Global CO2 Levels Hit Record High thanks to powerful El Nino Event
According to the WMO, carbon dioxide levels remained steady at 400 parts per million during 2015 thanks to a strong, naturally occurring El Niño that affected our climate and hastened global warming. That’s in line with the monitoring station at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, which uses a variety of #Science-based methods to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) levels across the globe.
The worldwide average of CO2 went up 2.3 parts per million (ppm) over 2014 levels, a 0.58 percent increase over the previous year. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also said in its yearly bulletin that CO2 levels have gone up an average of 2.08 ppm per year during the last ten years.
Collectively, CO2 emissions make up the largest chunk of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and President #Obama has pledged to “cut emissions 26%-28% by 2025 over 2005 levels” as part of the U.N.-backed Paris Climate Agreement. A large chunk of man-made emissions comes from coal-fired power plants in China and India, two nation states not required to cut emissions until 2030 under the recently ratified climate accord.
El Niño biggest factor
The current increase in CO2 levels is being blamed on the now-dead El Niño that lasted for roughly 15 months throughout 2015 and 2016, causing temperatures to spike worldwide. Climate alarmists pointed to this as proof of catastrophic global warming, but temperatures are already returning to pre-El Niño levels.
That long-lasting weather phenomenon caused droughts in otherwise tropical regions and reduced the normally abundant carbon sinks like forests, marshes, and vegetation. The rest gets mixed into the atmosphere, oceans, or siphoned off into space. Of the 400 ppm currently observed, the United Nations estimates that about 35 percent of it is from man-made sources.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that emissions from fossil-fueled power plants are the largest source of man-made greenhouse gases. With the advent of fracking and natural gas-powered plants, emissions have dramatically fallen across many states despite a global increase. That’s because CO2 mixes well into the atmosphere, a point seemingly lost by the Obama administration as it moves to curtail power plant emissions using the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP).
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