Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Reconstructions of paleo CO2 levels openly rely on data derived from plant stomata. But when modern (1800s-present) CO2 measurements from stomata conflict with the narrative that humans drive CO2 levels, they are patently rejected.
Reconstructions of paleo CO2 levels openly rely on data derived from plant stomata. But when modern (1800s-present) CO2 measurements from stomata conflict with the narrative that humans drive CO2 levels, they are patently rejected.
Scientists readily acknowledge plant stomata evidence from one location are “widely used as an effective tool for paleoenvironmental reconstructions” of global atmospheric CO2 from 1 to 150 million years ago (Badihagh et al., 2024).
For example, in a new study, 100-150 million-year-old stomata samples from Iran are shown to re-confirm global atmospheric CO2 levels hit 1,100 to 1,700 ppm during the Jurassic period. The authors proudly showcase how consistently their stomata-derived CO2 measurements compare to several other reconstructions reaching the same conclusion about past CO2 concentrations.
But that’s where the stomata-are-an-effective-paleo-CO2-measuring-tool perspective stops.
Whereas millions of years ago CO2 data derived from stomata were thought to be accurate, direct stomata measurements recorded in scientific papers from only a century ago – even the 1940s and 1950s – are regarded as not accurate. They must be rejected.
Dr. Ernst-Georg Beck’s compiled research with plant stomata-derived CO2 measurements was posthumously published in 2022. It’s an exhaustively-referenced paper detailing 97,404 direct near-ground measurement from 901 stations situated across the world, in both hemispheres. (This is very much unlike the ice core CO2 record in which only one continental location, Antarctica, is used; and yet this local record – contradicted by Greenland ice cores – is regarded as “global”.)
The research was recorded in 292 scientific papers (77 authors) covering stomata-derived direct CO2 measurements for the industrial era, 1800-1960.
These database compilations – ~60,000 global-scale measurements between the 1930s and 1950s alone – consistently show CO2 hit 380 ppm in 1943 and 372 ppm in 1950, with very small error margins after about 1870.
The currently accepted CO2 values for 1943 and 1950 are instead recorded as 310 ppm, and the 372 to 380 ppm values are not assumed to have been achieved until the mid-2000s. A data-driven portrayal of a decadal-scale decline in CO2 after the 1940s peak (shown in Fig. 24) contradicts the viewpoint that sharply rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions after 1945 led to tandemly increasing CO2 concentrations. Consequently, these direct CO2 measurements – tens of thousands of them from across the world – are rejected by the gatekeepers of the humans-did-it narrative.
Further, the stomata-derived CO2 values also indicate the temperature is the leading factor determining the CO2 concentration, with the CO2 changes correlationally (r = 0.67) lagging the temperature changes by about a year. This once again conflicts with the conclusion that CO2 levels are determined by anthropogenic emissions.
Another stomatal CO2 study published nearly 20 years ago also documents ±100 ppm CO2 changes over the last few centuries, with a peak of about 380 ppm in the 1940s. Like Beck’s work, this too must be rejected, as it doesn’t align with the human-caused angle.
“Europe’s highest human rights court ruled Tuesday that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change , siding with a group of older Swiss women against their government in a landmark ruling that could have implications across the continent.”
“Europe’s highest human rights court ruled Tuesday that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change , siding with a group of older Swiss women against their government in a landmark ruling that could have implications across the continent.” [link]
“The court — which is unrelated to the European Union — ruled that Switzerland “had failed to comply with its duties” to combat climate change and meet emissions targets.
That, the court said, was a violation of the women’s rights, noting that the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees people “effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life.”
A group called Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, had argued that they were particularly affected because older women are most vulnerable to the extreme heat that is becoming more frequent.
“The court recognized our fundamental right to a healthy climate and to have our country do what it failed to do until now: that is to say taking ambitious measures to protect our health and protect the future of all,” said Anne Mahrer, a member of the group.”
Well fortunately I have some text prepared to help innoculate us from this fresh new climate hell of litigation.
There is no human right to a safe or stable climate
There is widespread international acceptance of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which enumerates 30 human rights. There is no mention of the word “climate” or the word “environment” in the UDHR. This is true also for the European Convention on Human Rights.
There are efforts in Europe to create a new human right to a safe, stable climate. From a decision by the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) [1]
“… environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to enjoy the right to life.”
From a 2019 Report written by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights:[2]
“There is now global agreement that human rights norms apply to the full spectrum of environmental issues, including climate change.”
