Biosphere and Climate | Science Matters

Humans Add Little to Rising CO2 March 2024

Figure 16. Model reproduction of the monthly observations of evolution of δ13C at Barrow: (upper) without update of initial conditions and (lower) with update of initial conditions in each step by the δ13C observations.

While numerous studies support the title conclusion, the most recent and thorough analysis comes in the paper Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age by Demetris Koutsoyiannis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T notrickszone

Abstract

Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect. In the most recent study, this finding was supported by analysing the carbon cycle and showing that the natural [CO2] changes due to temperature rise are far larger (by a factor > 3) than human emissions, while the latter are no larger than 4% of the total. Here, we provide additional support for these findings by examining the signatures of the stable carbon isotopes, 12 and 13. Examining isotopic data in four important observation sites, we show that the standard metric δ13C is consistent with an input isotopic signature that is stable over the entire period of observations (>40 years), i.e., not affected by increases in human CO2 emissions. In addition, proxy data covering the period after 1500 AD also show stable behaviour.

These findings confirm the major role of the biosphere in the carbon cycle
and a non-discernible signature of humans.

Introduction

In recent years, a decrease in atmospheric δ¹³C has been observed, which is often termed the Suess Effect after Suess (1955) [11], who published the first observations on this phenomenon on trees, albeit using ¹⁴C data. He attributed the decrease to human activities, stating:

The decrease [in the specific ¹⁴C activity of wood at time of growth during the past 50 years] can be attributed to the introduction of a certain amount of C¹⁴-free CO₂ into the atmosphere by artificial coal and oil combustion and to the rate of isotopic exchange between atmospheric CO₂ and the bicarbonate dissolved in the oceans.

There is no question that δ¹³C has been decreasing and that human emissions have been increasing since the Industrial Revolution (Figure 2). Also, as seen in Figure 1, the combustion of fossil fuels can have an effect on reducing δ¹³C, as they are relatively depleted in ¹³C. This was the line of thought behind Suess [11] (even though the above quotation refers to ¹⁴C) and has become a common conviction thereafter.

Figure 2. (left) Compiled data set of annual mean, global mean values for δ13C in atmospheric CO2, from Graven et al. [12], reconstructed after digitisation of Figure 3 of Graven et al. [8]; and (right) evolution of global human carbon emissions [13,14], after conversion from CO2 to C (dividing by 3.67).

For example, Andres et al. [15,16] stated:

The carbon isotopic (δ13C, PDB) signature of fossil fuel emissions has decreased during the last century, reflecting the changing mix of fossil fuels produced.

Also, in their recent review paper, Graven et al. [8] noted:

Since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 has undergone dramatic changes as a result of human activities and the response of the natural carbon cycle to them. The relative amount of atmospheric 14C and 13C in CO2 has decreased because of the addition of 14C- and 13C-depleted fossil carbon.

These generally accepted hypotheses, however, may reflect a dogmatic approach, or a postmodern ideological effect, i.e., to blame everything on human actions. Hence, the null hypothesis that all observed changes are (mostly) natural has not seriously been investigated. However, there are good reasons for this investigation. It is a fact that the biosphere has become more productive and expanded [5,17,18,19], resulting in natural amplification of the carbon cycle due to increased temperature. This fact may have been a primary factor for the decrease in the isotopic signature δ13C in atmospheric CO2. Note that the emissions of the biosphere are much larger than fossil fuel emissions (where the latter are only 4% of the total) [5] and, as seen in Figure 1, the biosphere’s isotopic signature δ13C is much lower than the atmospheric (see also Section 6).

Figure 1. Typical ranges of isotopic signatures δ13C for each of the pools interacting with atmospheric CO2, and related exchange processes.

In addition to the biosphere’s action, other natural factors also affect the input isotopic signature in the atmospheric CO2. These include volcano eruptions, among which, in the recent period, the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 is regarded as the most important, as well as the interannual variability related to El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [8].

To investigate the null hypothesis and answer the two research questions posed above, we use modern instrumental and proxy data, as described in Section 2. We develop a theoretical framework in Section 3, which we apply to the data in a diagnostic mode in Section 4, and in a modelling mode in Section 5. The findings of these applications are further discussed in Section 6 and the conclusions are drawn in Section 7.

Discussion

With only two parameters, δ13CU and δ13CD, which represent the input isotopic signatures for the seasonal increasing and decreasing phases of [CO2], respectively, we are able to effectively model the isotopic signature δ13C of the atmosphere for the entire observation period. Of these parameters, δ13CD, reflecting the fractionation by photosynthesis, can be assumed as the same for the entire globe, while δ13CU varies, with smaller (more negative) values as we go north and higher (less negative) values as we go south. This spatial variation of δ13CU reflects the differences of the strength of seasonality in [CO2] and δ13C, which is at a maximum toward the North Pole and at a minimum at the South Pole.

The strong seasonality at high latitudes north is probably related to the processes in boreal vegetation, the dominance of snow and ice in winter, and the absence of photosynthesis during the 6-month night (note that Barrow, at a latitude of 71.3° N, is more north than the Artic Circle at 66.6° N). As we go south, some of these features cease to occur, and seasonality becomes less prominent, as photosynthesis occurs throughout the entire year, albeit with varying intensities. The minimal seasonality in the South Pole is probably related to the absence of vegetation due to the minimal appearance of land beyond a latitude of 43° S (with the exception of the frozen continent of Antarctica and a relatively small wedge of land in South America). All these suggest the dominance of terrestrial biosphere processes in driving [CO2] and δ13C.

Considering the fact that, as seen in Figure 2 (above), the human carbon emissions per year have doubled in the observed time period, if these were a key factor, this would somehow be reflected in a trend in the seasonality. Therefore, no sign is discerned that would necessitate an attribution to the influence of fossil fuel emissions. In contrast, continuity suggests that the key processes in CO2 emissions are related to biosphere processes such as respiration and photosynthesis.
.
Despite differences in seasonality, the over-annual input isotopic signature δ13CI remains almost the same globally, as seen in Table 4, which summarizes the results of all analyses, diagnostic and modelling, suggesting similar values, irrespective of the method used. This is not difficult to explain as, in the long run, CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere; thus regional differences in seasonal δ13CI tend to disappear.

In both the diagnostic and the modelling phases of this paper, the inclusion of human emissions proved unnecessary. This may contrast with common opinion, which blames all changes on humans, but is absolutely reasonable, as humans are responsible for only 4% of carbon emissions. In addition, the vast majority of changes in the atmosphere since 1750 are due to natural processes, respiration and photosynthesis, as articulated in the recent study by Koutsoyiannis et al. [5] and schematically depicted in Figure 22, reproduced from that study.

Figure 22. Annual carbon balance in the Earth’s atmosphere, in Gt C/year, based on the IPCC estimates (Figure 5.12 of [30]). The balance of 5.1 Gt C/year is the annual accumulation of carbon (in the form of CO2) in the atmosphere (reproduced from [5].).

The following observations can be noted in Figure 22: (a) the terrestrial biosphere processes are much stronger than the maritime ones in terms of both production and absorption of CO₂; (b) the CO₂ emissions by even the ocean biosphere are much larger than human emissions; and (c) the modern (post 1750) CO₂ additions to pre-industrial quantities (red bars in the right-hand part of the graph, corresponding to positive values) exceed the human emissions by a factor of ~4.5. These observations provide explanations for the findings of this study.

Furthermore, it is relevant to note the minor role of CO₂ in the greenhouse effect. As shown in a recent study by Koutsoyiannis and Vournas, despite the increase in [CO₂] by more than 30% in a century-long period, the strength of the greenhouse effect has not changed in a manner discernible in the radiation data. The greenhouse effect is dominated by the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere, rather than CO₂. That study is Revisiting the greenhouse effect – a hydrological perspective in Hydrological Sciences Journal, 2023.

Conclusions

The results of the analyses in this paper provide negative answers to the research questions posed in the Introduction. Specifically:

♦ From modern instrumental carbon isotopic data of the last 40 years, no signs of human (fossil fuel) CO2 emissions can be discerned;
♦ Proxy data since the Little Ice Age suggest that the modern period of instrumental data does not differ, in terms of the net isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 sources and sinks, from earlier centuries.

Combined with earlier studies, namely [2,3,4,5,31], these findings allow for the following line of thought to be formulated, which contrasts the dominant climate narrative, on the basis that different lines of thought are beneficial for the progress of science, even though they are not welcomed by those with political agendas promoting the narratives (whose representatives declare that they “own the science”, as can be seen in the motto in the beginning of the paper).

1. In the 16th century, Earth entered a cool climatic period, known as the Little Ice Age, which ended at the beginning of the 19th century;
2. Immediately after, a warming period began, which has lasted until now. The causes of the warming must be analogous to those that resulted in the Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD, the Roman Climate Optimum around the first centuries BC and AD, the Minoan Climate Optimum at around 1500 BC, and other warming periods throughout the Holocene
3. As a result of the recent warming, and as explained in [5], the biosphere has expanded and become more productive, leading to increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and greening of the Earth [17,18,19,32];
4. As a result of the increased CO2 concentration, the isotopic signature δ13C in the atmosphere has decreased;
5. The greenhouse effect on the Earth remained stable in the last century, as it is dominated by the water vapour in the atmosphere [31];
6. Human CO2 emissions have played a minor role in the recent climatic evolution, which is hardly discernible in observational data and unnecessary to invoke in modelling the observed behaviours, including the change in the isotopic signature δ13C in the atmosphere.

Overall, the findings in this paper confirm the major role of the biosphere
in the carbon cycle (and through this in climate)
and a non-discernible signature of humans.

One may associate the findings of the paper with several questions related to international policies:

♦ Do these results refute the hypothesis that CO2 emissions contribute to global warming through the greenhouse effect?

♦ Do these findings, by suggesting a minimal human impact on the isotopic composition of atmospheric carbon, contradict the need to reduce CO2 emissions?

♦ Are human carbon emissions independent from other forms of pollution, such as emissions of fine particles and nitrogen oxides, which can have harmful effects on human health and the environment?

These questions are not posed at all in the paper and certainly are not studied in it. Therefore, they cannot be answered on a scientific basis within the paper’s confined scope but require further research. The reader may feel free to study such questions and provide sensible replies. It is relevant to note that a reviewer implied these questions and suggested negative replies to each of them.

Climate Weaponized for War on Meat

Posted on January 10 by Ron Clutz

Robert Malone writes at Brownstone Institute ‘Science’ in Service of the Agenda. Excerpts in itallics with my bolds. H/T Tyler Durden

We all know what climate change is. The truth is that the UN, most globalists, and a wide range of world leaders” blame human activities for climate change. Whether or not climate change is real or that human activities are enhancing climate change is not important to this discussion. That is a subject for another day. [That subject is pursued here GHG Theory and the Tests It Fails.]

Most climate change scientists receive funding from the government. So they must comply with the government edict and policy position that human activity-caused climate change is an existential threat to both humankind and global ecosystems. When these “scientists” publish studies supporting the thesis that human activities cause climate change, they are more likely to receive more grant monies and therefore more publications and therefore are more likely to be academically promoted (or at least to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of modern academe).

Those who produce a counternarrative from the government-approved one soon find themselves without funding, tenure, without jobs, unable to publish and unable to procure additional grants and contracts. It is a dead-end career wise. The system has been rigged.

And by the way, this is nothing new. Back in the day, during the war on drugs, if a researcher who had funding by the NIH’s NIDA (National Institute of Drug Addiction) published an article or wrote an annual NIH grant report showing benefits to using recreational drugs, that would be a career-ending move, as funding would not be renewed and new funding would never materialize. . . The administrative state at NIH does that! And anything that went against the war on drugs was considered a war on the government. Funding denied.

The new wrinkle in what has now happened with corrupted climate change activism/ propaganda/ ”science” is that the manipulation of research is crossing disciplines. No longer satisfied with oppressing climate change scientists, climate change narrative enforcers have moved into the nutritional sciences. This trend of crossing disciplines portends death for the overall independence of any scientific endeavors. A creeping corruption into adjacent disciplines. Because climate change activists, world leaders, research institutions, universities, and governments are distorting another branch of science outside of climate science. They are using the bio-sciences, specifically nutrition science, to support the climate change agenda. It is another whole-of-government response to the crisis, just like with Covid-19.

They are distorting health research to make the case that eating meat is
dangerous to humans. Normal standards for publication have been set aside.
The propaganda is thick and easily spotted.

As the NIH is now funding researchers to find associations between climate change and health, it is pretty clear that those whose research is set up to find such associations will be funded. Hence, once again, the system is rigged to support the climate change narrative.

Some Recent “Peer Reviewed” Academic Publications on Climate Change and Diet:

Enter climate change regulations, laws, and goals – such as those found in UN Agenda 2030. Enter globalists determined to buy up farmland to control prices, agriculture, and eating trends. Enter politics into our food supplies and even the science of nutrition What a mess.

Below are some of the more outlandish claims being made in the name of climate science and nutrition. The United Nations’s World Food Program writes:

The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger. Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action.

Note that “Climate shocks” have always existed and will always exist. The existence of readily observed (and easily propagandized) human tragedies associated with hurricanes, fires, and droughts are embedded throughout the entire archaeological record of human existence. This is nothing new in either written human history or prehistory. This does not equate to a pressing existential human crisis.

In fact, reviewing the evidence of calories and protein available reveals a very different trend. Over time, per capita caloric and protein supplies have increased almost across the board. Despite clear and compelling evidence that climate change is not impacting on food availability or undernutrition, websites, news stories, and research literature all make tenuous assertions about how the climate change “crisis” is causing starvation.

This is not to say that that the poorest nations in the world don’t have issues with famine; they do. It is an issue, but not a climate change issue. It is a gross distortion of available data and any objective scientific analysis of those data to assert otherwise.

The best way to stop famine is to ensure that countries have adequate energy
and resources to grow their own food supply, and have a domestic
manufacturing base. That means independent energy sources.

If the United Nations and the wealthy globalists at the WEF truly want to help nations with high poverty and famine rates and reduce our immigration pressure, they would help them secure stable energy sources. They would help them develop their natural gas and other hydrocarbon projects. Then they could truly feed themselves. They could attain independence.

Famine is not a climate change issue; it is an energy issue.

Apples and oranges. This is not “scientific.” Rather, it is yet more weaponized fear porn being used as a Trojan horse to advance hidden political and economic objectives and agendas of political movements, large corporations, and non-governmental organizations. Facts matter.

Antidote for CO2 Hysteria

Posted on August 15 by Ron Clutz

Preeminent physicist Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) put the CO2 obsession in sharp focus in his foreward to CARBON DIOXIDE The good news by Indur M. Goklany (2015). Excerpts in italics. with my bolds.

To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. . .That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?

Synopsis: More CO2 Good, Less CO2 Bad

Gregory Wrightstone explains at CO2 Coalition More Carbon Dioxide Is Good, Less Is Bad. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

People should be celebrating, not demonizing, modern increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). We cannot overstate the importance of the gas. Without it, life doesn’t exist.

First, a bit of history: During each of the last four glacial advances, CO2’s concentration fell below 190 parts per million (ppm), less than 50 percent of our current concentration of 420 ppm. When glaciers began receding about 14,000 years ago – a blink in geological time – CO2 levels fell to 182 ppm, a concentration thought to be the lowest in Earth’s history.

Line of Death

Why is this alarming? Because below 150 ppm, most terrestrial plant life dies. Without plants, there are no animals.

In other words, the Earth came within 30 ppm in CO2’s atmospheric concentration of witnessing the extinction of most land-based plants and all higher terrestrial life-forms – nearly a true climate apocalypse. Before industrialization began adding CO2 to the atmosphere, there was no telling whether the critical 150-ppm threshold wouldn’t be reached during the next glacial period.

Contrary to the mantra that today’s CO2 concentration is unprecedentedly high, our current geologic period, the Quaternary, has seen the lowest average levels of carbon dioxide since the end of the Pre-Cambrian Period more than 600 million years ago. The average CO2 concentration throughout Earth’s history was more than 2,600 ppm, nearly seven times current levels.

Beneficial CO2 Increases

CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1750 to 420 ppm today, most of it after World War II as industrial activity accelerated. The higher concentration has been beneficial because of the gas’s role as a plant food in increasing photosynthesis.

Its benefits include:

— Faster plant growth with less water and larger crop yields.

— Expansion of forests and grasslands.

— Less erosion of topsoil because of more plant growth.

— Increases in plants’ natural insect repellents.

A summary of 270 laboratory studies covering 83 food crops showed that increasing CO2 concentrations by 300 ppm boosts plant growth by an average of 46 percent. Conversely, many studies show adverse effects of low-CO2 environments.

For instance, one indicated that, compared to today, plant growth was eight percent less in the period before the Industrial Revolution, with a low concentration of 280 ppm CO2.

Therefore, attempts to reduce CO2 concentrations are bad for plants, animals and humankind.

Data reported in a recent paper by Dr. Indur Goklany, and published by the CO2 Coalition, indicates that up to 50 percent of Earth’s vegetated areas became greener between 1982-2011.

Researchers attribute 70 percent of the greening to CO2 fertilization from of fossil fuel emissions. (Another nine percent is attributed to fertilizers derived from fossil fuels.)

Dr. Goklany also reported that the beneficial fertilization effect of CO2 – along with the use of hydrocarbon-dependent machinery, pesticides and fertilizers – have saved at least 20 percent of land area from being converted to agricultural purposes – an area 25 percent larger than North America.

The amazing increase in agricultural productivity, partly the result of more CO2, has allowed the planet to feed eight billion people, compared to the fewer than 800,000 inhabitants living a short 300 years ago.

More CO2 in the air means more moisture in the soil. The major cause of water loss in plants is attributable to transpiration, in which the stomata, or pores, on the undersides of the leaves open to absorb CO2 and expel oxygen and water vapor.

With more CO2, the stomata are open for shorter periods, the leaves lose less water, and more moisture remains in the soil. The associated increase in soil moisture has been linked to global decreases in wildfires, droughts and heat waves.

Exaggeration of CO2’s Warming Effect

Alarm over global warming stems from exaggerations of CO2’s potential to retain heat that otherwise would radiate to outer space. As with water vapor, methane and nitrous oxide, CO2 retains heat in the atmosphere by how it reacts to infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

However, the gas has saturated to a large extent within the infrared range, leaving relatively little potential for increased warming.

Both sides of the climate debate agree that the warming effect of each molecule of CO2 decreases significantly (logarithmically) as the concentration increases.

This is one reason why there was no runaway greenhouse warming when CO2 concentrations approached 20 times that of today. This inconvenient fact, despite its importance, is rarely mentioned because it undermines the theory of a future climate catastrophe.

A doubling of CO2 from today’s level of 420 ppm – an increase estimated to take 200 years to attain – would have an inconsequential effect on global temperature.

Pennsylvania’s solar-powered fossil fuels

CO2 being liberated today from Pennsylvania coal was removed from the atmosphere by the photosynthesis of trees that fed on sunlight and carbon dioxide and then died to have their remains accumulate in the vast coal swamps of the Carboniferous Period.

Pennsylvania Marcellus and Utica shale hydrocarbons being exploited today were also the likely hydrocarbon source of shallower reservoirs producing since the late 1800s.

The source of those hydrocarbons was algae remains that gathered on the bottom of the Ordovician and Devonian seas.

Like the coal deposits, the algae used solar-powered photosynthesis and CO2 (the algal blooms were likely fueled by regular dust storms) to remove vast amounts of CO2 from the air and lock it up as carbon-rich organic matter.

The provenance of these hydrocarbons spawns two novel ideas. First, there is a strong case that these are solar-powered fuels.

Second, the sequestering of carbon during the creation of the hydrocarbons lowered atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to sub-optimum levels for plants. Therefore, the combustion of today’s coal and gas is liberating valuable CO2 molecules that are turbocharging plant growth.

The plain fact of the matter is that the modest warming of less than one degree Celsius since 1900, combined with increasing CO2, is allowing ecosystems to thrive and humanity to prosper.

Additional information on CO2’s benefits and related topics are available at CO2Coalition.org, which includes a number of publications and resources of interest.

Carbon Capture Boondoggle

Posted on June 28 by Ron Clutz

John M. Contino explains in his American Thinker article The Contradictions of Carbon Capture. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In May, 2022, the Biden Administration announced a $3.5 billion program to capture carbon pollution from the air, and the money has been flowing copiously. A quick search on LinkedIn for companies engaged in Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) projects will reveal dozens of companies, most of which are U.S.-based. They are well-staffed and generously funded with millions of up-front taxpayer dollars. [Note the bogus reference to plant food CO2 as carbon pollution.]

Summit Carbon Solutions does have its share of proponents — among them ethanol producers, heads of Chambers of Commerce, and politicians of all stripes from state and local governments. It’s one thing to dangle large sums of other people’s money to induce cooperation, but landowners are apparently being bludgeoned into submission with eminent domain.

The CCUS projects in the Midwestern faming states are all predicated on the continued, if not expanded, production of ethanol, because ethanol facilities present localized concentrations of CO2 that can be harnessed and disposed of more efficiently than merely sucking carbon dioxide out of the ambient atmosphere.

A Reuters article from March, 2022 reports that

The government estimates that ethanol is between 20% and 40% less carbon intensive than gasoline. But a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline, largely due to the emissions generated from growing huge quantities of corn [emphasis added].

The production of ethanol results in a net loss of energy: “Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol…[which] has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU.”

And let us not give short shrift to Power Density. In his 2010 book Power Hungry. The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, energy expert Robert Bryce compares the amount of the energy produced by various sources in terms of horsepower per acre, or wattage per square meter. An average U.S. Natural Gas Well, for example, produces 287.5 hp/acre. An Oil Stripper Well (producing 10 bbls/day) produces 148.5 hp/acre. Corn Ethanol comes in at a pathetic 0.25 hp/acre (pg. 86).

