Peter Bissmire
Communications & Language Services
Technical and general translations, French/German -> English
09-09-20
CoViD-19 and CO2.
Reported by Auntie Beeb.
Carbon dioxide emissions fell during lockdown but climate change continued unabated.
Well, of course it did.
There are significant complexities introduced by interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, we can say the rate of warming is determined by the CO2 concentration. A drop in emissions means the rate of increase in the rate of warming fell. In other words, the curve was flattened a bit and only, so far, for a short time. This would be almost completely masked by the consequences of previous emissions coming home to roost.
If we take the interaction of atmosphere and ocean into account, then we end up with, at the very least, a double time constant. This means that there is a delay between any change and the point at which its effect even begins to become measurable. The initial response of the curve is to continue almost exactly as before.
Climate change was raised to the level of a major international political issue at the end of the eighties. We are now seeing measurable and visible consequences, sufficiently undeniable to convince many of the "I'll believe it when I see it" brigade. This represents a delay of about 30 years, which can be regarded as the minimum system delay between what you do and its consequences. Even after this time, the consequences will continue to accumulate.
In 30 years' time, it may be possible to measure the consequences of the "CoViD dip". More important, however, is the fact that, in 30 years' time, we may be in a position to say whether life as we know it can survive on Earth or not.
It is worth noting that climate warming as a result of increased CO2 concentrations was predicted in 1896 by Arrhenius. This was the culmination of over 70 years' work by the scientific community on the earth's heat balance, starting in 1824 with Fourier, who found that, on the basis of radiation balance alone, the earth appeared to be warmer than it should be and began to search for the reasons.