Covid pandemic has little impact on rise in CO2

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

This seems open to interpretation. Does it lead to the possibility that most CO2 rise is natural, and therefore all attempted reductions are an even bigger waste of time, money and resources than they were anyway? Here the BBC serves up another dollop of warmist assertions it can’t or won’t try to justify, presumably in an attempt to prevent any inconvenient notions about greenhouse gas theory from entering its audience’s heads.
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The global response to the Covid-19 crisis has had little impact on the continued rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

This year carbon [dioxide] emissions have fallen dramatically due to lockdowns that have cut transport and industry severely, says BBC News.

But this has only marginally slowed the overall rise in concentrations, the scientists say.

The details are published in the WMO’s annual greenhouse gas bulletin. This highlights the concentrations of warming gases in the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gas concentrations are the cumulative result of past and present emissions of a range of substances, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Through the Paris Agreement, countries are trying to reduce emissions of these pollutants which are generated through, for example, the burning of fossil fuels.

These greenhouse gases trap heat close to the Earth’s surface, driving up temperatures. This planetary warming threatens global food supplies, makes weather events – such as tropical storms and heatwaves – more extreme and increases the risk of flooding caused by sea level rise.

CO2 levels are measured in parts per million (ppm) – an indication of their overall atmospheric abundance.

According to the WMO, the global average in 2019 was 410.5ppm, an increase of 2.6ppm over 2018. This was larger than the increase from 2017 to 2018 and bigger than the average over the past decade.

Thanks to lockdowns in early 2020, carbon emissions fell by 17% at their peak, but the overall effect on concentrations has been very small.

Full report here.