Deductions based on a decision by the UNHRC and a Report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, do not create a new “human right” to be protected against the dangerous impacts of climate change. No attempt has been made by the UN to create international support for a new human right to be protected from climate change. Such a right is neither implicit or explicit in the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.
Even if Net Zero objectives were achieved globally by 2050, the climate would continue to change from natural weather and climate variability: volcanic eruptions, solar effects, large-scale oscillations of ocean circulations, and other geologic processes. Further, given the inertia in the climate system (particularly oceans and ice sheets), it would be many decades before there was any noticeable change in extreme weather/climate events and sea level rise after Net Zero was achieved.
Exaggeration of the risks from human-caused climate change lead to serious contradictions in context of the idea “that human rights offer protection against the impacts of dangerous climate change.”
Specifically with regards to the right to life, global mortality (per 100,000 people) from extreme weather and climate events have declined by 99% since 1920.[5] Between the period 1980 and 2016, global mortality (per 100,000 people) from extreme weather and climate events has dropped by 6.5 times.[6] For the mortality statistics since 1980, there is a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth.[7] Thus, an increase in wealth provides much greater and much more certain protection against climate-related risks than emissions reduction.
The trend in mortality statistics does not mean that weather and climate disasters have become less frequent or less intense. The trend implies that the world is now much better at preventing deaths from extreme weather and climate events than in the past. This has been accomplished through increasing wealth (driven by energy derived from fossil fuels), which provides better infrastructure, greater reserves, advance warnings, and greater recovery capacity.
The declining mortality statistics raise several issues and contradictions regarding the allegations that “human rights offer protection against the impacts of dangerous climate change”. What of the “rights” of people that died in the early part of the 20th century (or earlier) from extreme weather and climate events that were caused only by natural weather and climate variability? How were these deaths to be prevented at the time? Do deaths only count if they are alleged to be caused by human caused warming, but not by, for example, restricting access to safe cooking fuels?[8] Do deaths only count if they are alleged to be caused by human caused warming, but not by natural weather and climate variability? How is the cost of preventing deaths associated with extreme weather and climate events (whether natural or human caused) to be balanced with the costs of attempting to prevent the extremely larger number of deaths from a myriad of other causes?
The arguments supporting the putative right to a safe climate are significantly weakened once the adverse effects of the policies to bring about a safe climate on food production are understood. In addition, climate and energy policies have significant environmental impacts and cause environmental degradation. For instance, forest biomass-based fuel causes deforestation, and on-shore and off-shore wind turbines and solar parks may (and, in fact, do) harm the social fabric, real estate prices, nature, biodiversity, the scenery, and human health. The mining and manufacturing required for batteries, and other renewable energy-related goods and infrastructure cause adverse environmental and human health impacts, and renewable energy also causes CO2 emissions. Given that European Human Rights Court has taken the position that the right to life also protects against environmental degradation and health risks, these adverse environmental and health impacts associated with any policies to respond to the Court’s judgment would have to be taken into account.
Summary. There will be a continuing need for fossil fuels. Rapid restrictions to fossil fuels before cleaner energy is available interferes with more highly ranked sustainability goals – no poverty, no hunger, affordable and clean energy, and industry-innovation-infrastructure. There is no human right to a safe or stable climate. Apart from the lack of an international agreement, such a “right” contains too many contradictions to be meaningful.
[[5] Bjorn Lomborg, “Welfare in the 21st Century: Increasing Development, Reducing Inequality, the Impact of Climate Change, and the Cost of Climate Policies,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 156 (July 2020): 119981, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981.
[6] Giuseppe Formetta and Luc Feyen, “Empirical Evidence of Declining Global Vulnerability to Climate-Related Hazards,” Global Environmental Change 57 (July 2019): 101920, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.05.004.
[7] Bjørn Lomborg, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020), 218.
[8] Charles N. Mock et al., eds., “Household Air Pollution from Solid Cookfuels and Its Effects on Health,” Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition: Injury Prevention and Environmental Health 7 (2017): 133–52, https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0522-6_ch7.
Fifty years ago, the economies of the West were reeling from the effects of an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in response to the United States providing emergency military aid to Israel in the October 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Fifty years ago, the economies of the West were reeling from the effects of an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in response to the United States providing emergency military aid to Israel in the October 1973 Yom Kippur war. By January 1974, the embargo had nearly quadrupled the price of oil, driving up inflation and ending the postwar economic expansion.
