Climate deniers don't deny climate change any more

False claim.

 

“ Some North Americans” - yes, I’m Net-Zero, and so are many others. Let’s be honest. What are the overall numbers? Last I read the U.S. is double the per capita fossil fuel usage of China and Europe - a direct link to CO2 emitted.

 

Net Zero is a silly idea.
Unnecessary Net Zero, Part II: A Demonstration with Global Carbon Project Data
April 23rd, 2024
Some commenters on my previous blog post, Net Zero CO2 Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal, were dubious of my claim that nature will continue to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at about the same rate even if anthropogenic emissions decrease…or even if they were suddenly eliminated.

Rather than appeal to the simple CO2 budget model I created for that blog post, let’s look at the published data from the 123 (!) authors the IPCC relies upon to provide their best estimate of CO2 flows in and out of the atmosphere, the Global Carbon Project team. I created the following chart from their data spreadsheet available here. Updated yearly, the 2023 report shows that their best estimate of the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by land and ocean processes has increased along with the rise in atmospheric CO2. This plot is from their yearly estimates, 1850-2022.


The two regression line fits to the data are important, because they imply what will happen in the future as CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise. In the case of the nonlinear fit, which has a slightly better fit to the data (R2 = 89.3% vs. 88.8%) the carbon cycle is becoming somewhat less able to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere. This is what carbon cycle modelers expect to happen, and there is some weak evidence that is beginning to occur. So, let’s conservatively assume that nonlinear rate of removal (a gradual decrease in nature’s ability to sequester excess atmospheric CO2) will exist in the coming decades as a function of atmospheric CO2 content.

A Modest CO2 Reduction Scenario

Now, let’s assume a 1% per year cut in emissions (both fossil fuel burning and deforestation) in each year starting in 2024. That 1% per year cut is nowhere near the Net Zero goal of eliminating CO2 emissions by 2050 or 2060, which at this point seems delusional since humanity remains so dependent upon fossil fuels. The resulting future trajectory of atmospheric CO2 looks like this:


This shows that rather modest cuts in global CO2 emissions (33% by 2063) would cause CO2 concentrations to stabilize in about 40 years, with a peak CO2 value of 460 ppm. This is only 2/3 of the way to “2XCO2” (a doubling of estimated pre-Industrial CO2 levels).

How Much Global Warming Would be Caused Under This Scenario?

Assuming all of the atmospheric CO2 rise is due to human activities, and further assuming all climate warming is due to that CO2 rise, the resulting eventual equilibrium warming (delayed by the time it takes for mixing to warm the deep oceans) would be about 1.2 deg.C assuming the observations-based Effective Climate Sensitivity (EffCS) value of 1.9 deg. C we published last year (Spencer & Christy, 2023). Using the Lewis and Curry (201 value around 1.6-1.7 deg. C would result in even less future warming.

And that’s if no further cuts in emissions are made beyond the 33% cuts vs. 2023 emissions. If the 1% per year cuts continue past the 2060s, as is shown in the 2nd graph above, the CO2 content of the atmosphere would then decline, and future warming would not be in response to 460 ppm, which was reached only briefly in the early 2060s. It would be a still lower value than 1.2 deg. C. Note these are below the 1.5 deg. C maximum warming target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is the basis for Net Zero policies.

Net Zero is Based Upon a Faulty View of Nature

Net Zero assumes that human CO2 emissions must stop to halt the rise in atmospheric CO2. This is false. The first plot above shows that nature removes atmospheric CO2 at a rate based upon the CO2 content of the atmosphere, and as long as that remains elevated, nature continues to remove CO2 at a rapid rate. Satellite-observed “global greening” is evidence of that over land. Over the ocean, sea water absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere in proportion to the difference in CO2 partial pressures between the atmosphere and ocean, that is, the higher the atmospheric CO2 content is, the faster the ocean absorbs CO2.

Neither land nor ocean “knows” how much CO2 we emit in any given year. They only “know” how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.

All that is needed to stop the rise of atmospheric CO2 is for yearly anthropogenic emissions to be reduced to the point where they match the yearly removal rate by nature. The Global Carbon Project data suggest that reduction is about 33% below 2023 emissions. And that is based upon the conservative assumption that future CO2 removal will follow the nonlinear curve in the first plot, above, rather than the linear relationship.

Finally, the 1.5 deg. C maximum warming goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement would be easily met under the scenario proposed here, a 1% per year cut in global net emissions (fossil fuel burning plus land use changes), with a total 33% reduction in emissions vs. 2023 by the early 2060s.

I continue to be perplexed why Net Zero is a goal, because it is not based upon the science. I can only assume that the scientific community’s silence on the subject is because politically driven energy policy goals are driving the science, rather than vice versa.

 

More about the silliness of Net Zero.
Net Zero CO2 Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal
April 18th, 2024
The goal of reaching “Net Zero” global anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide sounds overwhelmingly difficult. While humanity continues producing CO2 at increasing rates (with a temporary pause during COVID), how can we ever reach the point where these emissions start to fall, let alone reach zero by 2050 or 2060?

What isn’t being discussed (as far as I can tell) is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels (which we will assume for the sake of discussion causes global warming) will start to fall even while humanity is producing lots of CO2.

Let me repeat that, in case you missed the point:

Atmospheric CO2 levels will start to fall even with modest reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Why is that? The reason is due to something called the CO2 “sink rate”. It has been observed that the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more quickly nature removes the excess. The NASA studies showing “global greening” in satellite imagery since the 1980s is evidence of that.

Last year I published a paper showing that the record of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, HI suggests that each year nature removes an average of 2% of the atmospheric excess above 295 ppm (parts per million). The purpose of the paper was to not only show how well a simple CO2 budget model fits the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements, but also to demonstrate that the common assumption that nature is becoming less able to remove “excess” CO2 from the atmosphere appears to be an artifact of El Nino and La Nina activity since monitoring began in 1959. As a result, that 2% sink rate has remained remarkably constant over the last 60+ years. (By the way, the previously popular CO2 “airborne fraction” has huge problems as a meaningful statistic, and I wish it had never been invented. If you doubt this, just assume CO2 emissions are cut in half and see what the computed airborne fraction does. It’s meaningless.)

Here’s my latest model fit to the Mauna Loa record through 2023, where I have added a stratospheric aerosol term to account for the fact that major volcanic eruptions actually *reduce* atmospheric CO2 due to increased photosynthesis from diffuse sunlight penetrating deeper into vegetation canopies:


What Would a “Modest” 1% per Year Reduction in Global CO2 Emissions Do?

The U.N. claims that CO2 emissions will need to decline rapidly to achieve Net Zero by mid-Century. Specifically, they say 45% reductions below 2010 levels will need to be made by 2030, and Net Zero will need to be achieved by 2050, in order to limit future global warming to the (rather arbitrary) goal of 1.5 deg. C.

But let’s look at what a much more modest reduction in CO2 emissions (1% per year) would do to future atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Here’s a plot of the history of global CO2 emissions, and how that trajectory would change with 1% per year reductions from 2023 onward. (Even this seems optimistic, but we can all agree the U.N.’s goal is delusional),


When we run the CO2 model with these assumed emissions, here’s how the atmospheric CO2 concentration responds:


Even though the CO2 emissions continue, atmospheric CO2 levels start to fall around 2060. Also shown for reference are the four CMIP5 scenarios of future CO2 emissions, with RCP8.5 often being the one used to scare people regarding future climate change, despite it being extremely unlikely.

The message here is that CO2 emissions don’t have to be cut very much for atmospheric CO2 levels to reverse their climb, and start to fall. The reason is that nature removes CO2 in proportion to how much excess CO2 resides in the atmosphere, and that rate of removal can actually exceed our CO2 emissions with modest cuts in emissions.

I don’t understand why this issue is not being discussed. All of the Net Zero rhetoric I see seems to imply that warming will continue if we don’t cut our CO2 emissions to essentially zero. But that’s not true, because that’s not how nature works.

 

Oh boy BLOG time!

 

As expected, that's just another dodge to avoid the substance of the discussion.

Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.

Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.

Dr. Spencer’s first popular book on global warming, Climate Confusion (Encounter Books), is now available at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.

 

That's half a dozen blatant falsehoods in a single sentence. Remarkable.

 

Calling unsupported claims facts doesn't change the fact that they are just claims, not facts.

 

And "per capita" means absolutely nothing. If one has to adjust your claims that much in order to push an agenda, you have essentially failed in your claim. "Per Capita" may have a valid point, but if that point must be made at the expense of eliminating consideration of "total", then that claim is false.

And a lot of that CO2 is actually produced for the purposes of agriculture. And the US is the largest food producing, donating, and selling nation on the planet. Tell me, what would happen to those figures if we were to say remove all of the CO2 produced from the production of food that we export to other nations? Because in reality, that is not "our CO2", it is "their CO2" because we are emitting that in order to feed them.

