From Watts Up With That?

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Michael Limburg of Eike, the splendid German environmental think-tank, writes to point out that there has been no discernible effect at all in the Mauna Loa monthly concentration data from the large reduction in annual CO₂ emissions arising from the Chinese-virus pandemic.

The 18 months January 2020 to July 2021, during which many nations locked down, are shaded on the Mauna Loa CO₂-concentration graph. Though global CO₂ emissions fell by a remarkable 27% in the first half of 2020 (Le Quéré et al. 2020), the uptrend in CO₂ concentration remained near-linear during the pandemic, and has continued unaltered thereafter. The breadth of the yellow trend-line is 1 μmol mol^–1.

A longer-run trend since 2015, with the breadth of the trend-line again equal to 1 μmol mol^–1:

The uptrend in total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing has also remained near-perfectly linear notwithstanding the large reduction in CO₂ emissions during the pandemic:

These considerations strongly reinforce the conclusion in my recent piece on the ever-lengthening New Pause (now at 8 years 9 months and counting) that even if the whole world actually achieved net zero emissions by 2050 the reduction in global temperature by then would be less than one-tenth of a degree:

The table shows just how little global warming would be prevented, even in theory, by the attainment of net zero worldwide and in various territories.

After 2100, very little further warming would be prevented, because existing and foreseeable resources of oil and gas would be substantially exhausted and coal reserves would last for only another half-century at current demand.

It is also possible to calculate how much (or, rather, how little) global warming would be prevented if the United States were to double its existing installed wind and solar capacity:

From the above calculation (h/t Douglas Pollock), it is evident that wind and solar on their own are not going to be capable of getting the United States, or the world, to net zero. Therefore, the earlier table was more than somewhat optimistic. Bottom line: the trashing of the Western economies to Save The Planet will not benefit the climate one whit.