Has The Pandemic Really Bought Us Some Time In terms of Climate Change-Global Warming?

Incredibly,  the take of many in the media now is that - thanks to the pandemic - we can breath a bit easier regarding the pace of global warming.  This was after the International Energy Agency reported the sharpest reduction in greenhouse  emissions on record. Namely that global CO2 emissions are forecast to fall by nearly 8 percent compared to 2019. Further, according to the United Nations Environment Program that tracks almost exactly with what's needed, i.e. if the planet is to have any chance of stopping the global average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 C.

In a recent WSJ column (May 29, p. A2, 'Slower Emissions Track Buys Some Time') Greg  Ip  cites Univ. of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. who in an interview, claimed that "because of Covid 19 the real world and IPCC's scenarios are diverging further." Adding "This buys us some time". But does it really?

Under the IPCC "high emission" scenario (denoted RCP 8.5) temperatures will likely rise to 4 C by 2011, which would be disastrous. (Other models, and research from the experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put the increase closer to 6C, or near the threshold for the runaway greenhouse effect)  Even the lower threshold, as Mr.Ip describes it, is a "dire outlook".

But according to Zeke Hausfather (director of climate and energy at Breakthrough Inst.) also interviewed by Ip:

"Business as usual is more like 3 degrees but that's still more than the 1.5 to 2 degrees he world targeted in the Paris climate accord."

But does all this really stand up to scrutiny?  It is well to point out that Mr. Ip himself issues a cautionary note, i.e. :

 "Locking down isn't a sustainable way to reduce emissions, and this drop is almost certainly temporary. Second, it is the cumulative buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution that, among other tings, influences global warming. So if annual emissions continue - even at a lower level - CO2 concentrations and temperatures will continue to rise."

This is critically important and clearly glossed over by Pielke Jr. and Hausfather.  But I have written about the cumulative effect in previous posts.

CO2 accumulates because earlier depositions remain even as new burdens are added yearly. Thus, the CO2 warming we’re now experiencing is not the result of just one year – but  100 years’ accumulation. The process may be described something like a series with terms being added, viz: to describe the CO2 content now in the atmosphere, we must initiate the series with n= 1 (for 1920), viz.


CO2( 2020) =   x  ₁  + x  ₂ +  x  ₃ +   x  ₄ +.............+  x  _{1 00} 

E.g. terminating at the last term 100 years later. Here each ‘x’ denotes the CO2 burden added for each year in succession.

Thus, the CO2 effect for a given year is not just for that year, but rather inclusive of the cumulative additions for all the years - starting up to 100 years before!

This means things can only get worse. It also means Hausfather's belief that 3 C is more reasonable peak by 2100 is nonsense.  It can't be because of the cumulative amounts of CO2 already in the atmosphere.   In addition, CO2 concentration, which determines the potential for temperature increase, will not go down. Well, not unless we can mount the equivalent of 9-10 years of an emissions shutdown.


Indeed, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has accelerated from 400 ppm in 2013 to 415 ppm now. That is an approximately 6 year interval for a per year change in concentration of :

(415 ppm - 400 ppm)  / 6 yr  =   15 ppm / 6 yr  =  2.5 ppm/  yr.

This is 25 % higher than the previous average rate of increase, i.e. 2.0 ppm/ yr. Given we know that every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m²,  we also know that the associated radiative heating is now significantly higher.  This accounts for a major part of the increase of atmospheric temperature with CO2 concentration.

While it is true that  there is a yearly rise and fall   in CO2 concentration and May is usually the peak month for atmospheric CO2, we have also seen each yearly peak is inexorably higher than the last one.  This behavior has been noted for decades and hearkens back to the well -known Keeling curve, e.g.                       

Also forgotten or neglected in the happy talk is the 2nd law of thermodynamics or entropy law.  This states that for a closed system the entropy - or state of disorder- will remain constant or increase. But it cannot decrease. While the Earth is not a totally closed system, it is certainly a partially closed one - since the CO2 greenhouse blanket effectively retains a good deal of IR solar radiation preventing its escape back into space.

But the point is, given this condition, it is not feasible for the entropy in the form of added heat to the atmosphere, to now decrease or for the CO2 concentrations to decrease, given the cumulative effects of increase.

As physicist Charles Kittel has also noted - in his 1969 edition of 'Thermal Physics' (John Wiley & Sons, p. 65):

The entropy is constant in a closed system, that is, in a system of constant energy and constant number of particles. The Sun, for example, is not a closed system: it loses energy by radiation and is cooling down. It is not clear, according to geophysicists, whether the total entropy of the Earth is increasing or decreasing at this moment

However, 16 years later in discussions  at the UAF Geophysical Institute with atmospheric scientist Gunther Weller,

 he noted his  conclusion that Earth's total entropy was indeed increasing!

His work on Arctic ice cores has disclosed that over the past 800,000 years the CO2 concentration of  300 ppm was never crossed until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.  Further, it has been found that no Ice ages have occurred whenever the CO2 concentration exceeded 200 ppm.  This means that climate change cannot be a “natural ongoing process.´ How can it when the greatest spike in CO2 concentration (now approaching 415 ppm) occurred after the human-instigated Industrial Revolution? 

Grep Ip is correct then when he writes near the end of his piece:

"Meeting that (3C) target will require emissions to head much lower"

The question is 'How much lower to offset the increased entropy already affecting our atmosphere?''

See also:

Climate Obfuscator Roger Pielke Jr. Strikes Again ...

And:

Climate report understates threat

Excerpt:

"So far, average temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius. Adding 50 percent more warming to reach 1.5 degrees won’t simply increase impacts by the same percentage—bad as that would be. Instead, it risks setting up feedbacks that could fall like dangerous dominoes, fundamentally destabilizing the planet. This is analyzed in a recent study showing that the window to prevent runaway climate change and a “hot house” super-heated planet is closing much faster than previously understood."