Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than pre-industrial times
The Associated Press in America carried a article a few days ago proclaiming the imminent climate catastrophe now atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 50 percent since the Industrial Revolution began.
orenstein, who Tony Heller has repeatedly noted used to report accurately on the climate, is now a fully-fledged member of the alarmist fraternity.
In the AP article on the 7th June, he writes:
The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50 percent higher than when the industrial age began.
And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50 percent higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.
Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.
“Reaching 50 percent higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”
Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels.
The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph Keeling. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.
Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.
Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7 percent, earlier studies show. But that was too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.
The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.
“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”
By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.
“The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.
It seems stupidity has reached a new low.
‘global heat-trapping carbon dioxide‘
As usual, alarmists do not understand, or more likely ignore, the laws of thermodynamics so ably described on PSI by Joe Postma, that prohibits CO2 from trapping heat.
‘sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere‘
Yet again confusing carbon and carbon dioxide.
‘pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.‘
I for one am glad carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere. It is making Earth more healthy. Even NASA admits the increasing CO2 is greening the planet, but that is apparently bad news.
It is often said by the media that CO2 and the Earth’s temperature have never been higher. This is pure nonsense, as the illustration below proves.
Image: Geocraft
We can see that for much of the last 600 million years, the average temperature of the planet was 22C. Today the average is 12C. We can also see that our paltry 419ppm of CO2 is dwarfed by historic concentrations. So far from CO2 and the temperature never being higher, we are currently in the joint coldest period, with the lowest CO2, of the last half billion years, matching the conditions in the Carboniferous and Permian epochs 300 million years ago.
‘Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic‘
Err…no it does not. In one of my email exchanges with Dr Tim Ball, he explained how a warmer world produces LESS bad weather not more. He said that storms:
“…occur along the boundary between the cold air dome over the polar regions and the warm tropical air of the atmosphere. This is generally known as the Polar Front and occupies the middle latitudes between 30° and 65°. As you correctly note, the intensity of the storm is determined by the temperature difference across that Polar Front. Also, as you correctly note the IPCC claim storms will increase in numbers and intensity with global warming. In fact, there is more warming in the polar region. This will reduce the temperature difference and thus the number and intensity of storms.”
As for making the oceans more acidic, this is yet another climate myth. The oceans have a pH of between 7.9 and 8.3, which makes them an alkaline.
You cannot increase the acidity of something that is not an acid to start with.
Also, the pH scale is logarithmic like the Richter Scale, so each number is ten times the previous number. Therefore, to make seawater even the mildest acid, the pH level would have to decrease by a factor of 20.
The oceans have been gradually rising as long as we have been measuring them, a natural consequence of the planet continuing to recover from the last ice age.
The number of wildfires have decreased dramatically over the last century, as this illustration Gregory Wrightstone produced shows:
The illustration also reveals how the IPCC chose only data from the low point in 1984 for their Fourth National Climate Assessment, to show an increase in the number of wildfires. This is a deliberate deception.
The area of ground burnt has increased, but this is mainly due to the reduction, and even total cessation in some places, of forest management practices.
The image below shows the claim and the reality of the climate system.
This AP article is pure propaganda intended to create a fear of the natural world, and make people afraid of the weather. Disgraceful.
See more here: apnews.com
Header image: NOAA
About the author: Andy Rowlands is a university graduate in space science and British Principia Scientific International researcher, writer and editor who co-edited the new climate science book, ‘The Sky Dragon Slayers: Victory Lap‘
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MattH
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Well balanced article Andy.
I did not realize the PH scale is logarithmic. For goodness sake, do not let any children gain this knowledge because they may become less terrified. Especially white children in an impoverished family. They should be ashamed of themselves for their self entitled privilege.
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Andy
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Cheers Matt, I appreciate that. I didn’t know the pH scale was logarithmic until I discovered it by accident a few years ago, but it serves to highlight the stupidity of ‘ocean acidification’ very well.
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Alan
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The above exchange raised a serious issue about education. I learned about pH when I was probably around 16, so why do school children of today not see the point that Matt made? I also wonder what school children think an average temperature means. If they had a container of ice and a container of water, they could do the maths to find an average temperature, but it has no meaning. It is not the temperature that would result if the two were put into one container and it is not the equilibrium temperature they would reach over time. The greenhouse effect is being explained to them using the addition of temperatures. They are told that the sun can only heat the earth’s surface to -18C and that it has a temperature of 15C and therefore 33C has to come from the atmosphere. If they believe this they believe that mixing two cups of water at 50C each will produce boiling water. What has our education system come to when neither children or adults can see through the nonsense of human caused climate change?
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MattH
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Hi Andy and readers.
