Opinion By Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris
Thanks largely to Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders and 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, “existential’ was selected as the word of the year by Dictionary.com. The on-line dictionary describes the phenomenon as follows:
Searches for existential spiked throughout 2019, especially after politicians used the word to characterize the dangers and disruptions climate change is widely held to pose for human life and the environment as we know them.
At a town hall on February 25, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders helped send searches for existential up over 179% when he called climate change “an existential crisis that impacts not just you and me and our generation but our kids and our grandchildren.”
Search volume for existential was higher than average throughout summer and fall 2019. August witnessed fires rage across the Amazon and Hurricane Dorian ravage the Bahamas. Many outlets and organizations discussed these disasters not only in connection to climate but also in existential terms. The non-profit Amazon Watch, for instance, framed the conflagration starkly: “ … it’s not only the Amazon, but our entire planet that is in crisis as the devastation of this life-giving biome poses a real, existential threat for all of humanity.”
September saw the worldwide Climate Strike and major speeches by the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg. On September 18, Thunberg notably urged the US Congress: “I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.”
Similarly, Oxford Dictionaries picked “climate emergency” as its word of the year. Clearly, alarmists are winning the war of words in the climate debate. Here’s why none of it makes any sense.
Our atmosphere is made up of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.9% Argonne, some trace gases and only 0.04% of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas most often blamed by alarmists for the supposedly ‘existential’ climate change threat. There is no way that this minuscule volume of life-giving gas (the only reason we can inhabit the Earth) is a threat to life as we know it today.
Direct atmospheric CO2 measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. They show a steady rise in CO2 from 314 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 406 ppm in 2017.
The 40% increase from 280 ppm at the end of World War II to 410 ppm in 2019 is widely recognized to be mainly man-made, derived primarily from fossil fuels, including power plants, factories, and automobiles. But these CO2 levels are neither unusual nor dangerous when viewed in the context of the long-term record of our planet’s climate.
We know from our fossil record that CO2 levels throughout Earth’s history have averaged more than six times our modern concentrations. We also know that nuclear submarines submerged beneath the ocean for weeks at a time, average 5000 ppm CO2, with no health problem ever reported.
Antarctica has had the longest continuous accumulation of ice. It has provided data going back 800,000 years, while data from Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere gives CO2 data going back into the last interglacial period 128,000 years ago. Temperature and CO2 levels have varied during this long period, and importantly, temperature changes preceded changes in CO2. In other words, carbon dioxide has NOT driven temperatures for the last 800,000 years.
During each glacial advance, CO2 levels dropped to dangerously low concentrations, to below 200 ppm. These low levels were dangerous because the minimum threshold for plant life to exist is 150 ppm, and we nearly reached that ‘line of death’ during our most recent ice age. Not only is rising CO2 not a bad thing, it could save civilization for future generations, centuries and thousands of years into the future.
Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, who now battles the lies that alarmists often tell to enrich themselves, believes the day will come when we will be crushing limestone to add more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. He seriously describes this future need because the record shows that over the past 150 million years in the fossil record there has been an alarming downward trend toward CO2 starvation.
The forecasters of climate doom assert that CO2 levels have never been as high as today. Well that is only true for the past 800,000 years. They prefer to view the increase of 120 ppm over the past 150 years through the narrow lens of recent geologic time. To properly analyze the current levels, we need to put the data into the proper context. During our current geologic period, called the Quaternary, there has existed the lowest average CO2 levels in the entire history of the Earth. In the lush vegetative days of the dinosaurs, the CO2 levels stood in excess of 1600 ppm. The average C02 concentration in the preceding 600 million years was more than six-times our modern era level.
The combustion of fossil fuels has allowed humanity to increase concentration of this beneficial molecule and perhaps avert an actual CO2-related climate apocalypse. The climate delusion used by alarmists in their attempts to defeat capitalism and destroy human freedom would set us back centuries to a time when backbreaking work and shortened life expectancy was the norm.
Carbon dioxide emissions are not an existential threat, but the climate alarmists most assuredly are.
Portions of this article were excerpted with permission of the author of the book “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone, which is recommended for everyone desiring the full story of the climate delusion.
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor with of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC and a policy advisor to Heartland.
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You want Existential threats?
