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Comment by isityouyesitsme | Hacker News Reader

In most of 2020, and large parts of 2021, the U.S. economy tanked, along with a substantial number of active road users, air travelers, manufacturing services, logistics, etc. Even today in my not-quite-urban living area, the traffic seems to be 2/3 what it was in 2019.

I live under a pretty big rock. Is there any explanation why this serious reduction of greenhouse has had no effect?

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Traffic and driving is up compared to 2019. Mass transit use dropped dramatically.

The economy only tanked for a brief period in 2020 and then had massive stimulus injected that led to a rush for consumer goods and real estate. Oil production increased and more oil and gas are being burned. Overall the trajectory for generation of greenhouse gases did not change significantly.

Hmm, most of that passes the smell test to me, thanks.

The part that doesn't: I'm admittedly looking only at my Urban area, but traffic is much less than it was. I still commute to the office, and it just isn't what it used to be, even into the city. My commute takes about 10 minutes less than it used to, 15 minutes instead of 25.

Obviously not a huge city, but definitely one that is well known across the U.S.

Residence times of greenhouse gases are on the years to centuries timescale. The economy tanking was a blip in the rate emissions were added to the atmosphere, but the net balance was still positive. And even if it wasn't, a single year of net zero emissions would make a near negligible change to the existing inventory of greenhouse gases, which is up almost 50% over the highs of the past 800k years. There would be a detectable drop in methane (half life of 10.5 years) but not too much for CO2 (hl of 100+ years).

Getting to net zero isn't going to substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or stop warming in it's tracks, it's just about limiting how much higher the temperature is going to get (at least for the short to medium term).

Thank you for the well-written and polite reply. You taught me that the residence times are the big problem, and for all of the arguments and discussion generated through the years on this, I have never once heard this.

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