Tag: CO2 reduction

Let´s talk about CO2 increases in 2024 and “collapsing systems”

You will also have read and seen it: The CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024 reached a record level. That is completely correct. In the messages (e.g. here) you can also read something like

“The system is collapsing”.

Infographic illustrating carbon cycles including respiration, photosynthesis, vegetation, ocean absorption, and fossil fuel emissions, with annotated data on carbon storage across various ecosystems and the atmosphere.

From KlimaNachrichten

By Frank Bosse

You will also have read and seen it: The CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024 reached a record level. That is completely correct. In the messages (e.g. here) you can also read something like

“The system is collapsing”.

A landscape with trees and smoke rising from a fire, indicating environmental issues related to climate change.

The main emphasis is on a “decreasing effect of land sinks (including forests)” to remove CO2 from the air. What is truth and what is poetry, freely adapted from Goethe?

The data basis for all this news can be found at NOAA. Since the end of the 1950s, monthly measured values for the CO2 content of the atmosphere have been stored there.
Measurements are taken at Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

Also listed is such a graphic:

Graph showing the recent monthly mean CO2 levels measured at Mauna Loa Observatory from 2020 to 2025, displaying a rising trend in CO2 mole fraction (ppm) with seasonal fluctuations.
Source 

You can see (in black) a continuously rising line. This is to be expected as long as humans gain a lot of energy through carbon combustion. No matter what is burned, whether coal, gas, oil, wood or “energy plants” (dressed up as “biofuel”): Burning means oxidation, in addition to heat, plenty of CO2 is produced from the carbon of the energy source and the oxygen in the air.
A first logical step to reduce the increase in CO2 (this is a greenhouse gas and that undoubtedly warms physics) would therefore be to avoid oxidation as far as possible.
Unfortunately, Germany did not choose this path either, it would inevitably lead to nuclear power. Instead, in addition to renewable energies (no combustion), a lot of carbon continues to be converted if renewable energies do not provide enough, unfortunately a normal state.

So much for the climb itself. The red curve in the diagram above shows the actual measured values per month and they have a conspicuous course over each year. There is always a steep rise until May, an almost equally steep drop until the following September, after which it goes up again until the end of the year. Where does that come from?
Almost all of the land is concentrated in the northern hemisphere of the earth. The vegetation outside the tropics goes through a cycle: it is active in the months from April, the forests grow and bind a lot of CO2. It is (along with light and water) THE fuel of photosynthesis, which represents a “CO2 sink”.
And it is now supposed to show “signs of collapse”? Then the amount of CO2 removed in the figure above would have to be very conspicuously low in 2024. Over the years from 1960 onwards, an average value for May to September (end of growth of the plants) of around 5.7 ppm CO2 reduction is achieved. The deviations from this, plotted in multiples of the standard deviation (sigma), are recorded in this diagram:

Graph showing the CO2 reduction from May to September with annual deviations represented in sigma from 1960 to 2020.

One speaks of “unusual” when the deviation is more than 2 sigma, so coincidence must be 95% excluded. The “sink performance” of vegetation already did this in 1965 (-2.53 sigma) and 2000 (-2.05 sigma), not so in 2024 (-1.54 sigma)!
Contributing factors were discussed in the “The system is collapsing!” reports,
e.g. fires in the Amazon in 2023/24. These are not included in the sink performance of the vegetation of the extratropical northern hemisphere considered above.
Among other things, they did indeed lead to an observed record increase of 3.54 ppm from December 2023 to December 2024. These fires were also fueled by El Niño, which brings drought to the area. There are many factors at work!
If you look at the deviations from the linear black trend discussed above in the first image, you get this from 1960 onwards:

Graph showing deviations from the linear CO2 trend in parts per million (ppm) from 1960 to 2020, with fluctuations above and below the zero line.
Deviations from the linear trend (ppm)

They were even higher in 1983 and 1998 than in 2024 with its temperature increase compared to 2022, the cause of which is still unclear in science, we reported.

So is there really so much excitement about the CO2 increase from 2023 to 2024, with “system collapse”? The sober data evaluation clearly says “no”!
What can be expected for 2025? The WMO employee quoted above denies the possibility of a forecast:

“We can no longer predict whether the 3.5 ppm increase will be repeated this year.” 

The inclined reader here could be smarter and consult the increase from August 2024 to August 2025 (last data point of the source): It is 2.5 ppm; in the previous year it was already 3.3 ppm.
The May-August reduction is also 1.1 ppm higher than in 2024. We no longer see an El Niño, which has a very decisive influence on growth. There is nothing unusual in behavior, not even retrospectively in the period up to 2024. What must be of real concern, however, is the increasing growth of the greenhouse gas as a whole, accompanied by warming. In the crucial “sector” of energy, the only way to counter this is really something measurable through real “decarbonization”.
What Germany is doing here is well below the EU average. It is also very likely that things will not get better in this country, new gas-fired power plants are objectively unavoidable if the security of energy supply is to be guaranteed.
The deeper cause of this is now of a physical nature after a political decision to abolish nuclear power. After that, something was formed that is called a “forced move sequence” in chess. Germany is a “driven country” when it comes to CO2 emissions, it has put itself in a pitiful, purely ideologically determined position with the phase-out of non-carbon-oxidizing nuclear power and the one-sided fixation on low-density “renewable energies”.