Here you go:
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/87
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/178
Okay, the climate alarmists are winning the nondebate in the media. Now let’s see them ban fossil fuel use without causing widespread diminutions of general standards of living.
Consider electric cars, whose proponents claim will soon be competitive with internal combustion engine cars. Not a chance. Right now, in every city in Canada, you can buy a safety inspected, insurable gas powered car for $30000 and drive it to Dawson City without worrying about gassing it up. There is not an electric car maker in the world who can come anywhere near that performance in terms of price and reliability. Electric car makers are cutting into the sales of Cadillacs, Mercedes’, Porsches and BMWs, but can’t make a dent in the sales of Chevy Malibus. And every time Chevrolet sells a Bolt, they lose $7000.
In order to sell a new product, it has to be an improvement over the product it is meant to replace, and electric cars are not an improvement over gas cars. Unfortunately, the evil rich who run the world want to force the adoption of electric cars, but this will inevitably put private vehicle ownership out of reach for millions of people who can now afford to own a car. That’s millions of (genuinely) middle class voters that no politician wants to alienate. So I don’t see that happening barring some revolutionary breakthrough in battery technology.
Watcha do is get a smallish generator and a second fuel tank. They’ll fit in the back of your SUV. Then you can drive unlimited miles without having to recharge. Just 5 minutes or so for gassing up.
Little known issue with electric cars: Chances are good the electric car would not make it to Dawson City depending on the tme of year. At 20 degrees F it would loose 41% range if the heater is turned on. If the heater is not turned on the driver may well freeze or experience hypothermia. Always dress like you’ll have to walk back.
“August witnessed fires rage across the Amazon and Hurricane Dorian ravage the Bahamas”
Yes sir.
And a few other things
Here is a long list of climate impacts in 2019 kindly compiled for us by the bald guy on youtube (tbgy).
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/04/tbgy-extreme-weather-lecture/
What is the ideal average global temperature?
And, since the trace gas CO2 is the heat regulator of the planet, what ideal level of atmospheric CO2 will create and /or guarantee that perfect average global temperature?
Justify your answers…..
– Thunberg notably urged the US Congress: “I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.” –
Suspicious that a Scandinavian native Swedish speaker (with limited education) is familiar with words that confuse a large proportion of English speakers!
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – Hamlet
We need more Existentialism. Attempting to define it would distract anyone from nonexistent existential threats.
Let them jump up and down, scream and whine
The climate is going to do what it is going to do
Nothing doable by man is going to have any significant influence over this process
Most of us here will not live to see concrete conclusions to this debate. That’s the way I figure it
J Mac: The ideal average global temperature is not a discrete figure. In fact there are very few discrete figures in the climate change alarmists array of God-ordained facts.. We can’t let the average global temperature rise more than 1.5 degrees about what temperature, exactly? Well, none of your business. The baseline is something called “pre-industrial levels,” and a numerical figure for that is absent from anyone’s discourse so far.
I’ll tell you what the ideal average global temperature is not: It is not anything that will ever be achieved in our lifetimes because, no matter what the climate is like, it must always be improved by radically rearranging whole economies and polities.
And as for you, J. Mac, don’t make any more trouble for the people who are trying to make the right kind of trouble. Discontent with the world and all that is in it is the natural duty of all good men. If I catch you being unconcerned about the existential crisis again, I’m going to be very, very disappointed.
Ian,
Thank you for your response but be prepared to be ‘disappointed’. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, not in evidence in any of the AGW proponents responses here . I am more than unconcerned about the nonexistent AGW ‘crisis’. I am deliberately challenging the existential assertions of the AGW conjecture. For the lads pushing the AGW conjecture, I repeat:
1) What is the ideal average global temperature?
2) As the trace gas CO2 is asserted to be the ‘heat regulator of the planet’, what ideal level of atmospheric CO2 will create and /or guarantee that perfect average global temperature?
3) Justify your answers.
I suspect you and I would enjoy a cold winter evenings discussion of this, Ian, over suitably heady fermented beverages, beside an ember’d hearth. Perhaps that would go a small way to assuage your disappointments and further enhance your wry sense of humor. };>)
I note that Nick Stokes obviously has strong belief in the CAWG hypothesis, and cites a number of phenomena which he feels support this belief.
I would like to ask him, following Richard Feynman’s classic lectures on the Scientific Method, what observed phenomena he would accept as DISPROVING his belief?