The Nixon administration responded to this first energy crisis in two ways. In November 1973, President Nixon announced Project Independence: by 1980, America would meet its energy needs from its own energy resources. Though it took nearly four decades longer than Nixon envisaged, the U.S. finally became a net energy exporter in 2019, thanks to the shale revolution. In December 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger proposed the formation of an energy buyers’ group to counterbalance the market power of the oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, an initiative that came to fruition with the setting up of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November 1974.
Half a century later, something strange happened. The roles ascribed to championing producer and consumer interests suddenly reversed. At last month’s CERAWeek in Houston, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser poured cold water on the forced march of the energy transition, telling the conference, “the hopes and ambitions of 8 billion energy consumers around the world are at stake.” The message from consumers, he said, is that they want energy that protects the planet and their pocketbooks, “with minimal disruption to supplies and their daily lives.”
In the real world, Nasser pointed out, the energy transition is visibly failing despite the expenditure of $9.5 trillion over the last two decades. So far this century, the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix fell from 83 percent to 80 percent, while wind and solar supply less than 4 percent of world energy. Despite its marginally lower relative share, the absolute demand for hydrocarbons grew by almost 100 million barrels per day of oil equivalent. “Even coal is at record highs,” Nasser unfashionably observes.
Nonetheless, oil consumption in developing countries ranges from less than one barrel to below two barrels per person per year, compared with nine barrels for the EU and 22 barrels for the U.S. “The energy transition narrative will increasingly be written by the Global South,” Nasser points out. This leaves plenty of headroom for growing hydrocarbon demand. “Peak oil and gas are unlikely for some time to come, let alone [in] 2030,” Nasser concludes.
The Biden administration moved quickly to dismiss Nasser’s analysis. “Well, that is one opinion,” commented Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “There have been other studies that suggest the opposite, that oil and gas demand and fossil demand will peak by 2030.” The other studies Granholm refers to are those by the IEA under its executive director, Fatih Birol. Most controversially, in 2021 the IEA published “Net Zero by 2050,” which claimed that investment in new oil and gas fields was no longer needed.
A June 2023 report by the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC) in collaboration with the RealClear Foundation shows that the IEA’s net zero analysis is unrealistic, internally inconsistent, and often supports the case for increased hydrocarbon production. Even though renewables allegedly drive oil and gas back into the ground through market forces, the IEA’s net zero scenario sees U.S. electricity prices rise by 50 percent on average by 2050. As for net zero being a counterbalance to OPEC: the cartel’s share of the global oil market would rise from 37 percent to 52 percent in 2050, a level “higher than at any point in the history of oil markets.” If oil demand continues to rise, but American and other non-OPEC producers cut their investment in new oil and gas fields, EPRINC reckons that OPEC’s share would rise to 82 percent. Who now is more in favor of boosting OPEC’s market share – Saudi Arabia or the IEA?
Three days after Nasser’s Houston speech, Birol wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times replete with falsehoods and misleading claims. It’s now cheaper to build onshore wind and solar than new fossil fuel plants, Birol maintains. But any accounting of wind and solar must incorporate the costs of their intermittency and their inability to match supply with demand, meaning that each megawatt of wind and solar capacity requires a matching megawatt of coal or natural gas.
The cost of electric vehicles (EVs) is plummeting, making a U-turn away from them improbable and impractical – or so Birol would have us believe. Birol might have a word with recently fired Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr, who joined the car rental giant only two years ago after nearly 30 years at Goldman Sachs. Scherr followed the green fashion and made a massive bet on EVs. Customers didn’t like them, they’re costly to maintain, and their value plunged when Tesla started a price war, leading Hertz to sell around one-third of its EV fleet and take a $245 million write-down. So much for Birol’s “no EV U-turn.”
Birol points to China, the world’s largest consumer of coal, as the clean energy superpower for its domination of the supply of solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs. “Regardless of where they stand on climate policy,” Birol argues, “if countries want to compete with China in the industries of the future, they need to double down on clean energy plans, not dial back on them.” This is economic nonsense, as every student of Adam Smith (specialization) and David Ricardo (comparative advantage) knows. Just because you might consume a lot of something doesn’t make you good at producing it. Ask the Germans. They were promised that their trillion-euro Energiewende would create thousands of green jobs. The green jobs did appear – in China.
“The IEA has become, so to speak, our armed wing for implementing the Paris agreement,” France’s President Emmanuel Macron declared two months ago. It is the clearest possible admission that the IEA has morphed into a green propaganda outfit and means that the IEA should not be relied upon to provide trustworthy, unbiased analysis. Self-evidently, the IEA no longer performs the function it was created for nearly fifty years ago. For that, better listen to Armin Nasser, not Fatih Birol. That, in turn, raises the question of what to do about the IEA should Donald Trump win a second term. There’s a one-word answer: withdraw.
There was a time back in the 1960’s and 70’s when a cause like “Save the Whales” was the exclusive domain of the political left.
But as Bob Dylan might say, “the times they are a changing”.
*Editor’s note: While, as Climate Realism has pointed out previously, here, whales are not threatened by climate change, right whales are confronted with more boat traffic, and are being driven into boat traffic by offshore wind development, especially via sonar testing.
There was a time back in the 1960’s and 70’s when a cause like “Save the Whales” was the exclusive domain of the political left.
But as Bob Dylan might say, “the times they are a changing”.
Three major “conservative” organizations – the National Legal Policy Center, Heartland Institute, and my organization, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow – recently filed a major lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court to save the Right Whale from facing potential oblivion.
Why aren’t the larger Green groups, unlike the grassroots ones, rallying around the efforts of these organizations to save Right whales? Good question. Perhaps it’s because the threat to the remaining 350 of them doesn’t come from Russian, Norwegian, or Japanese whaling vessels, as it did back in the 70’s. Rather, it is from so-called “Green energy” in the form of offshore wind. Right whales are being threatened by the Biden Administration’s fast-track plans to hurriedly place 30,000 MW of wind power generation off the Eastern coast, and doing so without the proper sort of environmental impact assessment they might otherwise perform for, say, offshore oil.
The collective decision by our outfits to take the issue of whale protection to Court came after two years of futile attempts to get the Biden Administration to listen. Offshore wind development threatens the nearly extinct North Atlantic Right Whale in various ways, and the government refuses to investigate.
The two agencies which share responsibility for making sure wind development does not harm whales include the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which oversees building wind facilities, and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS or NOAA Fisheries), which enforces the various laws to protect whales. Neither seems intent on doing their job.
In issuing its “biological opinion” last September, for instance, NMFS only examined the impact that each of these projects individually and in isolation would have on the North Atlantic right whale. The agency did not, as it should have, issue a comprehensive and cumulative analysis examining the combined harm which all the projects, together, would inflict on the whales during their annual migration path.
If it had done so, it would have uncovered that dangerous noises generated from several projects combine to create much louder and more dangerous circumstances for marine mammals than noises coming from just a single project. In fact, impacts can combine over time as well, such as when migrating Right Whales are repeatedly forced to go around a dozen wind facilities into heavily trafficked shipping lanes. The risk of being struck by a ship then becomes ten times greater than for a single project.
It’s likely for such reasons the Endangered Species Act specifically calls for assessment of cumulative impacts such as these, but the Biden Administration has ignored this requirement.
BOEM and NMFS say there is no evidence of a threat to whales. But this is just a coverup. The Right Whale population began its rapid decline in 2017, the year offshore wind development began in earnest. The Humpback Whale death rate tripled that very year and has remained abnormally high.
NMFS actually provides some of the strongest evidence. For every wind project they estimate the number of marine mammals by species that will be adversely affected by construction noise, something which they call “Level B Harassment”. For Right Whales the cumulative total of predicted Level B Harassments the government projects, and allows for, is already roughly twice the total population of the mammal … and growing.
Why is this a big deal? Because such harassment can easily lead to a whale death. This can happen, for example, when the noise level of an operating turbine disrupts the navigation of a marine mammal, driving it into heavy ship traffic or fishing nets. BOEM and NMFS have refused to consider this deadly possibility, even for a single project like Dominion Energy’s windfarm off Virginia Beach, much less cumulatively. Meanwhile more and more whales are dying from ship strikes and fishing net entanglements as offshore wind development recklessly accelerates.
Harassment-caused death is merely one of many potentially deadly threats that BOEM and NMFS refuse to assess. There are others we have cited, including loss of habitat, reduced food supply, and concentrated ship traffic. This is why we are asking the Court to require that the government undertake such an investigation, as they are required to do so under the ESA, on all offshore wind projects cumulatively.
“Save the whales” is more than a slogan. It should be a directive our federal agencies are eager to carry out. But if they won’t do it, then they shouldn’t be surprised to see lawsuits headed their way from every corner of the public interest – including from those of us on the right.
Craig Rucker is co-founder and president of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow
Originally posted atRealClearPolicy, reposted with permission.
