Original article from: The Hill
A new United Nations report says coronavirus lockdowns had an immediate effect on greenhouse gas emissions, but it was short-lived.
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere still reached record highs this year despite an emissions dip caused by coronavirus lockdowns, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday.
“Greenhouse gas concentrations – which are already at their highest levels in 3 million years – have continue to rise,” Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in the United in Science 2020 report.
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Why didn’t the pandemic lockdowns during 2020 reduce global warming?
Consider analogy. Imagine you are wearing a thin blanket. You’re perfectly comfortable. Then imagine someone puts a thin sheet over the blanket you are already wearing. You warm up just a little. Every minute, they throw another sheet over you, each one a little thicker than the one before. Your body temperature keeps rising, trying to find a new equilibrium. After a while, the blanket’s thickness plus the sheets piled on top are 50% thicker than when they started covering you. That’s essentially where we were in late 2019 with CO2.
Now imagine they put a slightly thinner blanket over you. Will that cool you down?
We know CO2 regulates the Earth’s temperature. We know that humans have emitted enough CO2 into the atmosphere to increase the CO2 concentration by 50%. We know the temperature of the planet is rising rapidly because of this. We know the planet will continue to warm for some time, even if we completely stop emitting CO2.
How can CO2 affect global temperatures if it only comprises 0.04% of the atmosphere?
Consider this: 99% of the atmosphere is Nitrogen and Oxygen. N2 and O2 do not trap heat. All greenhouse gases are trace gases, by definition. This is why human CO2 emissions impact CO2 concentration so much. Burning 1 gallon of gasoline injects 20 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. Combustion injects a lot of CO2 as a byproduct. We need to consider unnatural CO2 as a pollutant.