Misleading reporting on CO2 emissions

On the 5th December I published a post on this blog: Some of my thoughts on COP 21 – Keep it simple.

I’ll now just repeat below one of these particular thoughts which I had on the role of the media.

We must all now accept that atmospheric global warming is definitely caused by CO2, and we must get the media on-side and persuade them that their daily reporting of the world stock markets is not nearly as important as a daily update of the Keeling Curve which shows the CO2 levels and is published daily in co2.earth. Increases in world stock markets will only speed us down the Road to Armageddon, but a daily showing of the Keeling Curve will keep us informed as to whether we are making progress in saving this much abused planet of ours or not.

(Image: CO2.Earth)

Although the owner is not one of my favourite persons, I take the Sunday Times every week, and on Sunday 7 December, the large bold front page headline read – Revealed: greenhouse gases to fall. Just to be sure I was keeping abreast of Global Warming developments, I went into co2now.org and got the hot off the press month of November graph which I show on the right.

Daily CO₂                        

December 6, 2015  401.18 ppm

December 6, 2014  398.20 ppm

Average ppm of CO2 in atmosphere each November from 1978 to 2015

It’s not the emissions that are the problem, it’s the amount of these emissions that finish up in the atmosphere. It’s also impossible to accurately measure the emissions, but we can and do measure accurately the CO2 in the atmosphere, and from the table above you can see that we’re certainly not on or even near a plateau. I believe that the Sunday Times headline and comment was at best a mistake and at worst – a piece of very bad reporting.

 – See co2.earth website for current and informative climate measurements on Earth