CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir reported on the effects the nationwide lockdowns during the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has had on reducing the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases.
Weir went on to suggest, without evidence, that COVID-19 was the result of deforestation.
"But what about the effects that are harder to see? What is the pause in the industrial revolution doing to the chemistry of our sky?" Weir asks.
"Locals in northern India say they can see the Himalayas for the first time in decades. And before and after satellite imagery shows how nitrogen dioxide pollution over North America’s big cities is down by as much as 30 percent. But the blanket of heat-trapping gases around our planet is still thicker than ever," he continued.
Weir then asked Dr. Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, with what is wrong in assuming "the virus has helped humanity buy some time when it comes to global warming."
"We 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," Foley said. "It’s kind of like having a really huge bathtub in the sky filled with pollution and we have the faucet pouring, pouring more in and all we have done is kind of turn down the faucet a little bit, but it’s still filling up."
"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," Weir concluded. "So if anything good can come of this, Alisyn, maybe it’s an understanding that the climatologists who’re warning about the invisible enemy up in our sky and in our seas, maybe we should take them seriously too."
As a result of the statewide lockdowns, which saw the closure of non-essential businesses and a halt on large gatherings, 26.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks.