EU: no CO2 improvement in cars in 2017

There is a new report from the EEA (European Environmental Agency) which is breathtaking regarding elementary  logic. After that Brussels (and many enviro-groups) launched an unprecedented Diesel bashing, sales of Diesel cars are down in the EU (a decrease up to 19% in Greece and 17% in Luxembourg). Everybody should know that the fuel efficiency of a Diesel engine is much better that that of a gasoline engine of same power (a Diesel car makes about 3.4 km/l more than the equivalent petrol car, all fulfilling the Euro 6 norm, see here); the report says that as an average the CO2 emissions of Diesel cars is 117.9 gCO2/km, and those of petrol cars 121.6 gCO2/km.

So no wonder that EU wide car CO2 emissions are not “improving”: actually they rise by a rather minuscule 0.4 g/CO2/km. No wonder also that on average CO2 emissions are in a general rule lower in flat countries like Denmark (107.1) and the Netherlands (108.3) compared to hilly/mountaneous Austria (120.7) and Germany (127.1). Using a unique qualifier independent of geography/topography seems to be particularly silly (see next figure from the report, table added by me):

Clearly all the least developed Eastern countries have the highest emissions, probably due to topography and older car fleets. The extremely low value for Greece could well be a statistical fluke, not uncommon in many statistics from that country (even if Greeks seem to favor lighter cars).

Brussels has mandated a target of 95 gCO2/km for 2021 (i.e. in 3 years). A healthy dose of  skepticism seems adequate; but be sure that EV (electrical vehicles) will be counted as zero-emitters (what clearly they are not) to beautify the statistics!

 

Arctic warming seen in perspective

During the first months of 2018 the Arctic temperatures were “unusually” warm, which made most media jump into quasi hysterical writings; an example is The Guardian, never shy of pushing the alarm:

What most media forget to tell, is that after peaking in February, there was a formidable plunge to cooler temperatures in March, as seen on this graph of the Danish Meteorological Service from today:

The blue line corresponds to the freezing point of 0°C; so even at its highest, the average (global) temperatures of the Arctic region above latitude 80° were still “comfortably” in the freezing range; they are now practically “back” to the mean of the 1958 to 2002 period. You will not be surprised that this was ignored by the Guardian!

A look at the revised PAGES2k project will put things into perspective. The PAGES2k consortium was a research project to make a reanalysis of the land temperatures of the NH of the last 2000 years. Heavy mistakes were made in the first publication, which were corrected in a second corrigendum published in 2015 (see a more complete discussion here). The relevant data for the Arctic are available at the NOAA website here; using the published Excel file, I made the following graph were every data point is the mean of 30 years temperature (given as anomaly w.r. to the period 1961-1990):

Clearly the Arctic has warmed during the past 100 years, but it has not exceeded the maximum around year 400 and is actually now below the temperature of the Medieval warming around year 1000, when atmospheric CO2 levels are assumed being approx. 280 ppmV. What this graph shows is the well known approx. 1000 year oscillation of the climate system (see for instance here ):

The Central Arctic Sea Ice area has shrunken during the last year, but using a realistic y-axis scale, this does not seem to spell disaster (link: www.climate4you.com):

Looking at the winter snow cover of the Northern Hemisphere also brings us back to normality:

No visible plunge into “snow-free” winters are observed, contrary to what some “professors” prophesied ten years ago (see here)!

Conclusion:

Before shouting ” disaster!”, please look at the past changes!