What if I was to say that in order to reduce CO2, we cut back our agriculture by about 20%. Because that is the amount of produce that we export every year. Oh, it will cause mass starvations in many areas of the planet, but not my problem. We have reduced CO2 emissions, and that is all that matters.

 

There is a huge country in North America called “Mexico”. Maybe you have heard of it….

You grow all your own food? Smelt all your metals with solar power? Or do you sequester a lot of carbon in some manner? I doubt you are net zero. Maybe buy verified carbon credits?

Yes, the US emits about double per capita as China. But emits about half as much total carbon as China. Luckily for the environment it’s not total atmospheric carbon that drives AGW and it’s only a function of per capita emissions.


You must have missed my other posts on carbon statistics. China emits more than twice as much CO2 per unit of GDP than the US as well.

 

See, the facts are that most everything we're blaming on AGW for has occurred repeatedly several times prior to the industrial age; higher CO2, warmer temps, colder temps, higher ocean levels, lower ocean levels, etc.

 

Which is where I base what many call my "nihilistic viewpoint" on. I know for a fact, we are going to lose most of Florida in the future, along with a great many islands and coastal lowlands. Like Thanos, it is inevitable.

And even farther in the future, we are going to lose Canada, Scotland, Scandinavia, and other areas because the ice will someday return. Oh, not for at least 100,000 years, but it will return. It is inevitable.

But people should be happy for both changes. Because over time, with the higher temperatures plants will flourish. Much more of the planet will "green", deserts will recede, there will be significantly more water to support that increased plant life.

And when the ice returns, we will have significantly more land. Doggerland will reappear out of the ocean depths, and over 11,000 square miles of good farmland will appear between England and Europe. It will just take a couple of thousand years from the time it appears again for it to actually become farmland however.

 

I was referring to the home and vehicle. My home has no external heating or cooling, other than a wood- burning stove, lighted about 5x per year. For the most part the electric renewables is enough to power the home and the PHEV, with surplus power. I grow a big garden, raise chickens and goats; but food is not net-zero.

i’m not applying sainthood to China. Technologically, however, they are doing very well; and are in a much better position, regarding curtailing of their future fossil fuel emissions.

 

As they are destroying huge areas of their country. Anybody that puts up China as some kind of paragon of "Environmentalism" is either a fool, or kidding themselves. They are destroying huge areas of land in order to remove the very materials they need to make such things. Leaving behind wastelands and huge chunks of land that are toxic and unable to support anything. We know of lakes there over 5 miles in diameter that are filled with toxic waste. The degree they are destroying their own country makes Love Canal look like a paradise.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...are-metal-mines-captured-Nasa-satellites.html

 

Like I said, China certainly isn’t an eco-angel, but neither is the US. We are storing high- level nuclear waste along the entire population centers of the East Coast and Southeast - just to mention one item. I still claim they are better positioned, but we’ll see in the next few years.

 

So what's that got to do with the current global warming and climate change from increased atmospheric CO2 by human activity? And are you saying that we should just put our heads in the sand too and continue to burn fossil fuels until they run out?

 

And when you point the finger at others there is always three fingers pointing back like Trump's tiny hand.

 

Doesn't change the fact that North Americans produce twice the CO2 of Chinese and Germans and Europeans, and eight times that of Indians. And Chinese and Indians also produce their own food to feed half the world's population.

 

So operation of existing home and vehicle is net zero. That’s good. More people should go that route. Growing some food as well.

Yes China is making a lot of high tech stuff. But they are still increasing emissions while we have been decreasing emissions.

 

LOL, the "current global warming" comprise a temp increase of .15C per decade and the amount contribute to that by CO2 is 4-7% of that.

 

Fortunately not all of us just keep our heads in the sand like the boiling frog.

 

Are you serious? That's as blindly anti-science as asking what the fact that every previous year, May has been warmer than January has got to do with this May being warmer than this January.

 

^^^^ My nomination for Inept Mixed Metaphor of the Month.

 

Wait, so you are storage of nuclear waste is as much of a danger as the active destruction of thousands of square miles that China is doing? And that they are doing better than we are?

*shakes head and sighs*

You really have more than just drunk the kool-aid, you are bathing in it.

 

What is the active destruction of thousands of square miles in China, and how is that different to the active destruction in other countries?
And is that why we are replacing fossil fuels with more sustainable energy sources to reduce the amount of CO2 added from human activity?