Last Wednesday, after diving Wheeler, Lynch and Chicken reefs we made it to Davies. I particularly wanted to visit this reef as the Australian Institute of Science (AIMS) has a weather station here at Davies.
Stuart put his drone up and got photographs of the weather station and its immediate surrounds.
Last Wednesday, after diving Wheeler, Lynch and Chicken reefs we made it to Davies. I particularly wanted to visit this reef as the Australian Institute of Science (AIMS) has a weather station here at Davies.
Stuart put his drone up and got photographs of the weather station and its immediate surrounds.
The AIMS weather station at Davies reef, and this arial suggests that this area of reef is dominated by algae presumably growing over areas that were once coral, with sandy patches in-between.
There is no evidence of recent bleaching from this aerial photograph, but rather patches of reef that appear to have been lost to brown algae. It looks devastating from the air, the extent of the infestation of algae.
AIMS records temperatures at different depth at some reefs with the temperature data for Davies at a depth of 4 metres extending back to 1991, providing 33 years of information on water temperatures. The warmest summer in this record is in the year 2020.
Australian Institute of Marine Science temperature data recorded at Davies reef at a depth of 4 metres. This data indicates that temperatures cycle with the seasons. This data, through to the end of March, does not show global warming.
AIMS also collects water temperature data down to 18.5 metres at Davies. This data also shows temperatures cycling within an approximate 6C range. This data does not suggest that this summer has been particularly warm – at least not in this central region relative to the last 18 summers, which is the extent of the publicly available temperature record at this depth for Davies reef.
Water temperature data collected by AIMS at a depth of 18 metres, showing very marked changes with each season, showing cycles of warming and cooling.
This summer at Davies, temperatures don’t appear to have got unusually warm – with the time series data from both 4 metres and 18.5 metres extending right up to 28th March 2024; right up until the end of summer and some.
Yet the reef crest, at Davies, as for Lynch, was looking devastatingly bare.
Jennifer Marohasy diving down to the reef crest, with all the coral gone and the wall also bare. Davies Reef, Wednesday April 3rd, 2024.
Tropical cyclone Kirrily hit on 25th January; nearly 10 weeks ago. It has scoured the shallow flat top of this reef, and it seems also the wall.
As there is no coral, presumably following pummelling by the cyclone, specifically TC Kirrily, well, there is nothing to bleach.
At some depth it is the well attached corals that have survived and show some bleaching.
Davis reef, Wednesday 3rd April, 2024.
Amazingly, we did find some large healthy plate corals at a different section of the reef crest that have survived, and they are a good dark brown meaning they are replete with zooxanthellae.
We only had time to dive the northwest of this reef, with less than an hour in the water.
Hopefully there are other sections with more coral – hopefully there are other sections less affected by TC Kirrily.
As I posted at my Facebook page earlier today: there are two types of scientists, those who try and make their observations fit the narrative and those who let the data speak for itself. I am a fan of the latter; I seek information about the natural environment not to confirm my prejudices, but to learn about nature.
We can’t know whether this section of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering from global warming or cyclone damage, if we aren’t prepared to get into the water and make some observations.
I am a huge fan of 19th century British biologist Thomas Huxley. Back in 1860 he wrote:
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations. Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian concept of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before each fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.”
It is the case that the corals in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef appear to have been more impacted by TC Kirrily, than warmer than average water temperatures.
This is my observation, supported by the available water temperature data for Davies reef; the AIMS data.
Paul Crocombe getting out of the water, after diving Davies reef on Wednesday 3rd April, 2024.
I’m very grateful to Adrenalin Dive for the opportunity to visit this reef, and to the Institute of Public Affairs for funding this adventure. The video and photographs are by Stuart Ireland. Stuart has passed me the raw footage, that I have posted clips and snippets of here. There will be a short documentary, with much more information and interviews soon.
The feature image (at the very top of this post) shows me/Jennifer Marohasy swimming while holding my breath. Following is Paul Crocombe on scuba, blowing bubbles. The photograph is a screenshot from video taken under-the-water by Stuart Ireland. (I was on snorkel/free diving all day on Wednesday.)
And a last photograph of the boat taken on my Olympus TG6, when I came up for air. The water really was that blue, at Davies Reef last Wednesday.
Every now and then, a giant of modern science should be allowed to express himself in language that we all understand. In the informative Climate: The Movie, the 2022 Nobel physics laureate Dr. John Clauser thundered: “I assert there is no connection whatsoever between climate change and CO2 – it’s all a crock of crap, in my opinion.”
