CNN’s climate correspondent Bill Weir lashed out at a report about his odd claims that the coronavirus pandemic was helping humanity deal with global warming, and that the virus was caused by deforestation.
Weir tweeted his displeasure against the report in the Washington Examiner and included a colorful expletive.
“The full question was ‘There seems to be this perception that coronavirus has helped humanity buy some time against global warming. Tell us what’s wrong with that assumption.’ The entire takeaway is THERE IS NO SILVER LINING,” he explained.
While Weir is right that his report concludes that the economic shutdown from the coronavirus pandemic isn’t enough to combat global warming, it’s clear that he and the expert he consults are in favor of dismantling the economy.
In CNN’s report, Weir talks to Dr. Jonathan Foley, the executive director of Project Drawdown, a climate-change think tank.
“Um, we’d have to keep doing this even more and do it for the next 30 years to really begin to bend the curve on the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” said Foley.
“It’s kind of like having a really huge bathtub in the sky filled with pollution,” he explained. “We have the faucet pouring, pouring more in and all we’ve done is turned down the faucet a little bit, but it’s still filling up.”
In one airing of the segment on CNN, Weir attributed the cause of the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China, to deforestation.
“Virologists for years tried to warn us that an invisible enemy would come out of the jungles if we just kept cutting all of them down, and they were right,” claimed Weir in sententious tone.
“So if any good can come of this,” he continued, “maybe it’s an understanding that the climatologists who are warning of an invisible enemy up in our skies and in our seas, maybe we should take them seriously too.”
Weir tore into another person posting the video of his comments, saying, “I’m sorry for whatever hurt you and sincerely hope you find some redemptive meaning in your life.”
Here’s the entire context of the CNN video:
Pollution levels are down dramatically in major cities around the world during the coronavirus pandemic. But will that have a lasting effect on the environment? @BillWeirCNN reports. https://t.co/G7lhQvfDIZ pic.twitter.com/aIv1VFMlvG
— CNN (@CNN) April 23, 2020
Read more at The Blaze
It is obvious that CNN’s report has an agenda, the underlying issue is we have too many people causing “pollution” without never defining the content of the pollution. The lockdowns have given us a preview of life under the “New Green Deal” and few like it. All the blame, papers, calculations, models and proposals have failed to prove CO2 is anything close to a climate thermostat. Researching Earth’s climate used to be a legitimate pursuit—not since the 1970s. Climate changes very slowly, so it was supercharged with end of the world doom to suit globalist evil world domination plans. CNN never wants you to forget humans are an infestation that’s destroying the Earth.
Rather than rely almost exclusively on models to predict the benefits of reducing fossil fuel use on greenhouse gas levels and temperature, we should look at two major “experiments” of greatly reduced fossil fuel use: the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. In both events massive reductions in emissions from industry, aeroplane travel and automobile use around the world occurred, or are occurring, with the expectation that there should be a significant reduction in CO2 levels at recording stations worldwide.
Using Mauna Loa, Hawaii, as the benchmark (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/graph.html) there is nothing to suggest a major disruption to CO2 level trends that can be attributed to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis or 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. While major reductions in fossil fuel use occurred, the overall trend of atmospheric CO2 levels is upward so that today we have the highest ever recorded levels of CO2 (a weekly value of 416.27 ppm for the week ending 15 April 2020).
The lack of response in CO2 levels to the GFC and Coronavirus shutdowns strongly suggest that cutting fossil fuel emissions dramatically may not have a measurable impact on CO2 levels, hence impacts on climate.
This is acknowledged in the NOAA webpage where it is noted that so far the “missing emissions do not stand out.” Moreover, the reduction in CO2 levels would be trivial: “If emissions are lowered by 25%, then we would expect the mean monthly CO2 level for March for Mauna Loa to be lower by about 0.2 ppm.”
Many agencies, countries and the media are promoting a major reduction in fossil fuel use, but the reality appears that there will be a close to zero reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels (e.g. a 25% reduction in emissions for a 0.2 ppm reduction in CO2 levels with a background level of exceeding 400 ppm and trending up).
This is not to say that we should not overhaul many aspects of our consumerism, and environmental management, but rather to caution that the perception that reducing fossil fuel usage is a panacea to global climate change is illusionary. Clearly, there is much more to be learned before we start a deliberate grand experiment of reducing fossil fuel use.