Month: January 2022

Daily News 16 Jan 2022

How Much Manmade CO2 is in the Atmosphere, Really?

A new paper in HEALTH PHYSICS asks this question.

World Atmospheric CO₂, Its ¹⁴C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018)

Skrable, Kenneth; Chabot, George; French, Clayton¹

¹University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854.

Health Physics: February 2022 – Volume 122 – Issue 2 – p 291-305

doi: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485

Abstract

After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO₂ concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO₂ from burning fossil fuel.” Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO₂ emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper. Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the ¹⁴C specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750. The specific activity of ¹⁴C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO₂, which is devoid of ¹⁴C, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures. These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO₂ represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO₂ due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.

INTRODUCTION

At an elapsed time of t years since 1750 (the start of the industrial revolution with the onset of the use of fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants), atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, C(t), increased along with increases in temperatures. Atmospheric measurements of C(t) were not available until 1958 at the Mauna Loa, HI, observatory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has provided the longest record of atmospheric measurements of the total CO₂ initiated by Charles Keeling in 1958 at the Mauna Loa observatory (Keeling 1960). Based on our knowledge, the anthropogenic fossil component, C_F(t), and non-fossil component, C_NF(t), in C(t) have never been estimated by NOAA at its observatories or at any other observatory from atmospheric measurements of CO₂. Despite the lack of knowledge of the components of C(t), claims have been made in the scientific literature (^{CSIRO 2014}; ^{Rubino et al. 2013}, ²⁰¹⁹) that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component, C_F(t).

Other atmospheric measurements of C(t) began in 2003 at the NOAA observatory in Niwot Ridge, including measurements of the three isotopes of carbon: ¹²C, ¹³C, and ¹⁴C. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon having a half-life of 5,730 y. Carbon-14 atoms are produced in the atmosphere by interactions of cosmic rays, and they have reached an essentially constant steady state activity, i.e., disintegration rate, in the total world environment (^{Eisenbud and Gesell 1997}). The age of fossil fuels is much longer than the 5,730 y half-life of the ¹⁴C radioactive isotope; consequently, fossil fuels are devoid of the ¹⁴C isotope. When the anthropogenic fossil component of CO₂ is released to the atmosphere, the specific activity of ¹⁴C_,S(t) in C(t), decreases. The units of S(t) used in this paper are disintegrations per minute per gram of carbon abbreviated as dpm (gC)⁻¹, the common units used in ¹⁴C dating. The ratio R_S13 of the (¹³C/¹²C) atoms and the ratio R_S14 of the (¹⁴C/¹²C) atoms at the Niwot Ridge observatory are used to calculate two statistics designated respectively in this paper as d13C and D14C, both of which are said to decrease when the anthropogenic fossil component, C_F(t), increases in the atmosphere. As discussed later in Table 1, values of the annual mean specific activity, S(t), are calculated in this paper from annual mean values of the D14C statistic.

Both the d13C and D14C statistics represent 1,000 times the relative deviations of their respective (¹³C/¹²C) and (¹⁴C /¹²C) atom ratios from those of a 1950 standard (^{Karlen et al. 1964}) when expressed in per mil, given by the symbol ‰. This magnification increases their underlying relative deviations and slopes in plots by a factor 1,000. While such amplification techniques often are useful for displaying very small changes in quantities of interest, the interpretation of such magnified changes must be attended with some care. In the cases of concern here, the resultant steep slopes in plots likely have led persons throughout the world to conclude that the anthropogenic component has dominated the increase of CO₂ and caused global warming. We believe that both statistics have been misused to validate the anthropogenic fossil component, C_F(t), as the major cause of the increase of C(t).

Global carbon cycle and its effect on CO₂ quantities

The global carbon cycle for CO₂ is described by the Energy Information Administration (EIA 2020). Natural, two-way exchanges of CO₂ occur between the atmosphere and its two exchange reservoirs, the oceans and terrestrial biosphere. Two-way exchanges with the atmosphere also occur from changes in land use. The ocean is the largest reservoir of CO₂, and it contains 50 times that for the atmosphere and 19 times that for the terrestrial biosphere (^{Water Encyclopedia 2005}). All of the two way exchanges are considered in this paper to be comprised of both the non-fossil component and the anthropogenic fossil component. Annual changes, DC_NF(t) in C_NF(t), in the atmosphere relative to the 1750 initial value, C(0), can be positive or negative depending on the net flow of CO₂ between the atmosphere and its exchange reservoirs as well as on land use changes. A one-way pathway of anthropogenic fossil CO₂ into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and industrial fuel processes since 1750 is represented by annual emissions, DE(t), of anthropogenic fossil CO₂ to the atmosphere, which have been increasing each year since 1750. These emissions over time t result in increasing annual mean anthropogenic fossil concentrations, C_F(t), that result in specific activities, S(t), of ¹⁴C in C(t) that are increasingly lower than the initial value, S(0). This dilution of S(0) in C(0) in 1750 by the presence of C_F(t) in C(t) corresponds to what is described as the Suess effect (^{Suess et al. 1967}).

Read the full unrestricted paper here.

via Watts Up With That?

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January 16, 2022 at 08:28AM

Daily News 16 Jan 2022

What About Three Times?

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” Covid vaccine programs could end with third dose, Israeli doctor says

via Real Climate Science

https://ift.tt/3txpt9B

January 16, 2022 at 08:09AM

Daily News 16 Jan 2022

DARPA Bat Virus Proposal From 2018

On March 24. 2018, this proposal was sent to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) requesting $14 million to study “the Threat of Bat-borne coronaviruses.” DEFUSE proposal – DocumentCloud Here is a video from EcoHealth Alliance saying nobody knew about … Continue reading →

via Real Climate Science

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January 16, 2022 at 08:02AM

Daily News 16 Jan 2022

Why “Sustainability” Isn’t

Peter Woods explains what’s wrong with the cult of “Sustainability” and its continuing threat to scientific knowledge. His Spectator article is E.O. Wilson and the climate cult My run-in with the late sociobiologist. Excerpts with my bolds and added images.

E.O. Wilson, as it happens was one of the founding members of the organization over which I now preside, the National Association of Scholars. He served on its board of advisors starting in 1987 and gave a keynote speech in 1994 at one of NAS’s early national conferences. But I crossed paths with him only once, and it was not a happy occasion. I’ll tell it my own way.

In spring 2008, a faculty member at the University of Delaware alerted me that the university office of residence life has imposed a peculiar dorm-based form of ideological indoctrination on students. It involved all sorts of arm-twisting to get students to vocally support various racial claims, gay marriage and socialist goals. At first the university denied it was doing any such thing, but we had documents as well as witnesses, and the administration eventually climbed down. Those documents, however, looked even more peculiar when we started reading them more carefully. What jumped out was that the whole indoctrination program was presented as a “sustainability” initiative.

Thus began what became a seven-year project by NAS to track down exactly what this meant, culminating in 2015 study we titled Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism. What did and what does “sustainability” mean? The answers aren’t so simple, though one place to begin is with a 1987 United Nations report Our Common Future, better known as the Brundtland Commission report. It defined sustainability as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability if future generations to meet their own needs.” That sounds nice, but if you stop to think about it, how are we supposed to know what future generations will need? Could generations past have predicted the need for coal, oil, uranium or rare earths? Plainly we can predict some future needs. People will need breathable air and drinkable water, and we best not use these all up.

But the concept of sustainability, launched in that UN report, still has something fishy about it. Part of what is fishy is that its proponents were in a hurry to take a concept about “development” and the “environment” and move it quickly into seemingly unrelated areas. “Sustainability,” according to the mandarins at the University of Delaware in 2008, was only one-third about the environment. Another third was about “economic fairness” and the last third was about “social justice.”

In short, sustainability was a master concept that wrapped together a whole new Marxist utopian view of society.

By 2008, that included the idea that planet Earth was in the midst of manmade catastrophic global warming. But don’t lose track of the chronology. The sustainability movement was launched in 1987, a year before NASA scientist James Hansen lit the fire that became global warming hysteria. The two movements, however, quickly found one another and became the great quasi-religious pantheist dogma of our age.

I did my best for a decade to steer clear of “global warming” theory as a topic that would do the NAS no good. Clearly a lot of academics, including NAS members were enthusiastic votaries at that shrine. Apocalyptic thinking had secured a profoundly emotional hold on the modern mind. But the more I read, the more “climate deniers” I encountered and found to be level-headed folks, and the more preposterous became the pronouncements of the Carbon Doom Cult, the more difficult I found it to dodge the topic. A strange pseudo-science whose devotees insisted that they were upholding “true science” against a rabble of fossil fools were in ascendency.

And so I began to steer NAS into the dangerous waters of skepticism, not just towards “sustainability” but towards the whole idea that carbon dioxide, the gas that make up four one-hundredths of one percent of Earth’s atmosphere, was melting the glaciers, thawing the Arctic, whipping up hurricanes, drowning coastlines and turning croplands into deserts. Now we learn that the Arctic was being warmed by the Atlantic long before Exxon and Mobil started business; Greenland’s glaciers are growing; and increases in CO2 are so marginal as to mean nothing.

Not that I expect mere facts to arrest anyone’s enthusiasm for an exciting theory. We have too much invested in dismantling a modern energy-intensive economy to stop now. No matter that wind and solar are technological busts.

One of the early gurus of the ecology movement was Barry Commoner who way back in 1971 laid out his Four Laws of Ecology, including the first law, “Everything is connected to everything else.” It would be hard to find another platitude that has caused so much trouble. For sure, with an infinity of degrees, my shoelaces are somehow connected to the Great Wall of China, but it is not a connection that need detain us. Everything-is-connected is really a postulate of New Age religion and it is an invitation to descend into irrationality. Thus it follows that if we can’t prove a connection between the internal combustion engine and a tornado in Kentucky, we can just assume one. That’s what global warmists call “the precautionary principle.”

Sometime in the summer of 2015 I picked up the phone and called my NAS advisory board member E.O. Wilson to tell him where I was headed on this topic. He was appalled. In his view global warming was real, catastrophic and putting the whole web of life on our fragile planet at risk. After twenty-eight years on the NAS board, he abruptly resigned and so ended my call.

Of course, I knew he had often expressed his deep concern for the extinction of species and the loss of diversity in the plant and animal kingdoms, but I also knew him as someone who had a steely commitment to rigorous scientific inquiry and contempt for science that embroiled itself with political and ideological causes. It was arresting to see how he had settled down into an Al Gore conception of our blue speck in the vast universe.

Whether sociobiology is a signal contribution to human understanding of the living world and will prove sustainable to meet the intellectual needs of “future generations,” I have no clear idea. It is a model that works well with ants, and that’s something. To what degree are we like ants? I’d say not very much, but we do have an enormous capacity to fall in line, which is good myrmicine behavior.

If conformity is our central characteristic, then yes, we are ants. But I think we can do better.