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The global surface average for carbon dioxide (CO2), calculated from measurements collected at NOAA’s remote sampling locations, was 412.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2020, rising by 2.6 ppm during the year.
The global rate of rise was the fifth-highest in NOAA’s 63-year record, following 1987, 1998, 2015 and 2016. The annual mean at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii was 414.4 ppm during 2020.
Economic slowdown prevented a record increase in CO2
The economic recession was estimated to have lowered carbon emissions by about 7% during 2020. Without the economic slowdown, last year’s rise would have been the highest on record, according to Pieter Tans, senior scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. Since 2000, the global CO2 average has grown by 43.5ppm, an increase of 12%.
In late March, New Mexico’s largest newspaper ran a story about how 2020 set records for oil and gas production in the state: More fossil fuels were pumped out of the ground last year than ever before. The
Albuquerque Journal story, published in a weekly stand-alone business section, quoted a pair of company owners and an industry spokesperson. The original story was rewritten and repackaged by other outlets both in and outside of New Mexico.
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The story proved popular with the industry. On the day it was published, the state’s most prominent oil and gas lobbying group put the story on its website and social media platforms and followed up with posts of how petroleum revenues pay for so much of the state’s budget.
The transition to a global energy system that runs on renewable energy rather than finite and dirty coal, oil, and gas is arguably the number-one topic in the media, sometimes eclipsing even the pandemic.
Yet, for all the enthusiastic talk, it seems that we are nowhere near accomplishing the transition and it may already be too late to do anything about climate change anyway, according to some climate scientists. “Embedded power structures and support for a dying industry”: these are the factors that are keeping oil and gas as the world’s main sources of energy, according to the chief executive of one environmental nonprofit organization.