council Tax band and 1.4m in Wales.
If 70,000 homes in Reading are going to cost £2 billion the houses in Wales alone will cost £40 billion and in England £704 billion.
And then where are we going to get all the properly qualified people to do the work, especially as every where else in Europe will be doing the same?
Good one Paul.
Thanks
With respect to the year-over-year rate of increase in CO2, If one takes the raw numbers for that chart and subtracts the latest one from the one before it, and does the same all the way back to 1959, the curve changes dramatically. What one sees is not a steady sawtooth increase but an increase with major ups and downs. The most dramatic seem to correlate well with the two most recent La-Ninas and El-Ninos. None with major Climate conferences.
If one does the same thing for the year-over-year rate of increase of NASA GISTemp global temperature numbers, the upward trend disappears. becomes almost imperceptible.
One interperatation? Nature runs the climate.
Yes, CO2 in the atmosphere has increased independent of man’s emissions of CO2. Dr. Murray Salby shows why.
How much longer will the public permit itself to be fleeced?
The actual reductions in yearly CO2 emissions as a result of Covid are very small (although estimates vary quite a lot). Even a 10% drop would only make a small fraction of a PPM difference. What it does illustrate is that if such a catastrophic financial hit can’t make any real difference, the scale of what is required to make a difference is suicidal/impossible.
Once again…carbon fuel emission reductions take none of the CO2 we have already added out of the air. They reduce the exhaust aerosol particulates but not the CO2 and water vapor. And because we cannot stop using carbon fuels instantly to reach that zero goal, the atmosphere will continue to rise. We will keep reading about a new record every year for quite a while. More scary stuff.
Just to be clear, I was talking about a reduction in the rate of increase, a visible signal – or not – of reduced emissions.
You could superimpose a chart of renewable infiltration of the grid viz a vis rises in electricity prices….. in which case correlation does, indeed, mean causation!
We could also plot a chart of the number of coal miners employed in the UK and note it has now reach trace levels in the political atmosphere. Time to stop the UN fraud.
Some strong stuff here from the gallery of those who note the global ‘Climate Emergency’ with several pinches of salt. We must be getting very close to the point where there will have to be a high-level, concerted challenge to the incoherent belief that the earth is warming. COP26 could make a start by demanding an external, multi-national review of the wealth of good information now freely available, but the ‘vested interest’ sharks will have to be excluded.
Our own CCC can play a part by putting out the chairs at the meeting table and providing coffee and chilled water?
The CC are already in action – getting UK Gov to prepare new guidelines for house building. So they will be liveable in the new, hot period. And advice for retrofitting houses built since 1970, which will be too hot for the coming years. As reported in the Telegraph today
Ah.. DCCCC: Deben’s Climate Conference Catering Company! And he’d be not bloody good at that!
Handing out burgers…..?