With the new 120th Congress being seated in January, it's a safe bet we're going to be punished with a great deal of climate scoldery. Democrats love them some whipping up panic about the Earth suddenly bursting into flame, and they will push every "green" energy boondoggle imaginable, and they will be more than willing to spend our tax dollars on them.
But facts matter. The Left is the side that claims to freaking love science, but the problem is, they aren't very good at understanding the difference between science and ideology. Most of the claims of the climate scolds are based on ideology. The science, which relies on a dispassionate examination of facts, is often something else entirely.
This brings us to a published research paper on the contribution human-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) has to atmospheric CO2 as a whole, and as we might expect, once more, there's no reason to get excited. Here's the opening statement from that paper's abstract:
The IPCC, NASA, NOAA, and EPA state that essentially all of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 since the pre-industrial era originates from fossil-fuel combustion. This paper shows that claim is mathematically inconsistent with the isotopic record those same agencies rely on.
That's a striking conclusion, and one that runs directly counter to the prevailing scientific explanation for rising atmospheric CO2. Any discussion, any policy statement, any proposal, any conclusion, is only as good as the facts, if there are any; see any of the ravings of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for an example of fact-free raving. And in this case, as this paper presents, the facts just don't support the claims of the scolds.
The Daily Sceptic's Climate Editor, Chris Morrison, breaks down the data and conclusions for us.
Examining the different isotope signatures of CO2 derived from fossil fuels and other forms of the gas released naturally into the atmosphere, the authors calculated that hydrocarbons could account for between zero and 26% of the recent increase.
The scientists also introduce a second piece of evidence to back up their finding. Five hundred years of growth layers on a Caribbean marine sponge show the various CO2 isotope signatures remaining remarkably constant despite an enormous expansion in the use and burning of fossil fuels. From all this, the authors state that virtually all the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 comes from natural sources, rather than the accumulation of fossil fuel emissions. The paper’s central conclusion is that the contribution of fossil fuel use is effectively zero.
The isotope ratios are the thing. Isotopes are versions of periodic table elements with different atomic weights, which can be measured; for example, Uranium-238 is pretty stable, while Uranium-235 goes boom. The same sort of thing applies to carbon, as Mr. Morrison points out:
In simple terms, this is how they did the maths. Carbon comes in two main forms known as C-12 and C-13. The more abundant form C-12 is lighter and accounts for about 99% of the total. Naturally occurring carbon contains both isotopes, but the proportion of one to the other varies slightly depending on where the carbon came from. Scientists have agreed a standard known as VPDB against which carbon samples can be compared. Carbon from fossil fuels is relatively low in C-13 with a typical signature of minus-28. This means that the ratio of C-13 to C-12 is 2.8% lower than the standard. Naturally released CO2 from the ocean and other sources are richer in C-13 with a signature of minus-8, or 0.8% lower than VPDB.
That interpretation challenges the prevailing scientific view that human emissions account for the observed buildup of atmospheric CO2, even though natural sources contribute substantial amounts to the carbon cycling through the atmosphere.
And it is with those ratios that we can determine the percentage of atmospheric CO2 comes from human use of fossil fuels.
Now, between zero and 26 percent is still a pretty wide range. That's OK, too; science deals in facts and should, nay, must present conclusions honestly and completely, and sometimes that means that a study's results after analysis leave a pretty wide range. That's OK. That's how science works, and that's why science is tentative, subject to new data and new analysis.
But the claims of the climate scolds aren't based on science, and they aren't tentative, nor are they subject to change with new data and new analysis. This is ideology, not science, and ideology is fixed: Fossil fuels bad, habitat-wrecking solar panels and eagle-crunching windmills, good. And there's literally no reason for any of that panic-mongering, as study after study after study keeps pointing out with monotonous regularity.
The 120th Congress is seated January 3. We can expect a great deal of hand-wringing from them over the climate, over our use of fossil fuels, and over our selfishness in wanting to maintain our comfortable, technological lifestyle. They don't care about the data. They don't care about the scientific method. They don't care about carbon isotopes or what they tell us about the global climate and the origins of CO2 in the atmosphere. They don't care about the Earth's geological history, or the fact that throughout most of that history, it's been warmer than it is now. That's because their agenda isn't about science. It's not about geological history. It's not about reality. It's about control, and we had better be armed with the facts, the better to counter the outpourings of downright corral litter with which we are about to be inundated.
