BOMBSHELL: U.N. Admits Emission Reductions Have Been Futile in War on Climate Change

From a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) press release titled “Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite COVID-19 lockdown,” comes this statement about the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions during the COVID-19 lockdown:

“Preliminary estimates indicate a reduction in the annual global emission between 4.2% and 7.5%. At the global scale, an emissions reduction this scale will not cause atmospheric CO2 to go down. CO2 will continue to go up, though at a slightly reduced pace (0.08-0.23 ppm per year lower). This falls well within the 1 ppm natural inter-annual variability. This means that on the short-term the impact [of CO2 reduction] of the COVID-19 confinements cannot be distinguished from natural variability…”

Let this sink in: The WMO admits reduced carbon dioxide emissions are having no effect on climate that is distinguishable from natural variability.

The WMO acknowledges that after our global economic lockdown, where CO2 emissions from travel, industry, and power generation were all curtailed, there wasn’t any measurable difference in global atmospheric CO2 levels. Zero, zilch, none, nada.

Of course, we already knew this and wrote about it on Climate at a Glance: Coronavirus Impact on CO2 Levels. An analysis by climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer showed that despite crashing economies and large cutbacks in travel, industry, and energy generation, climate scientists have yet to find any hint of a drop in atmospheric CO2 levels.

The curve kept advancing in an upward trajectory despite the lockdown, as seen in the graph below provided by Dr. Spencer:

Can you imagine the kind of extreme global economic lockdown that would be required to flatten the atmospheric CO2 curve? No nation or it’s people could tolerate the draconian reductions that would be required to significantly change the upward trajectory of global CO2 levels.

Climate alarmists have repeatedly suggested that the COVID-19 lockdown is a trial run for a climate lockdown. I suspect they were hoping the CO2 curve would respond to the COVID-19 lockdown in a way they could present as “proof” that a viable path to a dramatically lower CO2 trajectory was within reach. But the global experiment in economic reduction failed to produce any atmospheric CO2 change at all.

But now, with the WMO officially weighing in, we’ve seen proof that the kind of extreme lifestyle cutbacks climate alarmists are proposing won’t make any measurable difference at all.

Clearly, despite the belief that we can “manage global climate just by changing our lifestyles,” the Earth continues unabated on its path of natural variability without a hint that humans can affect it. We’ve said before that Reversing Trump’s Commonsense Climate Policies Would Be a Nightmare for America, and this is the strongest indicator yet that economic misery in the name of “saving the planet” is a pointless exercise in futility.

Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. According to CNBC over 16,000 commercial jets out of a 24,000 world wide jet inventory, were parked for roughly 2 months. Now I have to look at my neighbor’s electric new vehicle he just bought by way of reaching into my wallet for $7,500 via federal tax incentive.

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