I was curious about the pH level in the coral sea and surrounds, the warmest seas on the planet. The google search brought me the below reference and surprisingly , a site of an anthropogenic climate sceptic I had not come across previously. No time to read it now for critical review but it has good presentation. References are for my own benefit so I can find it again.
between 8.4 and 7.7
Furthermore far from being catastrophic, not only is a pH range between 8.4 and 7.7 experienced daily in thriving coral reefs, that range appears to be an optimal balance that supports both photosynthesis and calcification!
Gaia and Coral Regulate Ocean pH – Landscapes and Cycles
http://landscapesandcycles.net/
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Moffin
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I guess Gaia incorporates both oceanic temperature variations and my favorites, coccolithophores.
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WhoKoo
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I wish I had a pet coccolithophore.
Jerry Krause
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Hi Matt H and and Andy,
“did not realize the PH scale is logarithmic”. This illustrates what many people know. CHEMISTISTS ARE LOUSY TEACHERS
Have a good day, Jerry
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JaKo
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Hi Jerry,
I think that correct answer was to be: “Chemists are known math-haters!”
With a plausible exception of Physical Chemists 😉
Cheers, JaKo
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Alan
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Nothing can trap heat. Heat is the transfer of thermal energy from high temperature to lower temperature. If heat is trapped there is no heat transfer and this would mean there is no temperature difference anywhere in the universe, which would then be effectively dead.
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Squidly
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“Heat” cannot be transferred at all .. “heat” is not a “thing” .. ONLY the energy can be transferred. “Heat” is a RESULT of that energy. And, that RESULT (heat) cannot be “trapped”, as you have rightly indicated.
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JaKo
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Sorry Squidly,
Heat is a form of energy and, as such, it can be and routinely is transferred — usually from the warmer to the colder object; however, one important role of engineers is to make heat flow from the colder to the warmer objects, as is to flow liquids from lower to higher elevations — the instrument they use is called pump. (I.e. Heat-Pump)
Cheers, JaKo
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jako,
Heat is kinetic energy which means it is a function of both energy (v^2) and mass (1/2mv^2). When objects collide (convection/conduction) the conservation of momentum (m1v1 + m2v2 = m1v3 + m2v4) dictates that energy equalizes between the two object so energy flows from the object with greater velocity to the object with less velocity regardless of mass. A low mass high velocity gas molecule will transfer energy to a large mass rock with lower energy even if the rock has more kinetic energy (is hotter). A colder object can add energy to a hotter object just as a high speed sports car rear ending a large slow moving truck will increase the speed of the truck while it loses velocity, even if the truck has more kinetic energy.
Herb
Herb
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Peter
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I find this is a good fall back to debunk chicken littles.
“My Gift To Climate Alarmists
665,336 views
•Premiered on 21 Sept 2019”
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Barry
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Good article Andy,thanks for keeping it in the headlines it’s a good reminder even for those of us that know what the truth is. Good ref from Dr Ball about the storm patterns,what nonsense that warming produces more and worse when you simply can look at a satellite shot of earth and understand exactly what it is that produces our wx. Keep up the good work.
Cheers Barry
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Andy
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Thanks Barry, I appreciate that 🙂
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Andy and hopefully PSI Readers,
Andy, will you explain to PSI Readers why (how it is) that you refer to Postma’s article (https://principia-scientific.com/joe-postma-email-thread-with-colleagues/) and did not refer to my earlier article (https://principia-scientific.com/new-scientific-law-greenhouse-effect/)???
Have a good day, Jerry (A PRACTICABLE SCIENTIST but certainly NO GENIUS)
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Andy
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Hi Jerry, I see so many articles now I didn’t remember either Joe’s or yours, and it was John who added the one for Joe by turning his name into a hyperlink. I can only apologise, and thank you for adding the link to your own article.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Andy,
I accept your apology and I can remember no evidence that you had any association with PSI in 2016.
And I must acknowledge that John O’Sullivan, a founder and hard working editor of PSI has always gone out his way to embellish, as he evidently consider his action in your case to be, my essays which he posted for PSI Readers to read.
And by the way, do you know that Galileo did not title his book ‘Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences’? Louis Elzevir, the publisher (and editor) did. Have you ever asked: What were these two NEW SCIENCES???
Beginning shortly after John Dalton, s chool teacher, hence an AMATEUR SCIENTIST, convinced the established SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY of that time that MATTER was composed of ATOMS by using established SCIENTIFIC LAWS, one which he established by his experiments, the fundamental and critical importance has become eroded (to use a geological term). For the first great departure from the importance of PHYSICAL EVIDENCE back to the RULE of REASON and ARGUMENTATION practiced by Aristotle and his fellow talented Greek philosophers began in the well know GEOLOGICAL case of CONTINENTAL DRIFT.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Andy
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Hi jerry, you’re right about me and PSI, I only became involved with them in 2018 🙂
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