Every now and then, a giant of modern science should be allowed to express himself in language that we all understand. In the informative Climate: The Movie, the 2022 Nobel physics laureate Dr. John Clauser thundered: “I assert there is no connection whatsoever between climate change and CO2 – it’s all a crock of crap, in my opinion.” While not expressing himself in such forthright terms, the Greek scientist Professor Demetris Koutsoyiannis might agree. He recently published a paper that argues it is the recent expansion of a more productive biosphere that has led to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and greening of the Earth. It is widely argued that changing atmospheric carbon isotopes prove that most if not all recent warming is caused by the 4% human contribution from burning hydrocarbons, but such anthropogenic involvement is dismissed by Koutsoyiannis as “non-discernible”. Koutsoyiannis is Professor Emeritus of Hydrology and Analysis of Hydrosystems at the National Technical University of Athens.
The isotope argument has been around for some time and has been useful in closing down debate on the role of human-caused CO2 and its supposed effect in causing a ‘climate emergency’. The carbon in living matter has a slightly higher proportion of 12C isotopes, and recent lowering levels of 13C, which accounts for 99% of carbon in the atmosphere, are used to promote the idea that it is caused by burning hydrocarbons. But Koutsoyiannis argues that the more productive biosphere has resulted in “natural amplification of the carbon cycle due to increased temperature”. He suggests this may be a “primary factor for the decrease in the isotopic signature 13C in atmospheric CO2”.
Clauser’s remarks, along with contributions from a number of other distinguished scientists, have led to widespread attempts to shadow-ban Martin Durkin’s Climate: The Movie in mainstream and social media. If Clauser and scientists like Koutsoyiannis are correct, there is no need for the Net Zero global collectivisation. Trillions of dollars can be taken back from the Climate Industrial Network to be used to solve more pressing environmental and social problems. In such circles, the idea that humans control the climate thermostat is regarded as little short of pseudoscience. In the film, the former Princeton professor William Happer says he can live with the descriptive suggestion “hoax”, although he prefers the word “scam”. Disregarding the role of natural forces and promoting a 50 year-old hypothesis – science speak for ‘opinion’ – that can’t even agree on the degree of warming caused by higher levels of CO2 – holds little attraction for these sceptical science minds.
During the course of the Durkin film, the evidence mounts that the warming ‘opinion’ can’t explain any of the climate change observations seen over the last 500 million years of life on Earth. As the Daily Sceptic has noted on numerous occasions, it would help if there was at least one peer-reviewed paper that proved conclusively that humans caused all or most changes in the climate. A politically-manufactured ‘consensus’ and appeals to UN authority do not count.
Koutsoyiannis provides some of the historical background to the evolution of the isotope story, and its use to promote the ‘settled’ science narrative around CO2. The generally accepted hypothesis “may reflect a dogmatic approach or a postmodern ideological effect, i.e., to blame everything on human actions”, he observes. Hence, he says, the null hypothesis that all observed changes are mostly natural has not seriously been investigated. To add weight to his contention, Koutsoyiannis repeats the infamous claim made recently at a World Economic Forum meeting by Melissa Fleming, Under Secretary-General for Global Communications at the United Nations: “We own the science, and we think that the world should know it.”
The Koutsoyiannis paper is long and detailed and he uses data obtained from the California-based Scripps Institute that has been measuring isotopic signatures since 1978, along with proxy data going back five centuries. The complex workings can be viewed in the full paper with the author concluding that instrumental carbon isotopic data of the last 40 years shows no discernible signs of human hydrocarbon CO2 emissions. He also found that the modern record did not differ in terms of net isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 sources and sinks from the proxy data, including Antarctica ice cores, going back 500 years.
The lack, or otherwise, of a discernible human-caused carbon isotope signature is an interesting branch of climate science to investigate, although, as we have seen, it is constrained by the political requirements governing the settled science narrative. In 2022, three physics professors led by Kenneth Skrable from the University of Massachusetts broke ranks and examined the atmospheric trail left by the isotopes. They discovered that the amount of CO2 released by hydrocarbon burning since 1750, “was much too low to be the cause of global warming”. The scientists found that claims of the dominance of anthropogenic fossil fuel in the isotope record had involved the “misuse” of statistics. They stated that the assumption that the increase in CO2 is dominated by or equal to the anthropogenic component is “not settled science”.
They warned that “unsupported conclusions” of human involvement “have severe potential societal implications that press the need for very costly remedial actions that may be misdirected, presently unnecessary and ineffective in curbing global warming”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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