I’m not a scientist. But I have reasons why I don’t fully trust the ‘climate emergency’ narrative. Here they are:
- Looking back through history, there have always been doomsday prophets, folk who say the world is coming to an end. Are modern-day activists not just the current version of this?
- I look at some of the facts – CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere; humans are responsible for just 3% of CO2; Britain is responsible for just 1% of the world’s CO2 output – and I think “really“? Will us de-carbonising really make a difference to the Earth’s climate?
- I have listened to some top scientists who say CO2 does not drive global warming; that CO2 in the atmosphere is a good or vital thing; that many other things, like the Sun and the clouds and the oceans, are more responsible for the Earth’s temperature.
- I note that most of the loudest climate activists are socialists and on the Left. Are they not just using this movement to push their dreams of a deindustrialised socialist utopia? And I also note the crossover between green activists and BLM ones, gender ones, pro-Hamas ones, none of whom I like or agree with.
- As an amateur psychologist, I know that humans are susceptible to manias. I also know that humans tend to focus on tiny slivers of time and on tiny slivers of geographical place when forming ideas and opinions. We are also extremely malleable and easily fooled, as was demonstrated in 2020 and 2021.
- I have looked into the implications of Net Zero. It is incredibly expensive. It will vastly reduce living standards and hinder economic growth. I don’t think that’s a good thing. I know that economic growth has led to higher living standards, which has made people both safer and more environmentally aware.
- Net Zero will also lead to significant diminishment of personal freedom, and it even threatens democracy, as people are told they must do certain things and they must not do other things, and they may even be restricted in speaking out on climate matters.
- What will be the worst things that will happen if the doomsayers are correct? A rise in temperature? Where? Siberia? Singapore? Stockholm? What is the ideal temperature? For how long? Will this utopia be forever maintained? I’m suspicious of utopias; the communists sought utopias.
- If one consequence of climate change is rising sea levels, would it not be better to spend money building more sea defences to protect our land? Like the Dutch did.
- It’s a narrative heavily pushed by the Guardian. I dislike the Guardian. I believe it’s been wrong on most issues through my life – socialism, immigration, race, the EU, gender, lockdowns and so on. Probably it’s wrong about climate issues too?
- I am suspicious of the amount of money that green activists and subsidised green industries make. And 40 years ago the greenies were saying the Earth was going to get too cold. Much of what they said would happen by now has not happened. Also, I trust ‘experts’ much less now, after they lied about the efficacy of lockdowns, masks and the ‘vaccines’.
- I like sunshine. I prefer being warm to being cold. It makes me feel better. It’s more fun. It saves on heating bills. It saves on clothes. It makes people happier. Far few people die of the heat than they do the cold.
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(1) is correct and the best reason to doubt “climate change” which for leftists is nothing more than a 100 year prediction of climate doom
(2) The claim that CO2 is 3% manmade is a claim made by stupid people. That’s when I stopped reading this claptrap at The Sceptic the other day and rejected it for my blog’s recommended reading list. Standards for inclusion here are obviously lower.
Leftist climate myths can not be refuted with conservative climate myths.
I too hate the 3% nonsense. It drives me nuts when people who should know better trot it out.
Some of us come here to learn from the “smart people”. You’re comment provided nothing. How about the correct answer?
I think the consensus view is something like this. Natural level of CO2 in 1800 was 280 ppm. Current level is about 420 ppm. The difference, 140 ppm, is supposed to be down to human emissions.
I don’t know what the 3% refers to so cannot comment on that. Maybe someone else knows.
Correct my first sentence if its not right!
It’s not right. The difference between 280 ppm and 420 ppm, I don’t know where it came from, you don’t know where it came from, and nobody on God’s green Earth can state with certainty where it came from!!! It might even be possible that Human activities have subtracted from what occurred naturally, not added to it. And not only does nobody know, bloody few are even curious about it! I don’t have a problem with 3%, it sounds as good as any other number.
“I don’t know where it came from, you don’t know where it came from”
You don’t know where it came from
Nearly 100% of scientists know where it came from
Manmade CO2 emissions were roughly double the increase of atmospheric CO2 since 1850. Nature absorbed enough cO2 to equal half of manmade emissions.
Go find someone smart to explain that to you. Or do you think scientists have a global conspiracy to lie about that, including at least 95% of skeptic scientists on our side?
“Go find someone smart to explain that to you.”
That will not be you. !! You emulate Billy Madison on this matter.
So we have been told by people with an obvious agenda and based on sale and shipments which we cannot independently verify.
How much of that increase is natural? Seems in the early 1700s, the CO2 levels were on par or higher than today. Pick a date and you can find warmer and colder temperature than 1880 or 1850 and those are not global temps.
So, exactly how much CO2 is emitted by the oceans per 1 C warming?
How much CO2 is from geothermal emissions, volcanic vents, and volcanos?
How much CO2 is from changes in agriculture? Or, wait, agriculture would be anthropogenic.
Give me the list of all scientists surveyed and demonstrate 100%.
The natural level of CO2 is 280? CO2 has been much,much higher in the past.
I would expect that any “natural level” is going to be near the mid-range value, not one of the extremes.
Yes, ‘natural level’ was a misleading way of characterising the consensus.
I think the consensus is that the current modern times level has been 280 ppm, that it remained at this level for a few centuries until the industrial revolution, and that it has risen since about 1850 to current levels – I said about 420, but in fact it seems to be a bit lower.
So yes, there is nothing natural about 180 in the sense that over geological time frames it has been much much higher.
The usual argument is that we know how much CO2 has been emitted due to human activity in modern times. We also know that not all of it has resulted in a corresponding rise in CO2 levels. The consensus seems to be that some of it must have been absorbed by natural processes and sinks, and that the fraction not absorbed is the source of the modern rise in CO2 ppm.
This seems quite plausible, and its not the point in the consensus argument that should attract most skepticism. Nor for that matter is the argument that added CO2 has a forcing, a warming, effect. It does, and we know that other things being equal that would be about +1C.
The point in the consensus argument that is weakest is what the effect of that forcing is on the climate. You can show there is a forcing effect. But this does not show that the climate will have higher temperatures as a result. The climate is a machine with lots of different components, and to make the case the consensus must show that they work in such a way that temperature is a straightforward function of additional forcing.
Feedbacks are the critical assumption here.
It may be that the climate reacts to forcing a bit like a car on cruise control does to speed fluctuations caused by hills or wind, coolings lead to positive feedback, warmings to negative feedback.
The best approach is probably not to focus critical energy on the two well established components of the consensus view [that the modern CO2 rise is substantially human caused, and that it does have a forcing effect], but on the assumptions about how the climate must react to that forcing. This last is the real weak point.
Richard Greene is right about the source of the CO2 rise, and right about CO2 rises having a forcing effect. But he often confuses these as showing that man-made CO2 must produce a warming climate. This does not follow at all.
I agree with every word. Well said!
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Deny the emergency, not the trivial warming and certainly not the enhanced agriculture.
Come here to learn or argue?
This is the answer
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog: How much do humans increase atmospheric CO2 each year?
Your own made up numbers, brilliant.
Not a good site to get real information.
Full of arrogant self-opinionated gibberish. !
You are the one who does the most arguing.
I have made it my mission to tell conservatives spouting climate myths that they are stupid. They make it impossible for most conservatives to be taken seriously on the subject.
Net Zero is finally getting some resistance.
But the coming climate crisis hoax is still alive and well.
And the hoax will stay alive if conservatives can’t admit that humans added a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere, and by doing so causes a some amount of warming, that so far seems beneficial, not harmful.
Denying the fact that human CO2 emissions are very small compared to natural CO2 flux, feeds right into the AGW CO2 meme.
It is what AGW-cultists, like you, do.
And anyway, we know there is no empirical scientific evidence showing that CO2 causes warming..
You have proven that fact very convincingly… as you will undoubtedly continue to do.
There is no one denying that the seasonal fluxes are huge. That is the source of your unfortunate obstinate confusion. You look only at the nature In and ignore the Out. Then you rightly say nobody can accurately measure all the sources and sinks.
What can be proven far beyond a reasonable doubt is that nature absorbs more than it emits. It is unnecessary to show how each source and sink combines to arrive at that outcome. Please follow the derivation I supplied to prove that point.
Wrong, The “out” part absorbs nearly all the human released CO2.
There is no way the natural carbon cycle can tell the difference…
and since the natural “in” part is many multiples higher than the human “in”, there is very little human “in” left in the system.
I am one of those stupid people. The natural carbon cycle accounts for 97% of the CO2 that enters into the atmosphere. Do you dispute that? IF so, I will happily supply a reference for the number.
If you do not dispute it, why is the biosphere not able to absorb and extra 3%? Would it be your opinion that the amt of CO2 absorbed by the biosphere if fixed?
The magnitude of the natural carbon cycle is, as a matter of logic, irrelevant to what I am calling the ‘consensus argument’.
The consensus argument is that we start out in (for example) 1800. Ppm is 180. Humans then emit lots of CO2. Enough to raise ppm to well over the 420 level that it reaches in 2024.
The consensus then argues, ppm is not higher because natural processes contain sinks, and the additional CO2 humans have emitted does not all remain in the atmosphere. Some is absorbed.
The argument does depend on there being a limited capacity to natural sinks. Or at least, if not a limited overall capacity, at least a limit to their takeup in modern times.
All this seems quite plausible, and does not in any way show the existence of a climate emergency or a case for net zero, still less any case for wind, solar, EVs and heat pumps.
If you differ from the consensus, you have to explain where the modern rise in CO2 came from, if not from the human emissions that are both large enough and the only plausible source for it.
As the person making the assertion, it is up to you to provide the proof. It is not up to others to disprove your assertion. That is essentially an argumentative fallacy.
If you can’t provide proof that over extended periods of time CO2 sinks can’t absorb any additional production of CO2, then only conjecture rules.
The fact that nature can both absorb all the CO2 that is emitted, and, can not absorb all the CO2 emitted is already proven by analysis showing varying levels of concentration over long periods. The fact that we are in a period of increasing concentration caused only by mankind requires substantial proof that so far is not available.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2024/04/net-zero-co2-emissions-a-damaging-and-totally-unnecessary-goal/
Where did CO2 come from before humans?
I think the 3% number is per decade, not in total.
It is approximately correct for the annual flux.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/07/carbon-cycle/
It is in any period but best evaluated in integer numbers of years due the seasonality.
Seasonal outgassing from all natural sources is humongous. Fossil fuel emissions are about 3% the size of that flux. There’s nothing wrong with that claim. It’s not in dispute. AT ALL!
Seasonal absorption by all natural sinks is around 20 gigatons more than the seasonal outgassing. And no, that’s not based on an assumption that the natural fluxes are in balance. They are NOT in balance, it is easily proven that the natural sink is bigger than the natural source.
And yes, it’s also true that we can’t accurately measure any of the natural fluxes. Hell, we probably can’t even identify all the fluxes. That is absolutely irrelevant. The mass balance doesn’t involve measuring ANY of the natural fluxes.
See my proof above for the details.
I’ll also stand for the unpopular truth. For some reason, certain skeptics want to deny that fossil fuel burning has raised the CO2 concentration from 0.028% to 0.042% over 175 years.
The apparent reason is often given away by the preface “how can manmade CO2 be warming the planet when…”
For some reason these skeptics accept the weak claim that CO2 is causing dangerous warming but reject the robust claim based on freshman class basic engineering of a mass balance.
We need only a few measurements to prove that nature is a net sink of CO2 and our emissions are gradually raising CO2 levels. Those are average atmospheric pressure, the total surface area of the earth, the change in concentration of CO2 observed, and the mass of fossil fuels burned in the same period.
All of those numbers can be accurately assessed. With respect to the amount of fossil fuel burned, governments track this in order to levy taxes and royalties. Thus it is likely to be underestimated because no company is going to over-report and some may be cheating.
The change in measured CO2 concentration converts to a number of tons of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere. If you can calculate the total mass of the atmosphere and you know the concentration of CO2 then you know the mass of CO2 currently in the atmosphere. Comparing that, say 10 years apart, we get a quantity of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere over that period. We know the total mass from the atmospheric pressure at sea level and the total surface area of the earth. We know the concentration from direct measurement.
The basic mass balance taken over the atmosphere says
In – Out = Accumulation
In means all natural outgassing plus manmade emissions combined. Out means all the various ways that nature extracts CO2 from the atmosphere. Accumulation is just that calculation of the change in CO2 mass on two different dates.
We calculate very accurately the Accumulation. There’s no ambiguity there.
Now let’s take a look at the ‘In’ term in the mass balance equation. It consists of two main components, natural and anthropogenic. We can define:
In = In(nature) + In(man)
Substitute that into the original equation to get
In(nature) + In(man) – Out = Accumulation
Now rearrange:
In(nature) – Out = Accumulation – In(man)
On the left side we have quantities that we cannot easily measure, that are indeed notoriously difficult and uncertain to measure. On the right side we have all the numbers that are accurately known.
Here comes the proof.
The accumulation calculated from concentration measurements over a period of time is only about half the emissions from fossil fuels. HALF! Remember that both of those numbers are already quite accurately measured.
That means that we are very confident that the term Accumulation – In(man) must be a negative number. For it not to be negative due to measurement error we must be overestimating fossil fuel production by a factor of double. But as we already noted, for fossil fuel production to be overestimated means fossil fuel companies are overpaying taxes and royalties. What is the prospect that on average all companies are accepting to pay double for ten years?
Now if the term on the right is a negative number we can express that as
Accumulation – In(man) < 0
Substitute again…
In(nature) – Out < 0
or
In(nature) < Out
So nature’s contribution to the atmosphere must be smaller than nature’s absorption from the atmosphere. Nature cannot be causing CO2 to rise when nature is a net sink of CO2.
QED
” . . . CO2 is causing dangerous warming”
You must be aware that in the climate models CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas. The models predict significant warming by CO2 due to a positive feedback, that is, CO2 causes more water to evaporate and water vapor is actually the main actor in the rise in global temperature.
Not making this up.
Joel you are quoting the thing that I said was a weak argument that should NOT be accepted. You have totally missed the point. My bad, failure to communicate I guess.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
The apparent reason that so many want to deny the logic of the mass balance seems to me to be the fear that the alarmists are right that a modest change in CO2 concentration is actually heating the planet in a dangerous way. So to ‘prove’ that human emissions must be trivial seems like a good way to argue, “so what, there’s nothing we can do about it, it’s all natural”. If it wasn’t a retarded argument I would love to be able to make that case.
The truth is that CO2 is a huge benefit to agriculture and if (IF!) it is also modestly warming the planet, mostly at night, in winter, at the poles, well that’s a GOOD THING.
Deny the emergency not the trivial warming. Global milding is a blessing.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Yes, this is the right argument. Very clear.
Yes.
I think you are ignoring the fact that the net is a time function. There is nothing that says nature is a net sink on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annual, decadal, etc. basis.
As the ocean warms it outgasses CO2. The Earth doesn’t develop an immediate response to that. It takes time. E.g. the “greening” we are now seeing on the earth. Sooner or later that “greening” will increase the ability to sink more CO2.
Thus nature *can* increase CO2 in the atmosphere. It just depends on when you look at it.
Within each annual seasonal cycle, nature is a net sink. That is all I have said and I am not ignoring anything.
Year to year it’s a net sink. Of course it’s also a net source for a minority of the time.
Your math is impeccable. However, it isn’t proof. It has been shown that absorption and emissions do not balance over periods of time otherwise we would not have seen dramatic increases in the past.
Your math must assume that natural balance is the default. You need to show proof of that first.
Nature emits roughly 30 times more CO2 than humans. It’s the carbon cycle, maybe you’ve heard of it. Don’t quote me, but I believe one of the biggest sources of CO2 is microbes doing their thing in the soil.
So, yes, humans have increased CO2 emissions by very roughly 3%.
If CO2 is pollution, then Nature is by far the biggest polluter. This shows how completely barking mad is the idea that we’re doomed by our emissions.
During the lockdowns human emissions fell significantly, but there was no measurable fall in the rate of atmospheric increase. That’s entirtely consistent with the fact that natural emissions dwarf those of humans.
Chris
It seems that just about everything these days must be simply labelled with a “good” or “bad” connotation. Truth be told, CO2 is fundamentally the basis of all life on earth from a material perspective. If it is anything, it should be on the good side of the ledger.
The claim by warmists is that natural CO2 (sum of sources and sinks) is balanced, in harmony if you will. While it is true that natural sources swamp man made emissions over say an annual basis, it is claimed that man made emissions have upset the balance and “accumulate” in the atmosphere to have caused about a 30% increase over the past 150 years or so.
Of course, we need to consider timeframes. Alarmists tend to avoid discussing times when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were orders of magnitude higher. Advances in any field typically lead to more accurate and precise terminology and understanding. This is the opposite of what’s going on in today’s climate “science,” whereby global warming has been replaced with “climate change” and carbon dioxide is “carbon.”
To get back to a more accurate and precise understanding of CO2 in the atmosphere, the timeframe being discussed and the identification and accounting of all sources and sinks should be addressed. For example, over the short term, human emissions have virtually no impact because indeed, natural emissions swamp them out or dwarf them.
Over longer time periods, small emission amounts can add up.
“over the short term, human emissions have virtually no impact because indeed, natural emissions swamp them out or dwarf them.”
Comparing natural and human annual CO2 emissions while completely ignoring annual natural CO2 absorption is a stupid thing to do.
Please don’t male that myth a habit.
Yep.. Nature absorbs basically all human released CO2.
Nature cannot distinguish between the 4% or so human emissions and its own 96% natural flux, so very little human CO2 released remains.. especially as the natural carbon cycle continues to expand due to natural warming.
That is why there is no isotopic signature in the atmosphere.
Nature does NOT distinguish between the sources of CO2 when determining which CO2 to absorb.
The atmosphere does NOT accumulate anthropogenic CO2. Most of the CO2 in the atmosphere was last found in a natural source.
These are irrelevant totally true facts.
The relevant fact is that the process of trickling in a small amount of fossil fuel emissions while nature is raging in the background dumping massive quantities into the atmosphere and sucking even larger quantities out, is how the concentration rises slowly over many decades.
Humans are not natural? Your differentiation between humans and nature then must mean that humans are the result of divine intervention as there can be no other definition.
That makes your assumption a religious belief.
Welcome to your religious freedom, but stop calling them facts as your assumptions have no room left for facts.
It’s true that some hippy dippy loons argue nonsense about a delicate balance that is thrown off the rails by supposedly unnatural human beings.
Don’t let your well-founded disdain for that sort of thinking distract you from the hard-edged logic of the mass balance.
Please just run through my brief derivation and point to how it is in error.
Your myths are carbon pollution
“If CO2 is pollution, then Nature is by far the biggest polluter.”
Only a stupid person would make that claim. Nature has been a net CO2 absorber for 4.5 billion years The CO2 that was once in the atmosphere is now sequestered as carbon in rocks, shells, oil, gas and coal.
“During the lockdowns human emissions fell significantly, but there was no measurable fall in the rate of atmospheric increase.”
2019 average ppm CO2
411.65 ppm
Expected 2020 increase in normal year
+2.5 ppm
Predicted 2020 increase
with 6% fewer manmade CO2 emissions
+2.35 ppm, or 0.57%
Actual 2020 average CO2 ppm
414.21 ppm
Actual 2020 increase over 2019
+2.56 ppm, or 0.62%,
The actual 2020 CO2 increased
slightly more than expected
with a 6% reduction of manmade
CO2 emissions in 2020.
That’s close enough to be
a meaningless natural variation
Atmospheric CO2 ppm by year 1959-2023 | Statista
Don’t you know that in the carbon cycle, humans account for 3% of the CO2 entering the atmosphere?
““If CO2 is pollution, then Nature is by far the biggest polluter.””
Why do you refuse to admit that natural CO2 flux is some 30 times higher than human CO2 emissions.
Very anti-science of you, and very much the actions of a rabid AGW-cultist.
“That’s close enough to be a meaningless natural variation”
And now you admit that the natural CO2 far outweighs human emissions.
You really need to get your fairy tale story straight
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
You wrote:
” “If CO2 is pollution, then Nature is by far the biggest polluter.”
Only a stupid person would make that claim. Nature has been a net CO2 absorber for 4.5 billion years The CO2 that was once in the atmosphere is now sequestered as carbon in rocks, shells, oil, gas and coal….” – end of quote
You have specifically insulted me. I’ll let you off this one time, but please don’t do it again.
Often it’s people who know they are wrong who call their opponents stupid.
I don’t think I’m stupid. I have a physics degree. I’ve spent my professional career as an electronics design engineer developing control electronics for ion implanters. I have several US patents, including one for the invention and development of a new method of controlling the ion source.
Did you seriously think I don’t know about the carbon cycle? Of course Nature absorbs CO2 as well as emitting it.
But the word “emission” is fairly precise. It is the transfer of CO2 usually from a storage medium (e.g. plant matter, soils, the oceans, human emissions) to the atmosphere. Absorption is the exact opposite.
So when I refer to emissions I’m referring to exactly that. I did not use the term “net emissions” or anything else that includes the absorption part of the cycle.
With that in mind, I repeat my original statement:
Nature emits roughly 30 times more CO2 than humans. If you have any doubts about that, check the details of the carbon cycle.
Chris
The reason why the lockdown was not noticabke in Mana Loa is that 35 Gt CO2/y has an equilibrium atmospheric level of 513 ppm, to be noticable yo7 need to reduce to 20 GtCO2/y
Mauna Loa is at 11,000 feet altitude and is near the largest active volcano on the planet.
CO2 does not disperse instantaneously. The local CO2 levels will be higher. Urban areas are even higher. Rural areas lower. The point is there is no set CO2 level in the atmosphere. Even NASA says there are swirls and eddies and CO2 is not uniform across the planet. Much as there is no valid global temperature average.
The laboratory does dry mol measurements, very precisely and with significant calibrations, but also since it is dry air, the state the actual C)2 level is ~10 ppm lower than their test results.
Mature absorbs more CO2 than it emits in the seasonal carbon g flows.
That’s why the atmospheric CO2 level has had a net decline for 4.5 billion years, down to about 180ppm 20,000 years ago — very low for C3 plants (80% of vegetation).
Himans emit CO2 but do not absorb it.
Mature? Himans? Slow down, son.
Humans emit a tiny percentage of natural CO2 turnover..
The natural CO2 emissions are increasing as the climate warms naturally.
You’re here. Enough said
It’s your lucky day !
Why?? Are you going on a long rehad session or something ??
You need one. !
We should all bow to you as the one source of the ultimate truth on this topic.
I always bow to self-declared sources of ultimate truth (“oracles”).
I do a special bow though –
I face away from the oracle, and pull my pants and and underpants down to my knees.
The most basic fact of climate science, from the first minute, of the first hour, of the first day of Climate 101 class is:
Humans added more CO2 to the atmosphere than nature could absorb, increasing the CO2 level about +50% since 1850.
No need to bow, just salute.
“Humans added more CO2 to the atmosphere than nature could absorb”
Really? So why is the Earth greening? (Plants growing, not nonsense.)
(No need to bow, just salute.)
Yes, I happen to agree most of the CO2 is from us- but just how much of an effect has it had on “the climate” as if there is such a thing. That’s what nobody knows.
CO2 emissions are one of the causes of warming after 1975.
No one knows the percentage.
There is more evidence of manmade warming than natural warming. But that is at least partially due to the fact there not much money available to study natural causes of warming.
“CO2 emissions are one of the causes of warming after 1975.”
So what did CO2 cause before 1975?
“There is more evidence of manmade warming than natural warming.”
What “evidence” of “manmade warming”?
You go on to say, “But that is at least partially due to the fact there not much money available to study natural causes of warming.”
So little money to study natural causes of warming yet you’re sure there’s, “more evidence of manmade warming than natural warming.”?
Ask yourself. Who’s funding the “Manmade” warming mantra?
Who’s profiting in money and, more importantly, power by funding that meme?
You have never been able to produce any evidence of that.
There is zero CO2 warming signature in the UAH data.
Plenty of AUW in the surface fabrications though. (Anthropogenic urban Warming)
It is the huge urban population growth that is responsible for most of the urban surface warming since the 1970s.
“CO2 emissions are one of the causes of warming after 1975.
No one knows the percentage.
There is more evidence of manmade warming than natural warming. But that is at least partially due to the fact there not much money available to study natural causes of warming.”
No. Air pollution is better correlated to the earth’s temperature from the 1940s through today than CO2 levels.
The world cooled from the 1940s through the 1970s due to increased air pollution. The clean air act started cleaning up US air pollution, as did other countries. The temperature started to rise along with cleaner air.
CO2 levels aren’t the ‘problem’, clean air is the ‘problem’ – assuming you consider that a warmer, greener earth is a problem. I don’t. Use of fossil fuels has been a great gift to the earth. And we’re still well below the earth’s historical average temperature.
“ just salute.”
There’s that insufferable arrogance in a vain attempt to boost his total lack of self-worth.
He is the fount of all knowledge, not necessarily accurate knowledge mind you.
It turns out he’s right and Richard Greene is wrong …yet again. His claim is the 0.04% concentration and 3% human produced with the UK producing just 1% of that won’t “really make a difference to the Earth’s climate”.
Maybe you should try understanding what was said before spouting your usual nonsense.
3% human produced CO2 is claptrap
33% is accurate.
UK producing 1% of total CO2 emissions is a false argument, if those emissions were important. 185 of 195 nations could use the same excuse — our CO2 emissions are small so we should not have to reduce our CO2 emissions
That’s like a shoplifter telling a cop: I only stole 1% of the total shoplifting losses of the store for that day. So don’t arrest me.
No, its not at all like that. The problem with the UK stopping when everyone else increases is that it will make no difference to anything. Except it will impoverish the UK of course.
Do X because climate is only an argument if X will have some effect on climate.
Don’t steal because its wrong, illegal, anti social is a valid argument because it is all three.
Need to be careful. You will find yourself arguing that we should do things which, if everyone else did them, would be beneficial, when we know for sure that everyone else won’t.
You can of course argue from force of example. But that requires evidence someone is watching and influenced. Which, if we are talking the UK, their main impulse watching the train wreck is going to be to run a mile. Not an example anyone is going to follow. And its only just starting, now!
You could actually make the argument that the UK should stop now, because its actions only serve to show everyone what a terrible idea net zero is, and so discourages them from even trying. Far from being an example to be followed, they are turning into a dreadful warning.
Everything you type is “claptrap”. Where did you get your 33% claim? I’ve never even seen a climate alarmist make such a ridiculous claim.
What is the ‘correct’ number?
We know from ice-cores the fall (~180 ppm) and rise (~285 ppm) of CO₂ during the multiple glacial cycles. This gives us an idea of the range of the natural CO₂ cycle.
There were likely spikes and dips in CO₂ due to warmer and cooler periods within the previous glacial and interglacial periods.
Absent humans, there’s no reason to think the current interglacial would be any different. As a caveat, fossil leaf stomata indicate times of 300-350 ppm in prior millennia.
So, this interglacial, unperturbed except for natural variability in warm/cool cycles,, would have had about 310±20 ppm of CO₂.
First order approximation is that most or all of the rise in CO₂ since 1900 is from human emissions.
The 310 ppm CO₂ is semi-starvation for plants.
For all we know an equilibrium level of CO2 could be higher but never gets there before the earth cools and starts to absorb again. The thing about natural emissions due to temperature increase in the ocean is that its slow and one thing we did burning fossil fuels is get it there and beyond really quickly.
About 33% of the 420 ppm was originally from d from manmade sources, not 3%
Rubbish.
Human emissions are only 3-5% of the total CO2 flux, and nature absorbs them into the carbon cycle very quickly
The natural carbon cycle has increased significantly as the planet has warmed naturally
We know you don’t believe the 3%, so in the interests of not starting a futile argument, let’s accept that it’s all “our fault”. ALL 140 ppm since 1850. An article can be found on NASA’s website that reports that their satellites have detected that the planet has “greened” by about 18% since the turn of the century, equivalent to twice the area of the continental USA. Remember, ALL life on land, in the oceans and in the air is composed of carbon compounds that were once in the air as CO2. All that extra flora is supporting extra fauna. Put simply, more trees can hold more monkeys. All that extra growth has mass, and it easily outstrips the mass of CO2 that we have “added” to the atmosphere. So where has the extra come from? Ocean outgassing. Volcanos. Even dormant volcanos and those declared extinct can still release CO2. Search “Lake Nyos disaster” for an example. Tectonic plate boundaries. Many sources, but only visible and obvious ones documented or included in the calculations, but you will no doubt claim that all sources and sinks are known as it fits your belief system. Nature circulates more CO2 in a few days than our annual contribution, rendering our “emissions” into background noise. Do you really believe that a variable trace gas can be calculated to the precision of one or two millionths of the total per year? Buy yourself a CO2 meter, you can get one for about £10 ($15) on ebay. It won’t be a precise scientific instrument, but it’s good enough for government work. You will find that levels can fluctuate by more than the 140 ppm “increase” in a couple of hours, sooner if the wind changes. Anyone that thinks the IPCC can pick out the “human fingerprint” from all the variable sources and sinks is delusional.
Volcanoes and vents average about 1% of manmade CO2 emissions.
All the natural volcanoes and vents have never been able to stop the 4.5 billion year natural decline of atmospheric CO2
The ice core estimates are a +/- 5 to 6 degrees C. change in ocean temperature changes atmospheric CO2 by about 100ppm
When humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere causing global warming, the warmer oceans will absorb less CO2 than they would have absorbed without warming
Lets says the oceans warmed 1 degree C. since 1850. Oceans would absorb 15 to 20 ppm less CO2 but they are still net CO2 absorbers.
Manmade CO2 emissions since 1859
+250
EFFECT ON OCEAN CO2
Estimate of 30% absorbed by oceans
(-75 ppm)
Ocean outgassing from +1 degree warming
+15 to +20ppm
Net ocean absorption
55 to 60 ppm
The natural exchange of gas between the seawater and the atmosphere always works towards a balance of these pressures. This means that surface waters with a lower partial pressure of carbon dioxide than the overlying atmosphere will take up carbon dioxide from the air until the pressure difference is no longer present.
Garbage. The composition of the atmosphere has changed by 14 thousandths of 1% since 1850, by how much does that change barometric pressure which, by the way, is never constant? Ever heard of high and low pressure weather systems? These will easily overwhelm your “balance of pressures”.
That is an estimate from samples of terrestrial volcanoes. We have little understanding about the amount of CO2 released from spreading centers, hydrothermal vents, and submarine volcanoes. I’d be surprised to find out that places like Long Valley Caldera are included in the samples used for the terrestrial estimate.
Mr Greene, sir. You are begging the question of what effects increased CO2 and other GHGs actually have on temperature. Assuming you accept the IPCC scenario, what pray tell caused the Little Ice Age? Or the Medieval or Roman or Minoan Warm Periods?
You are also begging the question as far as warming being A Bad Thing. Agricultural yields and global GNP are both up.
I have been “begging” for more CO2 since 1997 when I began reading CO2 enrichment plant growth studies. After reading about 200 studies since then. I am more certain that 800ppm CO2 would be good news for our planet, It would take 168 years for the current 420 ppm to double at the current rise rate of +2.5 ppm a year. Any global warming would be good news too.
CO2 is the staff of life
Leftists are carbon pollution
I thought that 97% of CO2 entering the atmosphere was from the natural carbon cycle. If not,where did all the CO2 come from before humans?
This is something RG refuses to understand, mainly because it doesn’t match his very limited understanding.
Shouldn’t you be out doing something important, like gluing yourself to an airport runway?
I had a friend in H.S. who, when arguing, would put his hands over his ears and say “Yay yay” to drown out my words. It worked. He never learned a thing. He is now a strong believer in global warming induced by fossil fuel burning and believes essentially anything repeated by trusted sources.
Now, again, CO2 has been much higher in the past before humans were a things. Where did that CO2 come from and why was it so high? Why is plant life on this planet stressed at the current CO2 concentration? Why are deserts shrinking?
Poor RG , still hasn’t figured out that nature is by far the greater CO2 flux.
Understanding is very limited with that little child.
Nature emits roughly 25-30 times more CO2 than humans as part of the general carbon cycle.
So yes, human CO2 is about 3-5% of the overall CO2 flux.
But humans mostly emit CO2 where nature’s CO2 fluxes are a closed cycle (with long term perturbations). Human emissions might be a small fraction of the natural CO2 flux but the emissions may be enough to shift the natural concentration to a higher regime. So Richard has good grounds to think the CO2 increase is due to man’s emissions. We expect our investments to increase over time (inflation neglected!) even at today’s low interest rates.
There is no scientific reason to think that nature can fully absorb all the extra CO2 emissions from mankind and maintain the “ideal” 300 ppm.
Your an optimist like myself.
Your an optimist like myself.
So like people here with renewables?
They don’t share my worldview 100% so they must be wrong? “I like”…what happend to facts don’t care about your feelings?
Look who’s a doomsday prophet now
So we are now slowly reaching the second stage of ff propaganda:
Renewables are benficial either way. And fossil shills predicted that renewables can never have a share greater than 4%. Look at how wrong they were.
Try getting your facts right.
There’s always been climate change. Nothing has changed. The most recent climate change is a net positive.
Nothing will be hurt by the current natural variations in climate the world is seeing and fewer people are dying due to fossil fuel driven technology.
Do you take a stupid pill every morning when you wake up?
Don’t think anyone has ever maintained #1. Except maybe some hard core activists who still believe in the Hockey Stick, in which case they believe there was no climate change until about 1950.
Don’t think anyone is maintaining #2 either. There are climate changes, some of them are on the whole good for humanity, some bad, affecting different parts of the world differently. The present warming is usually thought to be quite good, at least for Western populations, but its usually also recognized its probably temporary.
#4 is probably partially right in the sense that nothing the West does is going to make any material difference to global CO2 emissions. The sooner people get out of denial about this, the better. No-one outside the English speaking countries and Germany believes in any climate crisis, and none of the highest emitting fastest increasing countries have any intention of stopping or reducing. So whatever rising CO2 does, its going to do it.
If you really believe in a pending crisis you have two things that you could do. One is to seriously work at persuading China and India to reduce. Good luck with that!
The second is, agitate for stopping all Net Zero plans immediately and for putting the investment into safeguarding measures for your own citizenry.
MyUserName, thanks for coming to WUWT. I appreciate you and others who keep this from becoming an echo chamber. But when you complain about the attitudes and narrow-minded opinions of people on this site, you should acknowledge that you haven’t been kicked out, as many skeptics have been restricted from alarmist sites.
Mr. David provided reasons that he doesn’t believe the hype over global warming. I share his opinions. I never say that they are proof that anthropogenic climate change isn’t occurring, they are just rational reasons for being . . . skeptical. That is the scientific mindset.
I don’t know where you got your 4% share of renewables limit that you say fossil fuel advocates stated was the upper limit of renewable penetration; I had always heard 20%. I’d be interested in knowing whether that was a mainstream opinion in skeptical circles. But regardless, my question is why renewables, if they are so inexpensive, aren’t being installed at a greater rate than fossil fueled generation? It would seem market forces would be compelling their adoption. And yet, their share of the energy mix really hasn’t changed much in recent years, and isn’t projected to in the future.
More to the point, would anyone install wind and solar if they weren’t being subsidized by governments, or by progressive corporations who are willing to pay a premium in order to appear green, then in practice rely upon reliable fossil fuels or nuclear to actually run their facilities?
Genuine questions.
It’s a Big Oil funded conspiracy no doubt. Or maybe the Free Masons are behind it?
It’s the Free Masons. Leave Big Oil out of this.
/s
The Trilateral Commission?
Maybe. Could also be the Bilderbergers?
Once the wind and solar mix in a grid gets much above 10%, it starts to act as a parasite.
Grid instabilities creep in as the erratic nature of wind and solar causes frequency fluctuations that need to be handled with massively expensive batteries and/or condenser type equipment.
Dispatchable suppliers are usually forced to ramp up and down more, making them operate at far less efficient level, decreasing income, while increasing maintenance needs…
.. hence costs increase so they can remain in operation…
… as they must do if total grid collapse is to be avoided.
The global average air temperature is a meaningless number that cannot provide any information about “the climate”.
Like global average snowfall.
Yes.
And that would be because there is no such thing as “THE climate” (as in – just one singular globally operating system).
There are hundreds of uniquely different climates in different localities all around the world. They each have their own characteristics and behaviors, due to geographical, geological, topographical, atmospheric, meteorological etc influences.
“THE climate” is the same as referring the “THE science or SETTLED science”.
Which, as I trust we all accept, is outright denial that the scientific discipline requires continuous observation, testing and challenge to prevailing theories.
And the output of the vaunted IPCC climate models is GAT, upon which all of the emergency shrieking is based.
Not at all. Renewables require fossil fuels every step of the way. You can’t manufacture renewables without fossil fuels. You can’t mine or refine the raw materials without fossil fuels. You can’t transport the components to market without fossil fuels. You can’t install renewables without fossil fuels.
Weather-dependent renewables currently require 100% backup, typically from fossil fuel powered sources.
You do understand the implications of that, don’t you?
He won’t answer,
Fossil shills?? HA! You use FF every day, so YOU are a fossil shill if anyone! Give me a break you hypocrite! I bet you have NO solar panels on the roof.
Patently and demonstrably false. Everywhere that achieves any market penetration of unreliables has seen an exponential rise in electricity rates, causing the needless poor health and even death of far too many at the lower end of the economic spectrum who must then make the increasingly difficult decision of heat or eat. Overall, renewables have been a literal disaster to civilization.
Renewables have absolutely ZERO BENEFIT except to the billionaire renewable scammers soaking up the subsidies. They are a parasite on any grid system
Apart for a slight natural warming since the coldest period in 10,000 years.
How has the “global climate” changed ??
And Net-Zero and many other “carbon” agendas are already causing massive difficulties in many western countries.
Electricity prices climbing rapidly,
Industries and jobs closing down.
Societal control by leftist governments increasing.
The future looks very dim for the younger and future generations….
.. not because of fictious “climate change” but..
… because of the stupid and idiotic anti-CO2 agenda and response to the non-existent climate problem..
Very happy to see a rational, well reasoned article by a lay person regarding the climate hoax, and hoping there’s lots more” thinkers” out there like the author! Also, as a Ph.D. Psychologist myself, I view CC hysteria as a diagnosable cluster disorder that creates further dysfunction, and wonder if crippling mental health is perhaps more intentional than we had realized.
it’s a cluster fu*k
Its not a hoax. Its a great popular delusion and/or madness of crowds. But its confined to only some Western countries, and most of the world has so far turned out to have natural immunity.
Curious, isn’t it. Not only is climate hysteria confined to Western states, but so is the pell-mell stampede into dictatorship.
After 250 years of Enlightenment civility, and 10 generations of people growing up under the conscious standard of freedom of conscience and speech, right to privacy and representative governing, there is a huge lie-cheat-and-steal push by a sizable minority to impose censorship, to legislate thought-crimes, to surveil, to intimidate by police-power, and to impose a one-party tyranny. They’ve learned nothing.
There’s some signal n all that about deep reaches of human psychology. Myself, I strongly suspect the Enlightenment was a speciation event in the true sense of Evolutionary Biology. Emergence of Homo sapiens, var. individuus. The events of today are the resulting war between related species for the common ecology: culture.
One conclusion for sure is that having a Constitution to provide the standard of individual rights and sovereignty, and which supplies a prominent and visible measure of legislation and political behavior, is absolutely necessary to retain a free citizenry. The Constitution is the only reason the US lags Canada, Germany, the UK, NZ and Aus in subjugation of the populace. France is unique. It may see a return to 1787.
It will be by reference to the Constitution that the effort to pull us out will succeed.
Pat,
Spot on, as usual. My take is that the seeds for all of today’s nonsense were planted with the ‘post-modern’ movement that found a ready home in academia, particularly in the late ’60s. So much for the Enlightenment concepts of objective reality and reason.
The Constitution can save the populace from subjugation, but only if the populace desires not to be subjugated.
The hysteria was stoked up by a very influential film made by Al Gore and featured a graph by M. Mann this seemed to strike a chord with the public (even me) and politicians at the time. Consequently Al Gore and M. Mann went on to have very successful careers and made a lot of money, also politicians sanctioned lots of research, funding and green subsidies. I rejected this hysteria after finding no evidence that any of the dyer warnings for the last 40 years made by scientists and the media have come to fruition and that Mann is a piece of sh*t. Of course this is my own subjective view.
You only need one reason – a complete lack pf evidence. The big picture;
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
Use “comment image” link
Oh for an edit feature….
You can edit within 5 minutes of posting. Bottom right gear icon.
As here, editing after posting, to note your second comment was only two minutes after your first.
What is a reliable estimate of the percentage of C02 annually emitted that is manmade, or is there not such an estimate?
It’s about 4% of the carbon cycle.
Thanks!
But the natural carbon cycle is in approximate equilibrium, meaning that unperturbed level of atmospheric CO₂ is approximately constant.
Nearly all the increase since 1900 reflects human emissions.
Warming massively increases natural CO2 flux.
Henry’s Law estimate is that recent warmth is worth about 20 ppm. Accepting the size of the recent warmth.
Please dont feed the Nutters !
While manmade emissions are only 3% to 5% of natural CO2 emissions evert year, nature also absorbs more CO2 than it emits every year, while humans only emit CO2 and do not absorb CO2.
Manmade CO2 emissions are why the atmospheric CO2 level increases every year, unlike the normal natural trend in the absence of manmade CO2 emissions: Gradually declining CO2 … down to 180ppm about 20,000 years ago.
Only anti-science nutter here is you.
Because nature can’t tell the difference, nature absorbs basically ALL human CO2
The carbon cycle enhances and natural flux also increase.
It doesn’t take much change from the 96% of natural flux, to totally negate any human additions.
And only an ignorant fool would deny that warming doesn’t increase the natural carbon cycle.
There is a good estimate for fossil fuels because it is taxed and an effort is made to prevent untaxed sales. However, it is a lower bound on all man-made emissions as described here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/05/anthropogenic-global-warming-and-its-causes/
If you truthfully tell the Facts of Life in Scotland you will be ejected from their Green Party which has happened to thirteen of their members.
Modern climate science also requires so-called professionals telling porkies and then accusing sceptics of being the liars for picking them up on it.
That these people are complete and utter nut jobs just doesn’t do the problem justice when you look at the trillions already wasted and the trillions still to be wasted …
The one case (thus far) where they cannot mock by saying “follow the science”.
In other news from that frozen northern nation….
From the Telegraph.
A transgender woman who heads a Scottish rape charity presided over a “heresy hunt” against a former worker who held gender-critical beliefs, an employment tribunal has ruled.
Employee Roz Adams won a constructive dismissal action against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), with the tribunal finding she was harassed and discriminated against over her gender critical belief that biological sex is “immutable”.
She had suggested that a female survivor of sexual violence should be told the biological sex of a counsellor who identified as non-binary”. She was then subjected to an ERCC investigation “somewhat reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka” that “should not have been launched in the first place”, the tribunal found.
Mridul Wadhwa, a transgender woman who is the ERCC chief executive, was found to have played a key role in the investigation. It noted that Ms Wadhwa “was the one who selected and contacted who would deal with the various stages of the disciplinary and grievance process”.
Beautiful – thank you.
In their quest for deindustrialization, you have to wonder what the next generation aspires to, what will their training and education look like?
An internet music instructor was lamenting that this current generation is far more in to video games than music. We are already seeing massive declines in people knowing how to read music, forget about actually playing an instrument. “Art” in all forms has devolved as a Climate Change nihilistic world views consumes the once innovative and productive West.
Who would aspire to be a petrochemical engineer? Know how to work on ICE engines? Get into any practical discipline that is oriented towards making things? It seems that the only type of scientific training is to construct worthless studies on unimportant topics to push political narratives.
No one can eat a political narrative. Worrying about how climate change may have an effect on penguin reproduction under certain scenarios is interesting only to the people who scammed research money.
It is ALWAYS the lefties who jump up with yet another FAKE problem and of course their solution is to seize ALL money power and control.
Except I think you go the cart before the horse… the lefties ALWAYS (you can automatically assume, without need for verification, it’s true 100% of the time) want to seize ALL money, power and control, the various and sundry FAKE problems are just their means du jour to that end.
I’m seeing more and more of this type reasoning when reading online comments on Yahoo. I think a lot of it is the fact nothing is really changing. There’s bad weather, but that’s nothing new. Most people’s lives are unaffected by it. None of the most disastrous predictions have come true even with warming.
I think even more people will join this group with the last year having exceeded the 1.5 C limit that was claimed to be such a big deal.
“2) I look at some of the facts – CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere; humans are responsible for just 3% of CO2; Britain is responsible for just 1% of the world’s CO2 output – and I think “really“? Will us de-carbonising really make a difference to the Earth’s climate?”
Do I understand this right? 0.04% is natural +manmade. 97% of that .04% of the atmosphere is due to nature. 97% of 0.04% = .0388% which rounds to .04%. In other words Net Zero makes no significant difference. Right?
You are correct. Net Zero is a rounding error, nothing more. The climate will not notice it, buy humans sure will.
ALL CO2 increases are from manmade CO2 emissions. Including the most recent 50% increase since 1850.
Nut Zero won’t make a difference because 175 of 195 nations are not participating and the other 20 will never meet their arbitrary targets. CO2 will continue to rise, and continue to harm no one.
It is my opinion that Nut Zero is a political strategy to implement leftist fascism. In a few years it will be obvious that climate was just a trojan horse for leftist political power and control of us.
Sources please.
The statement make absolutely sense.
The source of his incoherent babble is fairly obvious.
“ALL CO2 increases are from manmade CO2 emissions”
WRONG ! Natural warming greatly increases the carbon cycle flux.
Human emissions are a tiny part of that natural flux.
▪️CO2 is currently 420 ppm, which is 0.042%. Humans are (possibly) responsible for 3% of that (a high end estimate IMHO), which is 0.00126%. Thus, 99.99874% of all CO2 is created naturally.
At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.
▪️The atmosphere has had periods where CO2 was up to and higher than 4000 ppm. Plant and animal life thrived, Alaska was a jungle. Why do you think there is so much oil in Alaska?
▪️When Mt. St Helens erupted in 1980, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That’s 270 x 1970 industrial activity–IN ONE DAY.
▪️In the historical record, CO2 has no correlation with temperatures. None whatsoever. In fact, CO2 levels rise AFTER TEMPERATURES rise, not before. (See graph in comments below).
Your arithmetic confuses me. If 3% of CO2 is man-made, 97% is natural. Your 99.99874% appears to be of the atmosphere, not just CO2.
If I’ve misunderstood, please clarify.
3% of the 0.042 percent is what I was referencing.
‘At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.’
You might want to check this number.
My understanding is it differs considerably for all plants, and 210 or 180 is more appropriate as a lower limit. I also expect that evolution would compensate somewhat for a gradual lowering.
Photosynthesis turns off at 120 ppm. Plants die below 80 ppm.
I’ve read many different numbers on that, so there does seem to be some confusion there.
Stomata are “fully packed” at about 250ppm..
Anything below 250ppm is survival rations only, because plants cannot control their water transpiration.
Almost every statement is false
Congratulations
“At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.”
180 ppm 20,000 u years ago
Plants did not die.
The worst lie is about the volcano
The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens vented approximately 10 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in only 9 hours. However, it currently takes humanity only 2.5 hours to put out the same amount.
Wrong. Every statement is correct. I got the Mount St Helens information from a lecture by a scientist at UT Austin. Backed up with research and data.
No, the consensus is humans are responsible for about 140 ppm of the 420 ppm, which is roughly 33%.
I have no idea what the 3% people are claiming that the human contribution is 3% of and suspect they don’t know either.
The 33% may be wrong, but its based on a pre-industrial ppm of 280 and a current ppm of about 420. If you think its only 3%, that would be about 13 ppm, so you have to account for where the other 127 ppm came from.
Are we talking annual emissions or total percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere?
I’ve never seen convincing arguments, to say nothing of studies or data that shows 100% of the increase in CO2 since (pick a date — 1850 or othe) is attributable to human activity.
Such a belief beggers the imagination. Science shows many fluctuations in CO2 levels in history, all of them natural. Until 1859 when the human input overwhelmed natural processes?
Total percentage. That’s what ppm means, its referring to the quantity in parts per million.
Is 33% plausible? As a rough number, yes, why not? Think of all the coal and oil that has been burned since 1800, and think also of all the cement and concrete that’s been used. Its not a precise number, 180 ppm to start might have fluctuated a bit up or down, but its probably not too far off.
If you need to say “consensus” it ain’t science.
Not what I have seen. You may be correct, but I’ve seen 3% in countless sources.
3% of what? It may be 3% of the CO2 flux.
But it is a lot more than that of the total atmospheric CO2.
The question is, what has caused the rise in CO2 since about 1850. And if its not human emissions, what has happened to those emissions?
The confusion people get into is that this has nothing to do with the effect of the increase in CO2 on global temperatures. That depends on the working of the earth climate machine, and its a very complicated machine, with lots of governors and feedback loops.
Human emissions can be the source of the recent rises in CO2 ppm, and the rise in CO2 ppm can have a heating effect, and global temperatures still not be caused to rise by the rise in CO2 levels. They are different things.
Parnell went down the road, he said to a cheering man
Ireland shall get her freedom, and you still break stone
Yeats
CO2 increased from a very low 275 ppm in the depths of the little ice age to about 310 ppm in 1940. So some of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is natural. But CO2 has increased from 1940 to the present 430 ppm (39%) during the rapid industrialization of the world. The hypothesis seems to be that man’s 3% of total CO2 emissions, though a small fraction of the earth’s natural CO2 emissions and absorption, nudge the sensitive natural balance and gradually increase the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere. It seems like a reasonable hypothesis and some claim isotopes of carbon prove that the increases on CO2 come from fossil fuels. But whether atmospheric CO2 concentration is a strong driver of global temperature is a hypothesis with much less scientific grounding. The whole house of alarmist cards tumbles down if more CO2 is benign to beneficial.
Exactly!
“When Mt. St Helens erupted in 1980, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That’s 270 x 1970 industrial activity–IN ONE DAY.”
Then why did it not register at the world’s CO2 monitoring stations?
Not even a blip!
Well … It’s all about belief because knowing the past and knowing the present are based on conjecture and belief and knowing the future is not even possible.
I read the rest of this short article (the 0, 1 and 2 for the last three paragraphs shoul be 10, 11 and 12)
(4) “I note that most of the loudest climate activists are socialists”
It seemed that way in prior ecades and may young climate Howlers are socialists . Marxists. But the large majority of he leaders are fascists. Leftist fascism has a big advantage. You tell the private sector what to do (they rarely seem to fight back). After you ruin the economy you blame greedy capitalists. With socialism or Marxism, the government owns most or all of the businesses, so can not blame those greedy capitalists for their failures.
(6) (Net Zero) will vastly reduce living standards and hinder economic growth.
Nut Zero will direct labor and investment toward things people do not want or need. Wind and solar ruinables and EVs are more expensive and less competent than what they replace. It should be mentioned that at least 175 smart nations of all 195 nations are not participating in Nut Zero.
(8) What will be the worst things that will happen if the doomsayers are correct?
The doomsayers in 1979 had a consensus average prediction of +0.3 degrees C. warming per decade for centuries. They claimed global warming was bad news.
1975 to 2007 actuals
Modest global warming
No bad news noticed
2007 through 2024 actuals
“catastrophic” rate of warming
+0.3 degrees C. per decade
(+0.34 since 2005 in the US, per USCRN)
No bad news noticed
If the first 48 years of ACTUAL global warming was good news (very good news in my opinion), then why would another 48 years of global warming be bad news?
Especially when most of the post-1975 warming was TMIN, in the six coldest months of the year, mainly in colder areas. Like Siberia.
(9) If one consequence of climate change is rising sea levels
90% of land ice is on Antarctica and almost all of the continent has a permanent temperature inversion. That causes a negative greenhouse effect, causes cooling, not warming. The claimed ice mass loss per year is so tiny it would take 1.6 million years for all the Antarctica ice to melt. That would require the current interglacial to last 1.6 million years.
(2) (12) Far few people die of the heat than they do the cold.
That common claim is somewhat deceptive
Very few people directly die from very cold or very hot weather. More people die directly from very hot weather.
Over the 30-year period 1988 – 2017, NOAA classified an average of 134 deaths per year as being heat-related, and just 30 per year as cold-related—a more than a factor of four
“Cold Related Deaths”
The controversy is mainly over the seasonal trend of heart patient deaths. More of those heart related deaths are in the winter months. They died from heart disease. It’s a stretch to blame their deaths on cold weather. But they are related to cold weather. The good news is warmer winters from global warming are very good news for heart patients.
We should be celebrating living with a warming trend during an interglacial. With CO2 enrichment for our plants:
Climate change is good news:
(1) Warmer winters
(2) Better plant growth
(3) The least known avantage of warming at the link below:
The main advantage of global warming, and the subject of 97% of my climate research:
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog: Investigation: Three new causes of global warming
BS Greene misses no opportunities to push his vanity blog.
I stopped reading his blog when he removed the nekked girly section.
(Please put the naked girls back on your blog, Richard)
They were not naked
But the wife objected anyway
Try the Three New Causes link above for another installment
Sorry, but without the nekked gurly section I won’t ever be visiting your blog.
Tell yer wife to piss off … then mebbe even put a pikchur of her on their for good mayzure.
One of the few things he got right !!
Follow RG if you want to be smart like Billy Madison. !
I miss a lot of opportunities to mention my free no ads, no donations blog with over 778,000 lifetime page views. But I never miss an opportunity to call you a dork.
That is a lot of really badly informed people.
Is that really something you want to brag about !!
Nice piece to start the morning/week off.
I did a deep dive into “global warming” about 10yrs ago. Until then I was busy
with life and hadn’t thought much on the subject as I was busy like many others.
I had a decent internet connection and a kindle. I was recovering from a horse incident and couldn’t work but was able to make this subject my focus while recovering.
The “climate gate’ emails is where I started then I downloaded a few books. The Neglected Sun was the book that convinced me that the “global warming/climate change” was a concocted ruse.
I also read some interesting things about Maurice Strong and the IPCC and how they don’t
study natural variation of climate, only manmade climate change. It was on
a forum where I asked some questions and someone pointed out that until
the parameters of natural variation in climate have been established it is impossible
to say what influence man has made on the climate if any. That was when I became
a “climate denier”…I have a relative with a degree in astrophysics and we have had
some interesting discussions about “climate change”.
My research began in 2008, after I attended an event, supposedly having to do with energy, and the keynote speaker began his rant by declaring, “You don’t need to ‘Google’ Global Warming, everything you need to know about climate is right here…” and gave the web address for Gavin Schmidt’s blog. Well that statement was kind of a briar patch taunt to me, so when I got back to the office the first thing I did was Google “global w…” Back then Google would suggest an autocomplete based solely on polls of user input, not based on the word from on high, so it helpfully autocompleted with “global warming hoax” and among the top four responses was wattsupwiththat.com. It has been an interesting journey since then.
I used to be ambivalent, thinking it just another typical political kerfuffle which would blow over when the next one came along.
What got me to look into it more was the incredible and constant lies. Olive trees growing higher up mountains in Roman times; retreating glaciers uncovering forests which had grown for at least 300 years in warmer times; corals surviving much worse environmental changes over hundreds of millions of years, including several hundred feet of drowning just 10-15,000 years ago; and cherry picked data.
No one lies that much so consistently when they have the truth on their side. I don’t know much at all about weather, climate, and CO2; but I do know that liars lie because they have no facts. Far as I’m concerned, that alone seals the deal.
Where are we going to get the energy required to build all the solar panels, windmills, and batteries required to eliminate fossil fuels?
Won’t we need to burn even more fossil fuels because renewable do not exist at sufficient scale to build themselves.
So the conversion to renewable is no solution. It is a dead end.
Yep.
You can’t build renewables with fossil fuels. Nor mine, refine or transport the raw materials. Nor install wind turbines or build solar farms without fossil fuels.
You need fossil fuels to backup renewables. Renewables require 100% redundancy.
It was Google that produced a study that found it takes more energy to build a solar panel than you’ll ever get out of it, so not just a dead end, it’s like digging your own grave.
Russel Davis….
LOVE IT!
Great little piece on the common sense that leads to sanity in the age of climate change, “mania or hysteria” a more generic term is MPI Mass Psychogenic Illness induced by fear mongering propaganda and mind control. (UK and US psychologists probably use different terms,)
The dupe factor means not only socialists are support, acquiesce to, vote for and push the climate change agenda. Many are simply pawns of revolution regardless of their own ideology or the movement’s root ideology, (Fluid Fascist-radical Environmentalism of the stake holder sort, Marxist, Communist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, or simply personal megalomania). Leftist revolutionary groups have as a primary goal is to build cadre in order to create a level of disruption that provides the environment for sudden and sweeping revolution; a mania in and of itself.
Revolutionaries are are experts at creating mania. If they had a choice between emitting carbon or fomenting revolution, they would prioritize mania over concrete climate action yet they would show up to support it.
Others of the super deep pocket variety, simply want a bigger piece of the global power pie in order to expand their control over markets. They do this to garner even more power towards the goal of a super centralized dialectical green utopia not socialistic. One they created for themselves and those they deem the worthy ones…. nothing Marxist about it.
This is the reason many who have benefited the most form global capitalism have tacitly aligned with the climate leftists. The leftists want revolution and will leverage any movement. The deep pocketed stake holder fascist leverages the left for their future personal ultra-efficient green re-wild (ed) utopia.
“I look at some of the facts – CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere; humans are responsible for just 3% of CO2; Britain is responsible for just 1% of the world’s CO2 output – and I think “really“? Will us de-carbonising really make a difference to the Earth’s climate?”
Fundamentally misunderstanding of the co2 cycle. Please check the co2 cycle with Roy Spencer
Photosynthesis: Plants/Plankton turning Sunlight/CO2/H2O into Food/O2; neither animal nor blade of grass would exist, absent CO2. More CO2 helps plants resist drought/damage/disease, extends growing seasons, lets plants move higher in altitude & Latitudes, shrinks deserts & reduces the spread of fire, plants using & retaining H2O more efficiently. As CO2 rises, photosynthesis flourishes & plants take in more CO2, sparking more growth, photosynthesis & CO2 uptake (recent studies indicate +20% absorption by 2100). Rising temperatures also extend growing seasons, help babies survive, increase net rainfall & save lives. We are in the short period (glacial interstitial) between long Ice Ages, the norm (where I sit) being a half mile of ice. Warm is good, cold is bad. This Cradle of Life is greener, more fertile & life sustaining than it was 200 years ago, because adding food to the base of the food-chain supports all of Nature, including humans. “It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.” R Lindzen
“4.I note that most of the loudest climate activists are socialists and on the Left. Are they not just using this movement to push their dreams of a deindustrialised socialist utopia? And I also note the crossover between green activists and BLM ones, gender ones, pro-Hamas ones, none of whom I like or agree with.”
Some quotes.
— “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports.
— “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, president of the UN Foundation.
— “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony. … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
I commend you for not allowing your lack of climate-specific expertise prevent you from bringing your layman’s logic to bear. My post from three years ago expressed a similar sentiment: Climate scientists make some of us laymen skeptical.
How about we condense it down to just ONE good reason…
THE GOVERNMENT IS PUSHING IT SO DAMN HARD!!!
I need no other reason to distrust
Global Warming™ Climate Change™Climate Weirding™.