It has always seemed to me that the failure of the atmospheric temperature to follow predicted increases matching CO2 concentration increase was an adequate disproof of the hypothesis – though many supporters do not agree. But, if they are doing science and not religion, they must agree that SOME observation would disprove the hypothesis. I just wonder what that might be….
“It has always seemed to me that the failure of the atmospheric temperature to follow predicted increases matching CO2 concentration increase was an adequate disproof of the hypothesis”
It is a matter of degree. First you have to establish exactly what was predicted – start with a quote. Then check the uncertainty range. If there is a sufficient deviation relative to the uncertainty, then that particular prediction is in doubt.
AGW says that adding CO2 will cause warming. We have seen consistent warming. So I don’t see any likely disproof there.
Nick, I am looking for a specific – hypothetical if necessary – observation which would cause you to consider the hypothesis invalid. You are aware, of course of the Einstein quote about ‘it only needing one experiment to prove me wrong’….
You must also be aware of the history of human certainty and proof – both in science and religion. As observations which do not match current paradigms become accepted by the mass of colleagues in a field, people either reject the beliefs they held before and accept the new paradigm, or retreat into a process of equivocation.
You can see this in theology with the ‘God of the Gaps’ argument – that no matter how much you know there will still be unknown processes going on, and that is where you will find God. I suppose the classic case in science would be Hoyle(et al)’s continuous shoring up of Steady-State theory to a point which is obviously indefensible.
The early history of AGW is replete with similar examples of equivocation and avoidance of disproof. Searching for lost tropospheric Hot-Spots gave way to searching for lost heat in the oceans….
In your case I note that you have not responded with a particular hypothetical observation which you would accept would disprove your argument, but instead have essentially claimed that the AGW hypothesis remains valid within the error bars of current observation. These error bars – in particular that of Climate Sensitivity – have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, and seem unlikely to do so. I conclude that you are trying to avoid the possibility of disproof rather than accept it.
Feynman pointed out that a true scientist should ‘bend over backwards’ in an attempt to disprove his hypothesis, and that this was a fundamental requirement of scientific methodology. Here I see you, and the other supporters of the AGW hypothesis, keeping your head down and crouching on all fours rather than standing up openly to defend your theories…..
Dodgy Geezer,
Plenty of people have tried to disprove the hypothesis. Has anyone succeeded?
The hypothesis at its most basic is about the properties of CO2. It has been around for over 100 years, as have the predictions of what would happen if atmospheric CO2 increased. Those predictions have come true. People have tried to explain it by other means, but they haven’t panned out. I know people here think modeling is a worthless endeavor, but if you can use a model to reconstruct past temperatures without actually using those temperatures in your model, you have a reasonably good test of the model. Then if you take away the increase in CO2 and the model doesn’t follow known past temperature (on average, I mean), that’s a reasonably good test of the hypothesis.
People can say, “But it could be something we haven’t yet considered” about any research. There could always be some variable that’s tied to the variables studied in some unknown fashion – your “gap.” Maybe heat turns water into steam because of some unknown force no one has yet discovered, and it only appears that we understand the physics of the process. But at some point we have to be reasonable and accept that CO2 absorbs heat in certain wavelengths, and that it therefore has an important role in our atmosphere.
“AGW says that adding CO2 will cause warming. We have seen consistent warming. So I don’t see any likely disproof there.”
More like, we have seen consistent warming therefore it must be CO2 because nobody will back us if we say we have to reduce water vapour.
“………..We have seen consistent warming. So I don’t see any likely disproof there………….”
i was NOT asking for observations which can be interpreted as supporting AGW. That way simply leads to arguments about the level of support.
I was asking for an unequivocal example of an observation which would be accepted by AGW adherents as DISPROVING it. This is something which Popper, and Feynman, say is integral to the scientific method. A true scientist who supports the AGW hypothesis should be trying to define an experiment or observation which would DISPROVE their theory, and then doing it.
Failed attempts at disproof are the most powerful way to support a hypothesis. Attempts to justify the hypothesis by re-interpreting data or avoiding experiment or observation which might disprove you tend to UNDERMINE your hypothesis.
As an example, McIntyre’s ‘Starbucks Hypothesis’ – whereby he pointed out that excuses for not gathering data were invalid. See WUWT passim – for example:
“..Readers of WUWT and Climate Audit may recall that in the summer of 2007, Steve left CA in my attendance for a couple of weeks while he went to Colorado to visit his sister, and to prove or disprove his ‘Starbucks hypothesis’ which asks:
…could a climate scientist have a Starbucks in the morning, collect tree rings through the day and still be home for dinner? This came about because apparently RealClimateScientists™ don’t have the funds or time to get out of the office and gather new tree core samples, such as cores that would fill in the last 25 years that seems to be part of that “tricky” divergence problem..”
Dodgy Geezer,
“I was asking for an unequivocal example of an observation which would be accepted by AGW adherents as DISPROVING it.”
Seems like this should be up to those who don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it, disprove it in a way that’s convincing.
What would it take to convince skeptics that it’s true? The evidence can pile up and pile up, but the evidence doesn’t seem to matter. Skeptics like the OP resort to saying it’s all a hoax for political reasons, and offer lame arguments that only show their unfamiliarity with the science.
“Seems like this should be up to those who don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it, disprove it in a way that’s convincing.”
Err no the null hypothesis was the climate is always changing until this new kid on the block theory that unparalleled warming is caused by man made CO2. I refer you to proven geology at Hallett Cove in South Australia that the sea level rise of 130M between 15000 and 6-7000 years ago (that can be an average of 16.25mm/yr for 8000 years) while the Fort Denison tide gauge in Sydney Harbour shows only 0.65mm/yr currently so why should I join your irrational panic?
You have no better historical proxy for temperature rise than that and nothing man made that can possibly match it in anyone’s lifetime or any ancestor they can recall telling them they’ve experienced anything like it. The MBH 1998 hockey stick that began all this hysteria is an admitted ‘travesty’ they couldn’t explain the decline and we learned of Mike’s Nature ‘trick’ to cover it up after they hid the data. Yet still we have supposedly rational people supporting computer mumbo jumbo with overheated predictions but not one of them can explain historical SLR the one true temperature proxy to rule all their tea leaf readings.
Until they can (I’m all ears if I’ve missed it so feel free to enlighten me here) I’m not joining the climate cult building windmills and solar panel edifices to ward off evil spirits in the sky and the only Tesla I’m interested in is this bloke-
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Twentieth-Century/dp/148122980X
Kristi, you really don’t understand science do you. It’s already “disproven” by the fact that
1) it’s never been able to get past the null hypothesis. In science, if you theory can’t get past the null hypothesis you need to go back to the drawing board.
2) all of it’s predictions (that can be checked) have failed. tropospheric hot spot? doesn’t exist. Heat hidden in the oceans? never found. Hurricane’s more frequent? nope. More intense? nope again. Ice free arctic? would be nice, but hasn’t happened. etc.
3) Science requires falsifiability. If you are backing a theory but can not articulate any situation that would falsify your theory, then your theory is not science. period.
And really, the burden of proof is on the one proposing the theory, not on the ones asking for that proof. In short, try as you might to push your burden onto the other side doesn’t change the fact that that is not how science works. all you accomplish by trying to do so is to reveal how lacking in science and scientific understanding your position is.
Also Krisiti, you failed to comprehend the post you were replying to. If you did you’d have noticed the answer to your question “What would it take to convince skeptics that it’s true? ”
Geezer: Failed attempts at disproof are the most powerful way to support a hypothesis.
When those proposing the theory
1) come up with what would falsify the theory,
2) attempt to falsify it and
3) fail to do so,
then skeptics will take notice. But your side hasn’t even manage to come up with step 1 in all the decades they’ve been pushing this nonscience.
Connolly and Connolly radiosonde data good enough for you? If not, why not?
“I would like to ask him, following Richard Feynman’s classic lectures on the Scientific Method, what observed phenomena he would accept as DISPROVING his belief?”
simple. A warming stratosphere when C02 goes up.
Even Freeman Dyson knows this
A warming stratosphere when C02 goes up.
Both are inherent outcomes of natural solar-driven ocean warming.
The heat that warmed the stratosphere had already released the CO2 from the ocean.
There is an average 16-hour lag from daily solar irradiance to CO2 outgassing.
Natural CO2 is misattributed to man-made CO2 by many orders of magnitude.
