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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Wed May 20, 2020, 03:48 PM May 2020

Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement

The paper to which I'll refer is this one: Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement (Corinne Le Quéré et al., Nat. Clim. Chang. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x)

The full article is open sourced, and anyone can read it. The introductory text of course, includes reference to so called "renewable energy, and endorses the idea that it is becoming cheap and plentiful, neither of which is true on any scale other than one involving wishful thinking and selective attention. Without referring to the first causes which may call this claim into question, the article correctly notes that nothing about the massive worldwide "investment" in so called "renewable energy" has arrested the rise in the use of dangerous fossil fuels, nor has it done anything to address climate change.

An excerpt from the introduction:

Before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, emissions of carbon dioxide were rising by about 1% per year over the previous decade1,2,3, with no growth in 20193,4 (see Methods). Renewable energy production was expanding rapidly amid plummeting prices5, but much of the renewable energy was being deployed alongside fossil energy and did not replace it6, while emissions from surface transport continued to rise3,7.

The emergence of COVID-19 was first identified on 30 December 20198 and declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020. Cases rapidly spread, initially mainly in China during January, but quickly expanding to South Korea, Japan, Europe (mainly Italy, France and Spain) and the United States between late January and mid-February, before reaching global proportions by the time the pandemic was declared9. Increasingly stringent measures were put in place by world governments in an effort, initially, to isolate cases and stop the transmission of the virus, and later to slow down its rate of spread. The measures imposed were ramped up from the isolation of symptomatic individuals to the ban of mass gatherings, mandatory closure of schools and even mandatory home confinement (Table 1 and Fig. 1). The population confinement is leading to drastic changes in energy use, with expected impacts on CO2 emissions.


As I've noted in several posts in this group, the rises in carbon dioxide as measured at the Mauna Loa CO2 observatory do not show very much change over other years; a new record of 418.83 ppm a few weeks back, for that particular record setting week, 2.72 ppm higher than the same week last year.

New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory 416.83 ppm.

It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide dumped by humanity has been extracted into the ocean. Even if there were no further emissions, it is unlikely that the concentration would fall tremendously, since these concentrations are subject, to a first approximation, to Henry's Law, a law of chemical physics that indicates that the solubility of a gas in a liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of the gas. This means that if the partial pressure of CO2 were reduced, it would be made up by out gassing from the ocean.

This figure from the Nature Climate Change paper cited in this post, refers to the proportion of carbon dioxide represented by countries in one of three Covid related restrictions.




CO2 emissions from countries, states and provinces in each confinement level (Table 1) aggregated as a fraction of global CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions are from the Global Carbon Project1 (Methods).


Again, the full paper is available. If interested, you can read it yourself.

It is possible that there will be some measurable effect in the atmosphere. I note that things were looking terrible earlier this year in the weekly data; for the week of March 22, 2020, we actually saw a reading of 4.28 ppm over the same week of the previous year, the 11th highest reading ever recorded. Maybe we can hope, under the circumstances for "not the worst of the worst."

Eventually things will return to "normal," "normal" including the difficult to shake almost theological belief that so called "renewable energy" will displace fossil fuels. It hasn't; it isn't; and it won't.

I trust you're safe and well, and enjoying those things that still can be enjoyed.

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