Mother Nature Rejects Net-Zero

Regarding your article on 17 June 2021 “Why Net-Zero Is a Suicide Mission for Canada” [by Fergus Hodgson, published online]:

I was surprised that with all the talk of net-zero, nobody appears to be quantifying the level of emissions that represents. I recently reviewed annual anthropogenic CO2 emission statistics versus atmospheric CO2 concentrations to better understand what net-zero means in terms of global emissions.

I found that for the three pre-CCP virus years 2017–2019 and adopting the climate alarmist’s own allocation process, an average of 27.9 Gt of anthropogenic CO2 was sequestered. An average 5.2 GT remained in the atmosphere each year on that basis, and net-zero ambitions suggest the alarmists’ objective is to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions below 28 GT so as not to add CO2 to the atmosphere.

Alarmists cheered in 2020 as the CCP virus shut down economies and reduced anthropogenic CO2 emissions by 7 percent to 31 GT. They dreamt that would result in curtailing the 2020 rise in atmospheric CO2 to 3 GT after normal sequestration, or 44 percent less than 2019 growth, nearly halfway to net-zero. Instead, Mother Nature rejected their ideology and accelerated atmospheric CO2 growth by 7 percent to a record 5.8 GT, continuing the climb out of current CO2 “drought” conditions.

Wayne Karlen, geophysicist & petroleum engineer

Queensland, Australia