So this is an example of an observation (“A warming stratosphere”) that was hypothesized to have been attributable to a particular cause (“when C02 goes up”), whereas the observation can be equally attributable to other causes.
Is this not what the null hypothesis holds must require rejection of the hypothesis Steve put forward?
Mr.
Correct. Did he understand that? Not sure.
You are correct Mr. But remember “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
“Despite Evidence that Nothing Unusual is Happening”
Not the job of critics to provide evidence that it aint so but the job of climate science to provide convincing evidence that it is so.
I’d say that the alarmists have won the war of words, and there is no question that the media have had a large part to play in this. Those controlling it have decided that there really is a ‘planetary emergency’, and seemingly consider those with opposing views to be a real threat to those doing ‘good works’ to prevent disaster. Skeptics are dangerous people, it would appear!
Existential as word of the year/decade? I would nominate the adjective/adverb most favoured by media pundits,celebrities and all types of interviewers/interviewees:incredible/incredibly
It’s called natural selection. Activists use the time honored scare-the-heck-out-of-everyone technique. Skeptics think it’s better to use science. Fear has won every virtually every battle throughout history. If skeptics really want to win, they need much, much better scare words and a platform that explains in two second sound bytes how great their fossil fuel is and how mean the detractors are. Plus a lot of paid activists to spread the word and intimidate all who do not listen.
If CO2 rise was the cause of the temperature rise then that would indeed be (IMHO) unprecedented and possibly existential. Fortunately there is no proof that the current rise in CO2 is due to Human enterprise (we may be contributing to it however) or due to current atmospheric temperature. It is far more evident that the CO2 increase is due to outgassing of the oceans caused by long term oceanic warming over hundreds of years starting with the medieval warming period, which would be a much closer match of the lag in CO2 fluctuations
Existential, that’s a bit Pretentious.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Like “rationalism” and “empiricism,” “existentialism” is a term that belongs to intellectual history. Its definition is thus to some extent one of historical convenience. The term was explicitly adopted as a self-description by Jean-Paul Sartre, and through the wide dissemination of the postwar literary and philosophical output of Sartre and his associates—notably Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus—existentialism became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s.
Hardly related to CO2.
Sartre and Camus each produced a lot of hot air, though.
The other two also, perhaps.
Auto
I think they are losing the war of the words as they are using more extreme language- desperation.
Moreover the political parties pushing this agenda are losing.
“Existential” really doesn’t mean anything, when you think about it. What a vague adjective!
It’s just a cue word — something to make you perk up and take notice of something.
You do not even need the word to describe climate change as a crisis. Look:
Climate change is a crisis. Vs Climate change is an existential crisis.
That word only dresses up an otherwise perfectly adequate phrase. Its sole purpose is to exaggerate or dramatize or emotionalize or hype.
I have a better word of the year — ostentatious
Hence, Climate change is an ostentatious crisis. Same number of syllables. Rings very similarly to the ear, when spoken. It even has a lot of the “s” sounds of “existential”. Even more, it has a meaning with which you can get greater intellectual traction.
Climate Alarmists Winning the War of Words…
Empty words, maybe.
What’s missing? Climate change, of course. Not once, in two decades, has that topic been part of this table. Which means it’s a less than marginal concern.
Climate change has never been important to ordinary people living their lives, raising their kids, and paying their bills. Never mind being a contender for first place, it isn’t even on the chart.
Gallup’s monthly polling results from August 2018 to February 2019 are publicly available. They include the long list of answers mentioned by small numbers of respondents. Among these we find: abortion, crime, drugs, gay and lesbian rights, gun control, and school shootings. No ‘climate’ there, either.
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2020/01/06/decades-of-public-opinion-climate-change-not-on-the-radar/
Let’s see, the Warmunists have all of Public Education Pre-K through post-doc, all of print media, all of a/v media, all the Scientific-Technological Elite in government, all the Environmentalist non-profits, the Democrat Party, the Communist Party of the United States, The Justice Democrats, the Green Party, antifa, and of course, Greta, yet public opinion in the US is still anti-GND and pro MODEST and commonsense solutions to our environmental issues. It could be worse…Ex: Ladies and Gentlemen, Madam President Hil….(no, I can’t type that!)
If AGW is an existential crisis as we are told by the elites, then let’s start by grounding all private and corporate jets. Same goes for first class on commercial airlines including government officials flying on military planes. Everybody flies economy and no cheating by flying on airlines from other nations or parking your plane or mega yacht overseas. No more CO2 offsets. Hey, that’s just buying the equivalent of an indulgence (I’m looking at you Al Gore). Anyone who exceeds more than 2X the average energy usage of an average home must be totally off the grid (yes, you Al, Barbara S, Bill Gates and the rest of the Media and Silicon Valley ilk). Does it solve the problem? No, but it’s a start. Isn’t that right Al, Matt, Bill, Barbara, Leo, et al?
Nullius in verba!
J Mac: Did you steal Greta Thunberg’s childhood? If you did you’d better put it back.
Don’t you worry: I am a denialist, and durn proud of it, partner. I am genuinely astonished that more people cannot see how flimsy, whimsical and indifferent to ordinary good sense climate warmism is. Wasn’t there a pause in the rise of global temperatures during a period of increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide? Did this not falsify the theory of carbon dioxide-induced global warming? I mean, come on.
My own theory is that some people require struggle in a great moral cause to feel that their lives have meaning, and that this is what undergirds the messianic zeal that climate change fascists so alarmingly display. All my life I’ve had to put up with people who cannot stand the idea of comfort, ease and happiness, and react to it by finding something wrong and starting a quarrel over it. Now we live in a wonderful country where even the poor live lives of comfort and easy amusement, and it drives some people mad with resentment at all this happiness. Obviously the suppression of fossil fuels is designed to impoverish people who have become used to fresh food, warmth, really good TV on demand, YouTube and assorted other sources of pleasure that wicked humans just don’t deserve. It’s harsh moralism run rampant.
Why do people search for words on a dictionary website?
Because they don’t know the meaning! That show that the Agw crowd is pretty stupid and that those who try to communicate with them have misjudged their public.
Make a test. Go out – no matter where you live – and pick the next 100 random people you meet. Ask each of them if they believe in Global Warming and if they say yes, ask them what the causes and mechanisms driving Climate Change are. Look what you get. You will be shocked. Most people don’t make decisions based on knowledge and information. They make decision based on what feels good. Truth is irrelevant. That’s why democracy is so dangerous as it amounts to mob rule. Politicians know this and those manipulating the mob best, win.
If “existential” was the most-searched word on Google, how many of those searches included Jean-Paul Sartre, the French leader of the existentialist movement?
If all the emitted CO2 remained in the atmosphere, a mass balance shows that the emission of about 8.0 gigatons per year would correspond to an increase in CO2 concentration of 1 ppm. World emissions of CO2 in 2017 were 37.08 gigatons, which should have increased the CO2 concentration by 4.6 ppm, but concentrations at Mauna Loa are increasing at about 3 ppm per year, meaning that 1.6 ppm/yr (or 35% of man-made emissions) are removed by natural processes (photosynthesis, absorption in oceans, etc.)
Hundreds of experiments have shown that increasing CO2 concentrations in the air causes more rapid plant growth (photosynthesis) and increased crop yields. If the photosynthesis rate is proportional to the CO2 concentration, the rate of destruction of CO2 will catch up to the emission rate when the CO2 concentration reaches 410 / 0.35 = 1,170 ppm, at which time the Earth will be much greener and more fertile than it is now. and the CO2 concentration will reach an equilibrium.
Of course, this simplistic calculation ignores other natural sources of CO2 (animal respiration, volcanic eruptions) and other CO2 sinks, such as conversion of CO2 to carbonates by marine organisms, so that the actual equilibrium point may be different. We do know that natural processes can remove AT LEAST the equivalent of 1.6 ppm/yr * 8.0 GT/ppm = 12.8 GT/yr of CO2 from the atmosphere, and according to Le Chatelier’s Principle, the rate of any chemical reaction increases when a reactant’s concentration increases, so that the CO2 removal rate will accelerate as CO2 concentrations increase, so that the CO2 concentration will reach an equilibrium at a higher level than the current 410 ppm, with much faster plant growth and higher crop yields than at present.
If the additional CO2 causes some slight warming of the climate, this will decrease the need for burning fossil fuels to heat homes in winter, so that man-made CO2 emissions will decrease.
Why is this an “existential” threat? It sounds more like a promise!