What Is the ‘Correct’ CO2 Concentration, And Who Decides?
The 2009 Endangerment Finding labelled carbon dioxide a ‘pollutant’ that threatens public health and welfare. For more than a decade, that designation has functioned as the legal foundation for regulating ‘fossil’ fuels, electricity generation, transportation, and much of the modern world
Now that the Finding has been revoked by the US EPA, it is worth stepping back from the regulatory framework and asking a much more basic scientific question.
What is the correct atmospheric concentration of CO2?
If carbon dioxide is truly a pollutant, then there must be a threshold right?
There must be some identifiable boundary at which CO2 shifts from being part of the natural carbon cycle to being harmful in a biological or climatic sense. If such a boundary exists, it should be visible in geology, in plant physiology, or in the empirical record of Earth’s climate.
But when we begin to examine those lines of evidence, the clarity we are promised does not appear.
Deep Time Does Not Cooperate
In The Endangerment Finding Was Pre-Cooked, I walked through the Phanerozoic reconstruction of atmospheric CO2. Over the last 550 million years, concentrations frequently exceeded 1000 parts per million and at times reached several thousand, possibly as high as 7000ppm, and the planet did not boil away.
Life did not collapse under those conditions. On the contrary, biodiversity expanded.
Forests flourished. Marine ecosystems diversified. The idea that 400 ppm constitutes dirty air sits uneasily beside a geological record in which far higher concentrations coincided with biological abundance.
If today’s atmosphere is “endangering,” then vast stretches of Earth’s history would need to be reclassified as ecologically reckless. That conclusion should at least give us pause.
In Does More CO2 = More Heat?, I also explored the complex relationship between CO2 and temperature over deep time. The geological record does not display a simple linear mapping between atmospheric concentration and climate state.
Continental configuration, ocean circulation, solar luminosity, volcanic outgassing and air pressure all shape global temperature. If there is an upper danger threshold, it is not obvious in deep time.
The Ice Age Constraint
The more recent record complicates things further.
In Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations of the Past and Do We Really Know the Surface Temperature or CO2 Concentration of the Past?, I discussed the proxy records and their limitations. Even accepting the ice core framework at face value, atmospheric CO2 over the past 800,000 years fluctuated between roughly 180 and 300 ppm.
Those low points coincided with massive continental ice sheets. Glacial maxima were not periods of ecological flourishing. They were periods of climatic severity and instability.
Pre-industrial levels near 280 ppm did not represent a golden age of climatic balance. They were part of a cycle of repeated glaciations driven by orbital forcing. The Earth system oscillated between ice ages lasting nearly 100,000 years and comparatively brief interglacials, like the one we are in now.
That history raises an uncomfortable possibility. Perhaps 280 ppm was not an optimal equilibrium. Perhaps it was closer to a lower boundary of climatic stability.
The Modern Biosphere Response
Meanwhile, as CO2 rose from roughly 280 ppm to more than 420 ppm, something measurable occurred.
In Greening Earth and Booming Crops, I examined satellite evidence showing widespread increases in global leaf area. Agricultural production has expanded dramatically over the past several decades.
Water use efficiency has improved under elevated CO2 conditions.
Commercial greenhouse operators routinely enrich CO2 concentrations between 800 and 1000 ppm in order to maximize plant growth. They do not regard 280 ppm as biologically ideal.
CO2 is not a trace contaminant in plant physiology. It is the fundamental substrate of photosynthesis.
If rising CO2 were inherently degrading the biosphere, we would not expect to observe widespread greening.
The Sea Level Complication
Perhaps, then, the danger lies in the sea level.
That argument is often presented as straightforward. Higher CO2 increases radiative forcing. Higher temperatures melt ice. Melting ice raises the sea level.
But in Sea Levels Were Significantly Higher in the Mid to Late Holocene at Pre Industrial Levels of CO2, I reviewed multiple peer-reviewed reconstructions showing that regional sea levels during the mid to late Holocene were, in many places, higher than today.
These highstands occurred while atmospheric CO2 remained near 260 to 280 ppm.
Evidence from the Arabian Gulf, the southwestern Atlantic, and the southeast Australian coast indicates elevated sea levels under what some now describe as ‘safe’ pre-industrial concentrations.
It means that sea level does not map cleanly or uniquely onto atmospheric concentration. Glacio isostatic adjustment, meltwater redistribution, and regional dynamics complicate the picture.
Once again, the boundary between ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ becomes difficult to identify.
The Asymmetry
Taken together, these observations produce a striking asymmetry. There is clear evidence that very low CO2 concentrations coincide with biospheric stress and glacial amplification.
There is far less clarity about a specific upper danger threshold anywhere near modern levels. And yet policy treats 280 ppm as a moral baseline.
Why?
Why do alarmists claim the concentration that existed in ‘pre-industrial’ times is the ideal level? It seems strange they would claim that, as that period was the Little Ice Age, which saw very cold temperatures, widespread crop failures and resulting large numbers of deaths from starvation and disease.
If the objective were maximizing biospheric productivity, minimizing glacial instability, preserving adaptability, and supporting human flourishing, what atmospheric CO2 range would we rationally choose?
See more here substack.com
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Editor’s note: The work of Sherwood & Craig Idso at CO2Science shows that 1200ppm is the ideal level for best plant & crop growth, so that is the level I would choose.