An Occam’s Razor approach to solving this problem would be
to shut down all the country’s ethanol production and
to not generate all that carbon dioxide in the first place.

Granted, the ethanol industry enjoys wide bipartisan support. But that doesn’t make it rational, or good for the country. Farmers receive substantial revenues by diverting an average of 40% of total corn yields to the production of ethanol. Why not just give that money to the farmers in exchange for them allowing 40% of their corn acreage to lie fallow? We might ask, facetiously, if we really needed all that extra corn to eat or export, why would our government prefer we burn it in our gas tanks?

Think of the savings:

♦ CO2 that would not be generated by growing and harvesting all that corn;
♦ water that would not be drained from our aquifers for irrigation;
♦ salination of our topsoil that would be abated by not applying unnecessary nitrogen fertilizers; and
♦ most obviously, the absence of the need to capture and bury carbon from ethanol plants.

An advantage of ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy reports that a 2021 Argonne Labs study “found that U.S. corn ethanol has 44%–52% lower GHG emissions than gasoline.” Let’s say ethanol reduces GHG by 50%. So, a tankful of gasoline with 10% ethanol yields a net GHG reduction of only 5% (50% of 10%).

Another advantage of ethanol is jobs in rural areas. The National Corn Growers Association reported that “[I]n 2019, the U.S. ethanol industry helped support nearly 349,000 direct and indirect jobs.”

Even if those advantages were sufficient to maintain or expand the ethanol industry, it sounds almost farcical to ask:

♦ “what is the cost-benefit analysis of spending billions of dollars to capture and sequester the CO2 from those corn fermentation processes, and

♦ to what extent would all that CCUS actually benefit the planet?”

When a John Kerry or a Greta Thunberg utters Climate Change Disaster words to the effect of “the sky is falling, we’re all going to die!” they would have us believe that it’s trivial to worry about boring quantitative cost-benefit ratios and returns on investment when the entire planet is facing an imminent, existential threat.

The hyperbolic language of the climate change crowd has been wearing thin ever since Al Gore’s dire predictions from 2006 have inconveniently not materialized. It’s up to us to make the left realize they’ve overplayed their hand: they cannot ride roughshod over property rights whenever it suits them, just as they cannot force us to drink Bud Light if we don’t wish to do so.

Canada Wildfires: Manage Forests or Lose Them

Posted on June 16 by Ron Clutz

Smoke from the West Kiskatinaw River and Peavine Creek wildfires in the Dawson Creek Zone. PHOTO BY – /BC Wildfire Service/AFP via Getty

Jesse Zeman explains the overdue choice in his Vancouver Sun article A long, destructive summer is coming to B.C. forests. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Until we overhaul forest management, wildfires and smoky skies will become the norm.

B.C. is poised to suffer an historically ruinous fire season, and we have only ourselves to blame.

Warm, dry weather early in the season is part of the problem, to be sure. Climate change is likely making things worse. But B.C.’s history of fire suppression and outdated forest management has turned our forests into a tinderbox that grows more dangerous every year.

At this moment, 23 wildfires are burning out of control in B.C., with dozens more in various stages of being extinguished. Campfire prohibitions are either in effect or planned across the province.

All this nearly a month before Canada Day weekend. It could be a long, hot, destructive summer. Decades of fire suppression have resulted in huge amounts of fuel littering the forest floor, crowding out biodiversity and putting people at risk.

By putting out every fire on the landscape, we are creating forests
that are bristling with fuel just waiting for a spark.

Fire naturally occurs every five to 200 years in much of B.C. In the central Interior, many areas historically burn every five to 30 years. Under the right circumstances, fire is good. Fire is part of a natural process that rejuvenates grasslands and promotes biodiversity.

In much of the Interior, fire is an integral component of functioning and productive habitat for grizzly bears, moose, elk, mule deer, and sheep, creating food for wildlife by regenerating the soil and letting in sunlight, which creates ideal conditions for new plants and berries to grow.

Broadleaf trees are nature’s fuel break, slowing and reducing the intensity of fires; they also support biodiversity and provide moose with food. Unfortunately, B.C.’s outdated forest policies treat broadleaf trees like weeds in order to promote the growth of merchantable timber.

In parts of B.C., we spray broadleaf trees with the herbicide
glyphosate to kill them off on a massive scale.

What we do after a fire is vital. A post-fire landscape left untouched creates a natural fire break. As new plants and trees grow in, the burned trees that we leave standing are critical for moisture retention and temperature regulation in the soil. In as little as a year, burned areas sound like a symphony, teeming with life from bugs to birds to bears. But our forest practices typically prevent natural succession. Instead, we often log areas burned by fire as quickly as possible, because burned trees are harder to cut at the mill after a couple of years.

Logging after wildfire often leaves behind a barren landscape, with stunted native plants due to a lack of temperature regulation and moisture retention in the soil. Roads for logging invite invasive weeds. The lack of vegetation can also exacerbate erosion, flooding and sedimentation in our watersheds.

B.C. has been so focused on cutting down and selling trees, it has failed to account for the costs of fire suppression, loss of biodiversity, food security, and tourism. Forestry could play a critical role in mitigating the effects of wildfire by reducing fuel loads and thinning forests.

But that will require a new way of thinking. Until we overhaul forest management, wildfires and smoky skies will become the norm. We need to forge a new relationship with our forests, watersheds and wildlife, focusing on sustainability and resiliency.

We have important choices to make: Keep putting fires out and treating native tree species, such as aspen, like weeds until the fuel loading is so bad that the ensuing wildfires are virtually uncontrollable. Or we can invest in our landscapes, have controlled burns in the spring and fall, and let some fires burn to create a natural diverse landscape that mitigates high-intensity wildfires.

National Perspective from National Post Blame Forestry Management, Not CO2 Emissions

Alternative theories as to the source of the 2023 fires have largely cropped up in response to progressive politicians fingering them as irrefutable evidence of the impacts of climate change — and a clarion call for stronger emissions policies.

“We’re seeing more and more of these fires because of climate change … We’ll keep working — here at home and with partners around the world — to tackle climate change and address its impacts,” reads one recent statement by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault rather explicitly used the wildfires as justification for higher carbon taxes, arguing that they’re still far lower than the “social cost of carbon.”

But there is a way to critique this line of reasoning without relying on tenuous evidence of a vast enviro-conspiracy to light Canada on fire for political gain.

Even wildfire specialists have been noting that while hotter, drier summers can supercharge a bad fire season, the immense scale of the 2023 fires is due in part to Canada and the United States dropping the ball on proper forestry management.

A recent Washington Post op-ed by Colorado wildfire scientist Jennifer K. Balch, for instance, suggested that the best way for governments to fight wildfires is a tighter focus on controlled burning in cooler years, and building residential developments away from high-risk areas.

“We have flood plain maps, but we don’t have maps that assess future fire risk to help set insurance costs and direct developers away from vulnerable areas,” she wrote.

The B.C. Wildlife Federation has similarly critiqued the notion that emissions reduction is the most immediate solution to increasingly damaging wildfire seasons. In a lengthy statement, (above) executive director Jesse Zeman outlined how B.C. forestry policy discourages the growth of broad-leafed trees and immediately logs post-fire landscapes; both of which eliminate what would otherwise be natural fire breaks.

“Until we overhaul forest management, wildfires and smoky skies will become the norm,” he wrote.

Climatists Against Growing Rice, Because . . .Methane

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Ron Clutz

Beautiful rice terraces in the morning light near Tegallalang village, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.

M Dowling reports at Independent Sentinel They’re Coming for Your Rice, But We Always Have Bugs. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Rice feeds half the world

The top rice producers are in Asia The world’s top rice producer is China, at 214 million metric tons. India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam are next. In Africa, Nigeria (6.8 million) is the largest producer. Brazil (11.8 million) and the United States (10.2 million) are also top producers, according to 2018 data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

But Now This Warning

VIDEO: Rice is to blame for around 10 percent of global emissions of methane, a gas that over two decades, traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Scientists say that if the world wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rice cannot be ignored. pic.twitter.com/46GgkaGPgK

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) April 16, 2023

The new “crisis” came at us in 2019 from Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum: This is how rice is hurting the planet Global rice production is releasing damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, doing as much harm as 1,200 average-sized coal power stations, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates around 770 million tonnes of rice were produced in 2018, with China and India responsible for approximately half of that amount.

Flooding isn’t strictly necessary for rice to grow – it’s an efficient way of preventing the spread of invasive weeds. It’s so fundamental to how many rice farmers operate that it’s not easy to imagine it being grown any other way…

Microbes that feed off decaying plant matter in these fields produce the greenhouse gas methane. And because rice is grown so prolifically, the amount being created is not to be sniffed at – around 12% of global annual emissions.

This crisis is as bogus as the rest of the asbsurdities Schwab conjures up.

Dr. William Happer at C-Fact explains the issue with methane gas.

“Methane, the molecule CH4, is the main constituent of natural gas. Animals like cattle and sheep belch methane as they chew their cud. They are able to get more energy from forage by digesting some of the cellulose with the aid of methane-generating microorganisms in their stomachs. Termites use the same trick to digest wood. Microorganisms in soils, notably rice paddies, also emit large amounts of methane.”

“Few realize that large increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases cause very small changes in the heat balance of the atmosphere. Doubling the concentration of methane – a 100% increase, which would take about 200 years at the current growth rates – would reduce the heat flow to space by only 0.3%, leading to an average global temperature change of only 0.2 °C. This is less than one-quarter of the change in temperature observed over the past 150 years.

“Most of the predicted catastrophic warming from greenhouse gas emissions is due to positive feedbacks that are highly speculative, at best. In accordance with Le Chatelier’s principle, most feedbacks of natural systems are negative, not positive.

It wouldn’t do much!

“So, even if regulations on U.S. methane emissions could completely stop the increase of atmospheric methane (they can’t), they would likely only lower the average global temperature in the year 2222 by about 0.2 °C, a completely trivial amount given that humans have adapted to a much larger change over the past century while reducing climate deaths by over 98%. And U.S. regulations will have little influence on global emissions, where producers are unlikely to be as easily cowed.

“Given that consumption of fossil fuels is likely to increase over the next few decades as developing countries pull themselves out of poverty, restrictions on U.S. oil and gas production will simply shift production to autocratic nations such as Russia, which have much higher methane-emissions rates than U.S. producers do.“

“In fact, there is no climate emergency and there will not be one,
with or without new regulations on methane emissions.”

“However, you can bet that if the Biden administration is successful in promulgating regulations on oil and gas producers, it will expand these efforts into ranching and agriculture, which emit about the same amount of methane as energy production. No sector of the economy will remain untouched by the EPA’s long arm of climate regulations.“

Give Daisy and the Rice Farmers a Break!

Background Post Climatists Aim Forks at Our Food Supply

The attack on world food supply has four prongs to it, just like the forks in the image.

1. Exaggerate the Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

2. Oppose Methane from Livestock as a Fossil Fuel, like Coal and Oil.

3. Freak Out over N2O as an Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

4. Meat Shame People’s Diets Because Vegans Love Animals

Waste Not, Want Not, Still True About Food

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Ron Clutz

Jack Hubbard reports at Real Clear Markets Eat What You Want While Questioning ‘Food Sustainability’ Claims. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Earth Day started 50 years ago, and if you judge the event by society’s environmental conscientiousness, it’s been a success. Today, people are increasingly considering the environmental impact of products they buy. That’s true not just of cars and clothing, but also what we eat.

A survey last year found that 37% of consumers look for sustainability claims on food. Food marketers have taken note, increasing the number of food products with eco claims.

But buyers should beware: Not all food sustainability claims are true.

Where is the Beef?

Perhaps the single most common claim you’ll hear today about food is that meat is bad for the environment. Ads for plant-based fake meat commonly assert this. These claims are parroted by animal rights activists who–naturally–don’t like people eating meat. You can even find a few documentaries that try to paint meat as eco-unfriendly.

But is eating meat actually bad for the environment? No.

A frequently cited statistic is that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from animal agriculture. But what you may not know is that this figure doesn’t apply to the US, where we have the most advanced modern agricultural technology in the world.

American agriculture has become economically and environmentally more efficient over time. For instance, we need 60% fewer cows yet produce twice as much milk as we did in the 1930s.

The EPA tracks greenhouse gas emissions and reports them by sector. According to the EPA, all of our agriculture only accounts for about 9% of total US greenhouse gas emissions, while animal agriculture accounts for only about 4%. That’s why researchers estimate that if the entire U.S. population went vegan tomorrow, it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 3%. That also means, as an individual, giving up meat will have zero impact on curbing climate change.

Fake Meat Doesn’t Lower Emissions

It turns out that producing plant-based fake meats actually produces the same amount of emissions as producing chicken. And cell-cultured meat–that is, grown from cells in a lab setting–has five times the emissions of regular chicken.

Why? Because while making fake meat may use less land than raising chickens, it uses much more electricity to power all those factories that make fake meat.

“Organic” Feels Good

“Organic” is another term that many consumers look for, thinking organic food is better for the environment and their health. Once again, reality is different from perception.

A recent study of organic vs. modern agriculture on different factors such as land use, climate, over-fertilization, and energy use. Modern farming was superior on land use while organic farming was better on chemicals. Overall, the two compared equally on most factors.

(Most consumers also believe that organic food is more nutritious. But once again, scientific research has found there’s no real difference.)

Food Waste Is Important

The biggest environmental impact associated with food isn’t about the food we eat. It is actually about food we don’t eat.

The USDA estimates that up to one-third of food produced in the country is thrown away. Whether that’s meat or fake meat, or organic produce or non-organic produce, that food took resources to grow and fuel to transport. And all of those resources go to waste when you don’t finish your meal or throw out the leftovers.

What’s the lesson?

Eat what you want and ignore the marketing claims. In the big picture,
anyone’s diet has a small footprint. But whatever you choose to eat,
make sure you don’t let it go to waste.

Biodiversity Unwisely Aims to be Eden

Posted on December 25, 2022 by Ron Clutz

More realistic is to take on Noah’s responsibility selecting species to survive on the ark.

Ronald Bailey’s article at Reason is The Myth of Wild Nature and Creating a New Form of Paradise. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A review of the new book Tickets For The Ark, by Rebecca Nesbit

Earlier this month, a “landmark U.N. biodiversity agreement” was adopted by delegates from 190 countries at the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP15) of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. The chief goal of the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is that “the integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050.” The GBF asserts that around 25 percent of assessed plant and animal species are threatened, suggesting that around 1 million species may already face eventual extinction unless action is taken.

The GBF specifies that by 2030, 30 percent of Earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas, and inland waters are “effectively conserved” and that restoration be completed or underway on at least 30 percent of degraded terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine ecosystems. Currently, 17 percent and 10 percent of the world’s terrestrial and marine areas respectively are under protection. In addition, the GBF aims to reduce annual subsidies harmful to biodiversity (e.g., biofuels, fisheries, fossil fuels) by $500 billion; and to cut food waste in half by 2030.

Ecologist Rebecca Nesbit in her new book, Tickets For The Ark: From Wasps to Whales – How Do We Choose What To Save?, launches a sustained frontal attack on the “myth of wild nature.”

Nesbit hammers home the absolutely correct point that there is no objective scientific standard providing some kind of value-neutral ecological baseline toward which conservation should aim. Since there is no goal or end state toward which any particular ecosystem is heading, who is to say that landscapes and ecosystems modified by human activities are somehow inferior?

“Ideas about pristine nature invoke a state that nature was in before humans affected it,” Nesbit notes. “The trouble is that humans have played a role in shaping nature for roughly 2.5 million years.” She explains that species and ecosystems do not have intrinsic value. Instead, humans confer value on them. This realization “should be liberating,” she argues, because it makes us “free to discuss logically what we should save and why, and not just fight an anti-extinction battle that is doomed to failure.” Nesbit notes that “The resources we dedicate to conservation will never be enough to prevent all extinctions, and we are forced to choose our priorities.” As she makes plain, it’s tradeoffs all of the way down.

Consequently, her goal isn’t to tell readers how we should choose what to save. Instead, she provides a series of case studies showing that human choices guided by our ethical and aesthetic values are inevitable regarding biological conservation.

Let’s take a look at a few of the conservation tradeoffs that Nesbit highlights. For example, due to centuries of sheep grazing, the prehistoric birch forests that once covered Norway’s craggy mountains have been replaced by meadows. Many Norwegians prefer the hiking and skiing opportunities and magnificent views made possible by sheep meadows to dense birch forests. “This recent baseline for what the natural world should look like has no more moral relevance than a prehistoric baseline, yet it is the form of nature that Norway now aspires to protect,” she notes.

Another example is the effort to preserve the flightless brown and white striped Guam rail. That bird was driven to near extinction by introducing brown tree snakes to the island, which ate its chicks and eggs. In 1987, the 22 remaining rails were put in a captive breeding facility. The good news is that rails from the captive breeding project have now been released on snake-free islands near Guam where they have established self-sustaining populations.

Nesbit, however, asked the biologists overseeing rail conservation what happened to the Guam rail louse that lived only on that species. As standard practice, the conservationists had cleared the captured birds of their parasites, thus bringing about the extinction of that parasitic insect. Is the rail more valuable than the louse? And who says so? Conservationists cannot avoid such questions as they choose among species to try to save some from extinction.

Conflicts of values are inherent in conservation.

“The people who benefit from wildlife protection are seldom the ones who pay the price,” Nesbit observes. “Different people and wildlife benefit from different management, so inevitably there will be opposing outlooks. But it’s an advance if, at least, we recognize that there is no historic baseline to aspire towards.” She illustrates how opposing outlooks played out in with the case of seals versus salmon in Scotland’s Moray Firth.

Seals compete with local fishers for the salmon, so fishers were licensed by the Scottish government to kill seals. On the other hand, tour operators argued for protecting the seals that thousands of visitors came to see in the wild. While no one side was entirely happy, a series of stakeholder discussions led to an agreement in which fishers could cull “rogue” seals.

“Dispensing with the idea that there is an objective ‘natural’ state of nature opens up huge possibilities for what conservation can achieve,” she argues.

Among the possibilities is using biotechnology to install a blight-resistant wheat gene in American chestnuts. Literally, billions of these forest giants succumbed to an introduced fungus in the 20th century. The new blight-resistant trees could be restored to their native range in the Appalachian Mountains. Even more ambitiously, biotechnology could combine the recently decoded genetics of extinct wooly mammoths with those of Asian elephants to restore them to the Arctic.

Also, Nesbit urges us to free “ourselves from the shackle of believing that species ‘belong’ only in their past ranges” so that we can “open up possibilities for assisted colonizations.” Conservationists could move creatures threatened with extinction in their home ranges to others where they would be protected and allowed to thrive. For example, Nesbit notes that Chinese water deer are declining in their native Asian range but are expanding in various parts of Europe.

Nesbit also stands firmly against eco-colonialism.

The GBF’s goal of protecting 30 percent of the world’s landscapes and seascapes must not become instances of what Nesbit calls “fortress conservation,” in which local people are banished from their lands and livelihoods. “With Indigenous lands representing about a quarter of the Earth’s land surface, there is huge potential for synergy between wildlife conservation and upholding Indigenous rights,” argues Nesbit. She cites a recent World Bank study that found community-managed forests are more effective at reducing deforestation than strictly protected areas. Hopefully, the signatories to the GBF will uphold its commitments toward “recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.”

Nesbit concludes, “Now that we have shaken off the idea of an unobtainable ‘pure’ nature, we can embrace the possibilities that come from celebrating nature in its many forms. We’re not doomed to simply mourn a paradise lost, we’re free to create a new form of paradise.” Let’s get at it.

Source: Phanerozoic_Biodiversity.png Author: SVG version by Albert Mestre

Footnote: A Sample of Math Humor

After Noah sent out the dove that returned, and landed the ark, he released the animals two by two and told them: “Go forth and multiply.” Noah checked on the progress of the various species, and discovered that two snakes had not reproduced. When confronted, the snakes responded: “We can’t multiply. We’re adders.”

Noah pondered the dilemma, then went to cut trees in the forest. After building a table with the wood, he again addressed the snakes. ” You no longer have an excuse. Even adders can multiply on a log table.”

LOL

Climatists Aim Forks at Our Food Supply

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Ron Clutz

It’s not enough to apply Chinese-style lockdowns in the name of “fighting climate change.” Now climatists want to stick forks in our food supply, thereby reducing populations to a more “sustainable” number. The attack on world food supply has four prongs to it, just like the forks in the image above.

1. Exaggerate the Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

2. Oppose Methane from Livestock as a Fossil Fuel, like Coal and Oil.

3. Freak Out over N2O as an Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

4. Meat Shame People’s Diets Because Vegans Love Animals

Background: The Carbon Cycle is Natural

This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white indicate stored carbon.

Instead of delusions about CO2 as the planet’s climate “control knob”, Viv Forbes provides us a wise, sane view how the carbon cycle works, and what we know and don’t know about it. And rather than exaggerate the effects of humans recycling fossil fuels, he puts the carbon cycling sources and sinks into a sensible perspective. His recent article is entitled: Carbon Delusions and Limited Models

The IPCC models misread the positive and negative temperature feedbacks from water vapour (the main greenhouse gas) and their accounting for natural processes in the carbon cycle is based on very incomplete knowledge and numerous unproven assumptions.

The dreaded “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide and methane) are natural gases. Man did not create them — they occur naturally in comets and planets, and have been far more plentiful in previous atmospheres on Earth. They are abundant in the oceans and the atmosphere, and are buried in deposits of gas, oil, coal, shale, methane clathrates and vast beds of limestone. Land and sea plants absorb CO2 and micro-organisms absorb methane in the deep ocean.

Earth emits natural carbon-bearing gases in huge and largely unknown and unpredictable quantities. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and various hydrocarbons such as ethane, methane and propane bubble out of the ocean floor, seep out of swamps, bubble naturally out of rivers, are released in oil seeps, water wells and bores, and are sometimes delivered via water pipes into drinking water. They are also released whenever carbon-bearing rocks such as coal and shale are eroded naturally, catch fire or are disturbed by earthquakes, construction activities or mining. The vast offshore deposits of frozen methane are released naturally when geothermal heat or volcanic intrusions melt the ice containing the methane.

The Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

Methane
Natural gas is 75% Methane (CH4) which burns cleanly to carbon dioxide and water. Methane is eagerly sought after as fuel for electric power plants because of its ease of transport and because it produces the least carbon dioxide for the most power. Also cars can be powered with compressed natural gas (CNG) for short distances.

In many countries CNG has been widely distributed as the main home heating fuel. As a consequence, in the past methane has leaked to the atmosphere in large quantities, now firmly controlled. Grazing animals also produce methane in their complicated stomachs and methane escapes from rice paddies and peat bogs like the Siberian permafrost.

It is thought that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas because it absorbs some infrared wavelengths 7 times more effectively than CO2, molecule for molecule, and by weight even 20 times. As we have seen previously, this also means that within a distance of metres, its effect has saturated, and further transmission of heat occurs by convection and conduction rather than by radiation.

Note that when H20 is present in the lower troposphere, there are few photons left for CH4 to absorb:

Even if the IPCC radiative greenhouse theory were true, methane occurs only in minute quantities in air, 1.8ppm versus CO2 of 390ppm. By weight, CH4 is only 5.24Gt versus CO2 3140Gt (on this assumption). If it truly were twenty times more potent, it would amount to an equivalent of 105Gt CO2 or one thirtieth that of CO2. A doubling in methane would thus have no noticeable effect on world temperature.

However, the factor of 20 is entirely misleading because absorption is proportional to the number of molecules (=volume), so the factor of 7 (7.3) is correct and 20 is wrong. With this in mind, the perceived threat from methane becomes even less.

Further still, methane has been rising from 1.6ppm to 1.8ppm in 30 years (1980-2010), assuming that it has not stopped rising, this amounts to a doubling in 2-3 centuries. In other words, methane can never have any measurable effect on temperature, even if the IPCC radiative cooling theory were right.

Because only a small fraction in the rise of methane in air can be attributed to farm animals, it is ludicrous to worry about this aspect or to try to farm with smaller emissions of methane, or to tax it or to trade credits.

The fact that methane in air has been leveling off in the past two decades, even though we do not know why, implies that it plays absolutely no role as a greenhouse gas. (From Sea Friends (here):

More information at The Methane Misconceptions by Dr. Wilson Flood (UK) here.

Give Daisy a Break!

Methane Risk from Livestock is Overstated

Frank M. Mitloehner is Professor of Animal Science and Air Quality Extension Specialist, University of California, Davis. He writes at the Conversation Yes, eating meat affects the environment, but cows are not killing the climate. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. And its persistence has led to false assumptions about the linkage between meat and climate change.

My research focuses on ways in which animal agriculture affects air quality and climate change. In my view, there are many reasons for either choosing animal protein or opting for a vegetarian selection. However, foregoing meat and meat products is not the environmental panacea many would have us believe. And if taken to an extreme, it also could have harmful nutritional consequences.

Many people continue to think avoiding meat as infrequently as once a week will make a significant difference to the climate. But according to one recent study, even if Americans eliminated all animal protein from their diets, they would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by only 2.6 percent. According to our research at the University of California, Davis, if the practice of Meatless Monday were to be adopted by all Americans, we’d see a reduction of only 0.5 percent.

Moreover, technological, genetic and management changes that have taken place in U.S. agriculture over the past 70 years have made livestock production more efficient and less greenhouse gas-intensive. According to the FAO’s statistical database, total direct greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. livestock have declined 11.3 percent since 1961, while production of livestock meat has more than doubled.

Removing animals from U.S. agriculture would lower national greenhouse gas emissions to a small degree, but it would also make it harder to meet nutritional requirements. Many critics of animal agriculture are quick to point out that if farmers raised only plants, they could produce more pounds of food and more calories per person. But humans also need many essential micro- and macronutrients for good health.

The world population is currently projected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. Feeding this many people will raise immense challenges. Meat is more nutrient-dense per serving than vegetarian options, and ruminant animals largely thrive on feed that is not suitable for humans. Raising livestock also offers much-needed income for small-scale farmers in developing nations. Worldwide, livestock provides a livelihood for 1 billion people.

Climate change demands urgent attention, and the livestock industry has a large overall environmental footprint that affects air, water and land. These, combined with a rapidly rising world population, give us plenty of compelling reasons to continue to work for greater efficiencies in animal agriculture. I believe the place to start is with science-based facts.

N2O is No Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

Methane and Climate is a paper by W. A. van Wijngaarden (Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Canada) and W. Happer (Department of Physics, Princeton University, USA) published at CO2 Coalition November 22, 2019. It is a summary in advance of a more detailed publication to come. Excerpts in italics with my bolds. [Note the paper is a thorough and deep expert analysis of atmospheric radiation physics which I do not fully comprehend. So the excerpts below are necessarily superficial, but intend to provide the core findings from these scientists.]

Figure 2: Left. A standard atmospheric temperature profile [9], T = T(z). The surface temperature is T(0)= 288.7 K. Right. Standard concentrations [10], Csd = Nsd /N for greenhouse molecules versus altitude z. The total number density of atmospheric molecules is N and the number density of molecules of type i is Nsd. At sea level the concentrations are 7750 ppm of H2O, 1.8 ppm of CH4 and 0.32 ppm of N2O. The O3 concentration peaks at 7.8 ppm at an altitude of 35 km, and the CO2 concentration was approximated by 400 ppm at all altitudes. The data is based on experimental observations.

As shown in Fig. 2, the most abundant greenhouse gas at the surface is water vapor (H2O). However, the concentration of water vapor drops by a factor of a thousand or more between the surface and the tropopause. This is because of condensation of water vapor into clouds and eventual removal by precipitation. Carbon dioxide CO2, the most abundant greenhouse gas after water vapor, is also the most uniformly mixed because of its chemical stability. Methane, the main topic of this discussion is much less abundant than CO2 and it has somewhat higher concentrations in the troposphere than in the stratosphere where it is oxidized by OH radicals and ozone, O3. The oxydation of methane [8] is the main source of the stratospheric water vapor shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 9: Projected midlatitude forcing increments at the tropopause from continued increases of CO2 and CH4 at the rates of Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 for the next 50 years. The projected forcings are very small, especially for methane, compared to the current tropospheric forcing of 137 W m−2.

The paper is focused on the greenhouse effects of atmospheric methane, since there have recently been proposals to put harsh restrictions on any human activities that release methane. The basic radiation-transfer physics outlined in this paper gives no support to the idea that greenhouse gases like methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) or nitrous oxide (N2O) are contributing to a climate crisis. Given the huge benefits of more CO2 to agriculture, to forestry, and to primary photosynthetic productivity in general, more CO2 is almost certainly benefitting the world. Radiative effects of CH4 and N2O are so small that they are irrelevant to climate.

Source: Global Monitoring Laboratory

The chart above informs on the scale of N2O concentrations. At first glance, it appears comparable to CO2, but on closer inspection the amounts are in ppb (parts per billion), not ppm (parts per million) as with CO2. To get comparable amounts requires dividing by 1000, thus the vertical axis goes from 0.315 ppm to 0.340 ppm. Yes, the dramatic rise over the last 22 years is 0.025ppm.

