Links tagged “co2”

With production surging by 4.4%, corn will drive world cereal grain production to record levels in 2020/2021, said the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in its first forecast of the new crops. It was the second forecast in a week of record global output as the planting season ends in the northern hemisphere. The FAO forecast cereal grain production of 2.781 billion tonnes, up 2.6% from the record set in 2019/2020.

In spite of uncertainties posed by the pandemic,” it said, prospects point to “a comfortable supply and demand situation…"

#

Flashback 2019: ‘We really need to wake up quickly’: Al Gore warns of a looming food crisis caused by climate change - Wash Post - Oct 21, 2019: - 

Gore had invited 300 guests — chefs, farmers, food executives and activists — to “The Climate Underground,” a two-day conference last week at his family farm here that explored the intersection of food, climate change and sustainable agriculture...the main event was Gore’s slide show, delivered with his characteristic mix of bravado and humility, detailing the impacts of climate change on food systems worldwide...

Gore spent the better part of 90 minutes detailing the pressures of drought, heat, flooding, superstorms, “rain bombs,” invasive insects, fungi and bacterial blight on food producers. “We may be approaching a threshold beyond which the agriculture that we’ve always known cannot support human civilization as we know it,” he declared in a low growl. “That’s something we need to avoid.”

Grist Mag: "According to a recent update of a study originally published in Nature Climate Change, fossil fuel pollution has bounced back rapidly as lockdowns have started to lift around the world. In early April, when billions of people were sheltering in place, global daily carbon dioxide emissions were 17 percent lower than they were in 2019; now, it’s almost as if the lockdowns never happened." ...

"Fear of the coronavirus is also pushing people to get in their cars, instead of taking public transit. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines encouraging people to drive to work solo, instead of taking the bus or the subway...Last Monday, 800,000 people rode the New York City subway, the highest number since March — but that’s still only 15 percent of normal." ...

"The researchers still expect emissions for the whole of 2020 to be down 4 to 7 percent compared with last year, depending on the pace of reopening. But that’s not even close to enough to slow down climate change. Keeping global warming below dangerous levels would require a 7.5 percent drop in emissions every year."

Moment of Clarity: “People want to move on with their lives,” Jackson said. “We can’t reduce emissions just by locking people at home.”

#

Flashback: ‘Fantastic’ for the climate: Activists See Coronavirus Lockdowns As Dress Rehearsal for ‘Climate Emergency’ – Special Report

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen's new study published in The European Physical Journal: 

The "doubled-CO2 effect has less than 1/5th of the impact that the net cloud effect has. And yet we are asked to accept the “implausible” claim that change in one variable, CO2, is predominantly responsible for altering global temperatures."

"A causal role for CO2 'cannot be claimed' for the glacial-to-interglacial warming events because CO2 variations follow rather than lead the temperature changes in paleoclimate records and the 100 ppm total increase over thousands of years produce “about 1 W/m²” of total radiative impact."

"Climate science didn’t used to be alarmist prior to the late 1980s. Scientists were instead sufficiently skeptical about claims of climatically-induced planetary doom. That changed during the years 1988-1994, when climate research centered on CO2 and global warming received a 15-fold increase in funding in the US alone. Suddenly there was a great financial incentive to propel alarming global warming scenarios."

"Concepts like 'polar amplification' are 'imaginary'."

Collister Johnson to Prof. Nordhaus: "Most importantly, the theory of man-made global warming does not pass the sniff test - the test of common sense. It simply does not follow common sense to believe that an increase of one human-caused atmospheric CO2 molecule out of ten thousand over eighty years should result in ruination of the planet." ...

"Once again - I know. By questioning this climate orthodoxy, by committing heresy against the church of man-made global warming, people like me are called “deniers” - as in “Holacaust deniers”. Let’s be clear. We are not denying anything. We are affirming what we believe to be the denial of the truth by others. Nevertheless, for expressing these views,  we are shunned and ex-communicated. The political, academic, and global bureaucratic elites have spoken. Man-made CO2 is evil. Drastic measures must be take to banish this malevolent CO2 from reaching the atmosphere."