This is the “truth” in the figures for the CO2 data, the rest is “poetry”.

A simple exercise in the social cost of climate extremism

Using the estimated $117 billion spent on CO2 reduction from 2021 to 2024, the United States could theoretically shelter or house 1.46 million to 5.85 million people annually at a cost of $5,000 to $20,000 per person. This represents 2.2 to 9 times the 2024 homeless population of 653,100 people.

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

Using the estimated $117 billion spent on CO2 reduction from 2021 to 2024, the United States could theoretically shelter or house 1.46 million to 5.85 million people annually at a cost of $5,000 to $20,000 per person. This represents 2.2 to 9 times the 2024 homeless population of 653,100 people.

With the same $117 billion, the United States could feed 13.36 million to 133.56 million people annually, depending on the cost model ($2,190 for SNAP or $219 for food banks). This equates to 30% to 300% of the 44.2 million food-insecure population in 2023. At the lower spending estimate of $82 billion, 9.36 million to 93.61 million people could be fed annually, and at the higher estimate of $152 billion, 17.35 million to 173.52 million people could be fed. The food bank model could theoretically eliminate hunger in the United States multiple times over, while SNAP-level funding would cover a substantial portion, but not all, of the food-insecure population.

In other words, climate extremism diverts funds that could address significant human problems today to combat a challenge to which humanity has always adapted. This approach contradicts the safety net that the government is meant to provide, prioritizing a perceived future threat over the immediate needs of people. The Green New Deal exemplifies this misallocation, reflecting the Left’s inhumanity to mankind.

Shoal of fish, or herding cats? African energy

The U.S. Government has officially discontinued a program in Africa to generate renewable energy in the interests of the environment. The program was originally initiated by President Obama in 2013, and the idea was to produce 30 000 MW of renewable energy, for underserved communities.

From CFACT

By Kelvin Kemm

The U.S. Government has officially discontinued a program in Africa to generate renewable energy in the interests of the environment. The program was originally initiated by President Obama in 2013, and the idea was to produce 30 000 MW of renewable energy, for underserved communities.

Such programs always sound so good when they are announced, but any major government initiative, which is operationally run by a government, invariably leads to all sorts of effects and complexities which were not adequately anticipated at the start.

The whole concept of natural market forces is built on the idea that there is a natural free market in which there is a constant push and pull, and readjustment of interaction, which takes place. This interplay results in a constant self-correcting tumble of actions, striving for the intended goal, much like a shoal of fish pursuing its food source. In contrast, a government project is more like herding cats, where each element is pursuing its own objective, like local political objectives, macro political objectives, personal income from some aspect not directed at the end goal, compounded by the lack of a central reporting line of command.

In a major government top-down exercise, most of the stabilizing interaction of a free market is lost, leading to spin-offs that were not intended.

This Obama initiative was named Power Africa and launched via USAID. The U.S. government committed $7 billion, and furthermore the African Development Bank proposed an additional $3 billion.

This initiative involved a number of African governments such as Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and more, plus private sector partners. Can you see the trouble looming at that stage? That much influence over an array of governments, dealing with private companies. Think about it. But in 2015 the Obama administration intensified its efforts and mobilised over $20 billion in private sector commitments.

Think about that. The private sector does not donate such money. They are interested in profit. They have shareholders to report to. That means that they draw their profit from the various projects in the various African countries.

Some progress was made. A total of 600 MW was supplied by GE at the Amandi and Bridge power plants in Ghana. In Tanzania 672.26 MW of electricity generation was provided. Then the project stalled for obscure reasons.

In Nigeria, Power Africa, with USAID, arranged a $75,000,000 Technical Assistance programme. But no electricity seems to have been produced by the project.

Remember, all this effort was to improve the environment, by forcing renewable energy into African regions.

In 2019 a report by the U.S. Inspector General identified major shortcomings in the accuracy of the results presented. It showed that achievements had been overstated, since much which was reported as, ‘achieved’ had not actually materialize.

A report of 10.6 million new ‘electricity connections’ by 2017 was nearly 80% composed of distributing handheld solar lanterns.

This type of American aid is frequently seen as something either completely misreading the requirement, but even as an insult to local intelligence.

Much of this type of US-African involvement is not doing the image of the US any good at all. Africans should not be patronized, and should not be told what is good for them, by someone who has no idea of the true local circumstances.

Then, when one assesses the actual implementation, the question arises; ‘ Does this help the environment?’

The family, which has been given a solar lantern, are still going to be cooking dinner with a wood or dung fire, if they do not have electricity, as 600 million Africans don’t. They will still cut down trees to get the firewood. So, targeting energy-provision for an environmental concern, in a thrust such as Power Africa, is not really achieving either of these objectives. Supplying a small amount of lighting at night is not altering the cooking habits, or any regular daytime routine of the target population. So, the target of CO2 reduction is not happening.

When the U.S. wishes to help African countries, it is laudable, but Power Africa was not the correct approach. Rather ask the actual people of Africa what they feel they need. A prescription to an externally imposed plan does not usually work.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy