A Re-Evaluation Of Earth’s CO2 History
The reliability of ice cores was of course also heavily questioned by the late Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, who pointed to compression effects in their gases
Dr. Matthew Wielicki
The ongoing debate and investigation into the causes and impacts of global warming bring to the forefront the significance of understanding Earth’s climatic past to forecast its future
Central to this discourse is the theory of anthropogenic global warming, which posits that human activities, primarily through the emission of ‘greenhouse gases’ such as carbon dioxide, have significantly altered the Earth’s atmospheric composition, leading to global warming and ‘climate change’.
Let’s explore the essential crux of the anthropogenic global warming theory, examine the reliability of ice cores in recording atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and explore alternative methods such as plant stomata analysis to gain insights into historical CO2 levels.
The anthropogenic global warming theory is underpinned by the analysis of atmospheric CO2 concentrations over geological timescales. Scientific evidence suggests that for the past 800,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuated between approximately 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm).
This range is considered to reflect natural variability, driven by Earth’s orbital cycles, volcanic activity, and interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.
However, the stark increase in CO2 levels to the current concentration of around 420 ppm is attributed to anthropogenic emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial processes.
It is claimed that this significant departure from the historical range is a key indicator of human influence on the climate system.
Understanding the historical context of atmospheric CO2 levels is crucial, and ice cores have been an invaluable resource in this endeavor. Ice cores are cylindrical samples extracted from ice sheets and glaciers.
They contain trapped air bubbles that have been sealed off from the atmosphere, or at least that is the assumption, as the ice forms, preserving a record of past atmospheric conditions. By analyzing the gases within these bubbles, scientists can reconstruct atmospheric compositions, including CO2 concentrations, over hundreds of thousands of years.
However, the formation of glacial ice is a prolonged process that occurs over centuries to millennia. This slow encapsulation process means that ice cores may not effectively capture short-term fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels, which could last only a few years to decades.
The question then arises: How accurately do ice cores reflect short-term variations in CO2 concentrations?
This is where alternative methods, such as the analysis of plant stomata, come into play. Stomata are microscopic pores found on the surfaces of leaves and needles, facilitating gas exchange between the plant and the atmosphere.
The density of stomata on plant leaves is influenced by atmospheric CO2 levels; higher concentrations lead to fewer stomata, and vice versa. By examining fossilized leaves and comparing stomatal density across different periods, scientists can infer past CO2 levels with a higher resolution than ice cores, potentially capturing more significant, short-term changes.
The evidence from plant stomata analysis suggests that there have been many more large, short-term fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels than those recorded by ice cores. In fact, some studies suggest levels approaching 400 ppm in the 14th and 16th centuries, challenging the notion of stable CO2 prior to human emissions.
Furthermore, other studies have shown short-term increases of CO2 of about 200 ppm in two centuries, naturally, which are not observed in the ice cores.
These discrepancies raise important questions about our understanding of natural CO2 variability and the baseline levels of atmospheric CO2 in the absence of human activities.
In conclusion, while ice cores provide a critical long-term perspective on Earth’s atmospheric history, their limitations in capturing short-term fluctuations underscore the need for complementary methods like plant stomata analysis.
Together, these tools offer a more nuanced understanding of natural versus anthropogenic influences on the Earth’s climate.
As we continue to unravel the complex interplay between natural variability and human impact, it becomes increasingly clear that the rise in CO2 levels can not merely be assigned to anthropogenic means.
https://principia-scientific.com/a-re-evaluation-of-earths-co2-history/
*********************************************Bugs on the Menu? Biden’s Climate and ESG Policies Threaten Food Supply, Think-Tank Warns
A new report from the right-leaning think-tank The Buckeye Institute sounded the alarm on the Biden administration’s net-zero climate-control policies and that agenda items threaten U.S. food production.
The report, released on Feb.7, found that the climate policies and mandates guided by the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda that is being pushed by the Biden administration carries a hefty price tag for American farmers and consumers.
“To better appreciate the true costs that American farms and households will likely pay for the Biden administration’s net-zero policies and objectives, The Buckeye Institute’s Economic Research Center developed a model corn farm that must play by the government’s new carbon emission rules,” wrote report authors Trevor W. Lewis and M. Ankith Reddy, who are both economic research analysts at the think-tank.
“The farm’s operational costs, as expected, all rose significantly,” they added.
Crunching the numbers, the researchers found that U.S. farmers will see their operational costs rise by an estimated 34 percent as a result of the Biden administration’s net-zero emissions policies.
Not only did the model predict that the government’s carbon pricing policies would raise farm operating costs, consumers also face a hit to their wallets.
The government’s net-zero policies that the Buckeye report took into account in its analysis include the implications of rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, which targets greenhouse gas emissions.
In order to achieve the climate pact’s objectives, the Biden administration committed to cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50–52 percent by 2030 and to reach economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Achieving the administration’s desired decarbonized economy will require aggressive climate-emission reduction policies that drain and replace fossil fuels from every sector of the U.S. economy,” the report’s authors wrote.
The Biden administration has already started implementing stringent regulatory policies meant to cut carbon emissions from America’s energy industry, while a looming final rule on ESG reporting, due to enter into force in April 2024, threatens to push carbon compliance onto other industries.
Many of these policies have been tested in Europe, with the researchers concluding that the results there have been an “unmitigated failure.”
“Despite these resounding warnings from European counterparts, U.S. policymakers have recommitted American industry to the same net-zero emissions standards and have imposed the same kinds of costly mandates on farms and businesses that will ultimately reduce food and energy supplies without achieving their intended benefits,” they argued.
“The results of Buckeye’s modeling were predictable and unsurprising, but many U.S. policymakers seem unwilling to address or even acknowledge them. That has to change, or the United States will face dire economic consequences,” concludes the report’s executive summary.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s findings.
Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, commented on the report in a post on X.
“Farmers and ranchers lay out huge sums for everything from fertilizer, seeds, and feed to heavy machinery and pesticides to produce the food we eat. Yet, the climate cult and ESG elites are causing these costs to skyrocket,” he wrote.
“That puts a heavier financial burden on agricultural producers and imposes higher food costs on hardworking Americans,” he continued.
“America’s farmers and ranchers’ livelihoods shouldn’t be at risk because of inflated operating costs or loss of access to capital from woke banks. Nor should the American people be victim to a crushing tax put on their groceries by climate extremists.”
*******************************************
SEC faces avalanche of lawsuits from states, companies, and nonprofits over climate rule
More than half the states in the U.S. filed lawsuits this month against the Securities and Exchange Commission over the climate disclosure rules it finalized last week.
On top of state lawsuits, the SEC is facing legal challenges from companies, nonprofits and business advocacy groups.
A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily paused the new rules.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request from Liberty Energy Inc. and Nomad Proppant Services LLC to put the rules on hold while it considers the oilfield companies' lawsuit challenging them.
The final rule didn’t include the stringent Scope 3 reporting requirements, which would have required companies registered with the SEC to disclose all emissions along the entire supply chain through the end use of products.
If it had been included, the average per-firm costs of producing climate disclosures would have been $864,864 across 7,400 companies, according to the National Review.
The final rules still require large and mid-sized companies to report Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and a deluge of lawsuits have raised a number of objections to what did end up in the final rule.
The day after the SEC voted 3 to 2 to adopt the final rules, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced his state and Georgia were leading a coalition of 10 states in filing a petition to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Today, the Biden administration has once again got on the attack against America's energy industry. It actually may be one of the most egregious attempts yet,” Morrisey said in a press conference.
Morrisey said the SEC is exceeding the authority Congress granted it to be a financial regulator. The climate disclosure rules, he said, were an attempt by the SEC to be an environmental regulator.
“Congress only wanted the SEC to focus on the financial regulation. And that's all the SEC has the power to do. Certainly, the SEC has nothing to do with climate change or energy,” Morrisey said.
Materiality
The new rule, Morrisey said, twists the definition of materiality, which has been the basis for what information companies need to supply to investors. The SEC considers a matter "material" if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable person would consider it important.
Commissioner Hester Peirce had also raised this objection in explaining her dissenting vote on the final rule.
“While the commission has decorated the final rule with materiality ribbons, the rule embraces materiality in name only,” Peirce said.
Morrisey said the reporting requirements under the new rule will be onerous, and that it will make it virtually impossible for companies to calculate how their environmental impact is material.
“How is the company supposed to know if greenhouse gas emission will affect its finances? How many trucks are going to be too many? How much coal do you use versus natural gas or other forms of energy?” Morrisey said.
He also said there are First Amendment issues with the final rule as it may fall under compelled speech.
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and publisher of JunkScience.com, told Just The News that the strongest legal argument against the rules is that the agency is exceeding its authority.
“Congress never authorized the SEC to participate in climate regulation — number one of two. The SEC can only require disclosure of material facts, and it cannot be shown that climate is in any way material to any investor decisions. So it fails on those two counts,” Milloy said.
*********************************************
History of weather extremes reveals little has changed, new report shows
A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation challenges the popular but mistaken belief that weather extremes - such as flooding, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires - are more common and more intense today because of climate change.
Drawing on newspaper archives and long-term observational data, the report, written by Dr Ralph Alexander, documents multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world.
Dr Ralph Alexander said:
“That so many people are unaware of past extremes shows that collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived.”
“The perception that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity is primarily a consequence of new information technology – the Internet and smart phones – which have revolutionised communication and made us much more aware of such disasters in all corners of the world than we were 50 or 100 years ago.”
***************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment