The “green” climate-mafia with another ridiculous alarmism article. First of, the picture is depicting smog, smog is pollution, CO2 is not pollution, it’s the gas of life, without Carbon Dioxide (CO2) no life, as we know it, would be possible. The other thing about this alarmism article is the fact that human emission of CO2 has not increased over the 3 last years according to IAE:
That means the increase is ALL NATURAL! Most likely driven by the last very strong El Niño, which was all natural. And, just so i have mentioned it, CO2 is not a “greenhouse gas” because “greenhouse gases” doesn’t exist in the real world, the closest we get is water vapor, but that is called latent heat. Temperature in the atmosphere is the result of incoming radiation, pressure, gravity and mass, not “green” rent and grant money dependent magic.
Propaganda piece from Reuters from earlier this year, updated 29. Oct.
Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main man-made greenhouse gas, hit 403.3 parts per million (ppm), up from 400.0 in 2015, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said in its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
That growth rate was 50 percent faster than the average over the past decade, driving CO2 levels 45 percent above pre-industrial levels and further outside the range of 180-280 ppm seen in recent cycles of ice ages and warmer periods.
“Today’s CO2 concentration of ~400 ppm exceeds the natural variability seen over hundreds of thousands of years,” the WMO bulletin said.
The latest data adds to the urgency of a meeting in Bonn next month, when environment ministers from around the world will work on guidelines for the Paris climate accord backed by 195 countries in 2015.
The agreement is already under pressure because U.S. President Donald Trump has said he plans to pull the United States out of the deal, which seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
Human CO2 emissions from sources such as coal, oil, cement and deforestation reached a record in 2016, and the El Niño weather pattern gave CO2 levels a further boost, the WMO said.
As far as scientists can tell, the world has never experienced a rise in carbon dioxide like that of recent decades, which has happened 100 times faster than when the world was emerging from the last ice age.
Scientists know prehistoric levels from tiny air bubbles found in ancient Antarctic ice cores, and they can derive even older data from fossils and chemicals trapped in sediment.
The last time carbon dioxide levels reached 400 ppm was 3-5 million years ago, in the mid-Pliocene era.
“During that period, global mean surface temperatures were 2–3°C warmer than today, ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica melted and even parts of East Antarctica’s ice retreated, causing the sea level to rise 10–20 m higher than that today,” the WMO bulletin said.
Since 1990, the global warming effect of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases has risen by 40 percent. The two other main gases – methane and nitrous oxide – also grew to record concentrations last year, although at a slower rate of increase than carbon dioxide.
Ref.: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution/north-china-air-quality-shows-no-improvement-from-last-september-idUSKBN1CX09T
Update
Matt McGrath’s El Niño Scaremongering
Concentrations of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere surged to a record high in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Matt McGrath is getting worked up about a natural weather event!
Last year’s increase was 50% higher than the average of the past 10 years.
Researchers say a combination of human activities and the El Niño weather phenomenon drove CO2 to a level not seen in 800,000 years.
Scientists say this risks making global temperature targets largely unattainable.
This year’s greenhouse gas bulletin produced by the WMO is based on measurements taken in 51 countries. Research stations dotted around the globe measure concentrations of warming gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The figures published by the WMO are what’s left in the atmosphere after significant amounts are absorbed by the Earth’s “sinks”, which include the oceans and the biosphere.
2016 saw average concentrations of CO2 hit 403.3 parts per million, up from 400ppm in 2015.
“It is the largest increase we have ever seen in the 30 years we have had this network,” Dr Oksana Tarasova, chief of WMO’s global atmosphere watch programme, told BBC News.
“The largest increase was in the previous El Niño, in 1997-1998, and it was 2.7ppm; and now it is 3.3ppm. It is also 50% higher than the average of the last 10 years.”
El Niño impacts the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by causing droughts that limit the uptake of CO2 by plants and trees.
Emissions from human sources have slowed down in the last couple of years according to research, but according to Dr Tarasova, it is the cumulative total in the atmosphere that really matters as CO2 stays aloft and active for centuries.
Over the past 70 years, says the report, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is nearly 100 times larger than it was at the end of the last ice age.
Rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 and other gases have the potential, according to the study, to “initiate unpredictable changes in the climate system… leading to severe ecological and economic disruptions”.
The study notes that since 1990 there has been a 40% increase in total radiative forcing. That’s the warming effect on our climate of all greenhouse gases.
“Geological-wise, it is like an injection of a huge amount of heat,” said Dr Tarasova.
“The changes will not take 10,000 years, like they used to take before; they will happen fast. We don’t have the knowledge of the system in this state; that is a bit worrisome!”
According to experts, the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago, in the mid-Pliocene Epoch. The climate then was 2-3C warmer, and sea levels were 10-20m higher due to the melting of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets.
Other experts in the field of atmospheric research agreed that the WMO findings were a cause for concern.
“The 3ppm CO2 growth rate in 2015 and 2016 is extreme – double the growth rate in the 1990-2000 decade,” Prof Euan Nisbet from Royal Holloway University of London, UK, told BBC News.
“It is urgent that we follow the Paris agreement and switch rapidly away from fossil fuels. There are signs this is beginning to happen, but so far the air is not yet recording the change.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41778089
There is nothing unusual at all about this increase in CO2. It is a result of a perfectly natural event, El Nino.
In fact, last year the BBC’s Jonathan Amos forecast this exact thing:
A big spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels means the greenhouse gas is about to pass a symbolic threshold.
Twenty-sixteen will very likely mark the first time the concentration of CO2, as measured atop Hawaii’s famous Mauna Loa volcano, has been above 400 parts per million for the entire year.
The forecast is from the UK Met Office.
It says carbon dioxide levels have seen a surge in recent months as a result of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which has warmed and dried the tropics.
These conditions not only limit the ability of forests to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere but also trigger huge fires around the globe that inject extra carbon into the air.
This means the instruments at Mauna Loa, which maintain the benchmark record of CO2, are unlikely to see any month in 2016 where the concentration dips below 400ppm (that is, 400 molecules of CO2 for every one million molecules in the atmosphere).
To be clear: the value has no particular significance for the physics of the climate system; it is just a number. But it has resonance because the last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago – before modern humans existed.
“There’s nothing magical about this number,” said Prof Richard Betts at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter.
“We don’t expect anything suddenly to happen. It’s just an interesting milestone that reminds us of our ongoing influence on the climate system,” he told BBC News.
The usual trend seen at the volcano is for the CO2 levels to rise in winter months and then to fall back as the Northern Hemisphere growing season kicks in. Last year most months were above 400 with only three below.
Ordinarily, one expects the carbon dioxide concentration to rise by an average of about 2ppm per year, but the team expects a record rise in 2016 of 3.15ppm, plus or minus 0.53ppm.
The scientists used a seasonal climate model to predict sea-surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific – where the El Niño shows itself most obviously – and then linked these to a statistical relationship with CO2 to generate a picture of what levels would probably look like across the calendar year.
This gives an average for 2016 of 404.45, with a September low of 401.48 (again with errors of plus or minus 0.53ppm).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36521068
The main reason is that warmer seas during El Nino mean that CO2 is outgassed, something that is pretty basic physics, Le Chatelier’s Principle.
Matt McGrath also repeats this howler:
According to experts, the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago, in the mid-Pliocene Epoch. The climate then was 2-3C warmer, and sea levels were 10-20m higher due to the melting of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets.
The implication is that higher levels of CO2 led to a warmer climate. In fact, the reverse is true.
Warmer seas meant that more CO2 was outgassed.
If there was any validity to AGW theories, warming would have lead to more CO2 in the atmosphere, which would have led to more warming, which in turn would have raised CO2 levels, which would have increased temperatures further, etc etc.
In other words, runaway warming.
The fact that it did not happen proves that CO2 is not the dominant driver it is made out to be.
Ref.: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/matt-mcgraths-el-nino-scaremongering/
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More “green” propaganda
Attenborough’s Latest Propaganda Piece Ignores The Facts About Walruses
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04thmv7
Apparently tonight’s episode concerns itself with walruses, who (you guessed) are all going to die because of “melting Arctic ice”.
Below is the part of the programme’s introduction:
Ocean currents move heat around our planet and maintain a climate favourable for life. But our ocean system, in relative equilibrium for millennia, is changing at a worrying rate. Deep in the polar north, we meet walrus mothers and their newborn calves, searching for an ice floe to rest on. But with rising temperatures, summer sea ice is retreating – their battles to survive are becoming ever harder. As we begin to understand the true complexity of the lives of our ocean creatures, so do we recognise the fragility of their home.
It’s a pity the doddering old idiot, David Attenborough, could not be bothered to check the facts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who issued this press release earlier this month (my bold):
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that the Pacific walrus does not require protection as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The finding follows a comprehensive review and analysis of the best available scientific information concerning the species, as well as local and traditional ecological knowledge of Alaska Native peoples.
The Pacific walrus is found throughout the continental shelf waters of the Bering and Chukchi seas and occasionally in the East Siberian Sea and Beaufort Sea. In its review, the Service paid particular attention to the impact to the species of the ongoing loss of sea ice in the walrus’s range.
While walruses use sea ice for a variety of activities, including breeding, birthing, resting and avoiding predators, they have shown an ability to adapt to sea ice loss that was not foreseen when the Service last assessed the species in 2011. Given these behavioral changes, the Service determined that it could not predict, with confidence, future behavioral responses of the species beyond 2060. Accordingly, that date was used as the limit for determining whether the walrus was likely to become endangered within the “foreseeable future,” under the ESA. Beyond that time, predicting behavioral responses becomes too speculative to be considered best available science for the purposes of a listing determination.
“Our decision not to list the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act at this time is based on a rigorous evaluation of the best available science, which indicates the population appears stable, and the species has demonstrated an ability to adapt to changing conditions,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Principal Deputy Director Greg Sheehan. “If future circumstances warrant or new information comes to light, we can and will re-evaluate the Pacific walrus for ESA protection. In the meantime, the species will continue to be federally protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”
Other stressors that were identified in 2011, including subsistence harvest, have declined. The Pacific walrus population appears to be approaching stability with reproductive and survival rates that are higher than in the 1970s–1980s.
The Pacific walrus will continue to receive protection in the U.S. under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Protections afforded under the MMPA include prohibitions on the harvest, import, and export of the Pacific walrus or walrus products, except by Alaska Natives for subsistence and handicraft creation and sale. In addition to monitoring the population, the Service will continue to work with the State of Alaska, coastal communities and other partners to conserve the Pacific walrus population and minimize the impacts of stressors where possible.
The decision today is the Service’s final action regarding a petition submitted to the agency in 2008 to list the Pacific walrus.
So far from declining, the Pacific walrus population is stable and doing better than it was in the 1970s and 80s, when Arctic sea ice was more extensive.
This episode must mark a new low in the reputation of the BBC.