Then we have the annual global increase of N2O from all sources ranging from about 0.5 to 1.3 ppb. Does anyone believe they can measure N2O down to 0.0005 ppm?

Vegans Pushing Their Anti-Meat Agenda

The origin of these alarms are studies published in Lancet, once highly reputed but recently given over to climate ideology rather than objective science. Most recently is Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems The preceding Lancet study stated this main finding:

Following environmental objectives by replacing animal-source foods with plant-based ones was particularly effective in high-income countries for improving nutrient levels, lowering premature mortality (reduction of up to 12% [95% CI 10–13] with complete replacement), and reducing some environmental impacts, in particular greenhouse gas emissions (reductions of up to 84%). However, it also increased freshwater use (increases of up to 16%) and had little effectiveness in countries with low or moderate consumption of animal-source foods. (here).

Georgia Ede MD writes in Psychology Today EAT-Lancet’s Plant-based Planet: 10 Things You Need to Know. Excerpts in italics below with my bolds. Title is link to full text which is recommended reading. Georgia Ede, MD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and nutrition consultant practicing at Smith College. She writes about food and health on her website DiagnosisDiet.com.

We all want to be healthy, and we need a sustainable way to feed ourselves without destroying our environment. The well-being of our planet and its people are clearly in jeopardy, therefore clear, science-based, responsible guidance about how we should move forward together is most welcome.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to look elsewhere for solutions, because the EAT-Lancet Commission report fails to provide us with the clarity, transparency and responsible representation of the facts we need to place our trust in its authors. Instead, the Commission’s arguments are vague, inconsistent, unscientific, and downplay the serious risks to life and health posed by vegan diets.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a human clinical trial designed to test the health effects of simply removing animal foods from the diet, without making any other diet or lifestyle changes such as eliminating refined carbohydrates and other processed foods. Unless and until such research is conducted demonstrating clear benefits to this strategy, the assertion that human beings would be healthier without animal foods remains an untested hypothesis with clear risks to human life and health. Prescribing plant-based diets to the planet without including straightforward warnings of these risks and offering clear guidance as to how to minimize them is scientifically irresponsible and medically unethical, and therefore should not form the basis of public health recommendations.

Summary:

Natural Gas (75% methane) burns the cleanest with the least CO2 for the energy produced.

Leakage of methane is already addressed by efficiency improvements for its economic recovery, and will apparently be subject to even more regulations.

The atmosphere is a methane sink where the compound is oxidized through a series of reactions producing 1 CO2 and 2H20 after a few years.

GWP (Global Warming Potential) is CO2 equivalent heat trapping based on laboratory, not real world effects.

Any IR absorption by methane is limited by H2O absorbing in the same low energy LW bands.

There is no danger this century from natural or man-made methane emissions.

Conclusion

This is a bogus war on fertilizers, farmers and food. Everything is exaggerated for the sake of an extreme agenda to impose controls on free enterprise developed societies. It is true that use of fertilizers results in some release of N2O into the air, but even this has been overstated. And as the video demonstrates, farmers have a vested interest in using fertilizers wisely and are applying techniques that improve efficiency. As well, there is evidence of efficiency gains in the process of producing ammonia and then urea from air and natural gas. The attack on food supply is in effect an effort to reduce the population.

Resources

Much Ado About Methane

More Methane Madness

Washing Methane Away: Atmospheric Chemistry

Mastering Methane Mania

Let Them Eat Steak!

Climate Ideology = Bad Nutritional Advice

Carbon Sense and Nonsense

In Defense of Fertilizers, Farmers and Food

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Ron Clutz

The UN and WEF have declared a War on Fertilizers with conflicts erupting in Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and Canada. Fear of “greenhouse gases” provide the moral justification for mandating reductions in the production and use of fertilizers.

This will in turn deprive many farmers of their way of life. As a group, farmers belong to the “yeomanry” social class: independent, self-reliant small businessmen and women who don’t trust government and want it only to leave them alone. This makes them (like truckers) public enemies no.1, according to the control freaks increasingly entrenched in public authorities.

Most important is the objective to take over and regulate the food supply, along with governmental direction of the energy sector. The reason for this was well articulated by Leon Trotsky decades ago.

U.N. War On Fertilizer Began in Sri Lanka

Michael Shellenberger: UN Environment Programme launched its anti-fertilizer efforts from Sri Lanka in 2019

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) describes itself as “the global authority that sets the environmental agenda… and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.” Through its “Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food” program launched in 2014, the UNEP advocates that nations “steer away from the prevailing focus on per hectare productivity.”

But today the world is in its worst food crisis since 2008.

The number of people suffering acute food insecurity increased by 25% since January 2022 to 345 million, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. Why, then, is the UNEP trying to steer nations away from fertilizers that increase food production?

The UNEP’s Acting Director in 2019 said the reason was humankind’s “long-term interference with the Earth’s nitrogen balance.” In October of that year, the UNEP hosted a meeting in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo and issued a “road map” to push nations to cut nitrogen pollution in half.

But the Netherlands proves that nations can slash nitrogen pollution
from livestock by 70% while also increasing meat production. Same for crops.

Since the early 1960s, the Netherlands has doubled its yields while using the same amount of fertilizer. While rich nations produce 70 percent higher yields than poor nations, they use just 54 percent more nitrogen.

One month after the Colombo meeting in 2019, which generated significant media attention in Sri Lanka, voters in that nation elected an anti-fertilizer president, H.E. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who claimed, without scientific evidence, that synthetic fertilizers were causing kidney diseases. In April 2021, he banned fertilizer imports.

In June, 2021, two months after the fertilizer ban, Sri Lanka hosted a UN-sponsored “Food System Dialogue” aimed at influencing the UN’s broader anti-fertilizer agenda for the world. “Sri Lanka’s inaugural Food System Dialogue is part of a series of national and provincial dialogues conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture ahead of the 2021 UN Food System Summit set to take place in New York later this year.”

Netherlands and Canada Invoke Nitrous Oxide (N2O) Hysteria

LifeSiteNews While the event went mostly unreported, a large group of Canadians formed a convoy late last month in Winnipeg, Manitoba to voice their support for Dutch farmers currently protesting their government’s fertilizer reduction policies.

In the footage, many of the vehicles can be seen donning the Netherlands flag, with some of the flags being flown upside-down, which is a practice done throughout the world as a way to signal distress.

One large tractor had a sign on it that read, “No fertilizers, No Farmers, No food,” while a pick-up truck had a sign reading, “Government is lying. Fight for freedom.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, for the past month farmers in the Netherlands have been protesting the fertilizer reduction policies put forward by their World Economic Forum-linked Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.

Under the guise of “climate change,” Rutte and his government have created a “nitrogen and nature” ministry to curb nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions in the country, and told farmers that failure to comply with the new policies would lead to an expropriation of their land.

According to the Dutch farmers, compliance with the policies would mean far smaller crop yields and insufficient food production – nitrogen and ammonia are integral ingredients in fertilizers – and would lead to a massive loss of income or having to sell their farms altogether.

Despite the pleas of thousands of farmers to have the implementation of the policies reconsidered, Rutte dismissed the group as “small” and “unacceptable,” echoing the statement made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this year, when he called the anti-COVID mandate “Freedom Convoy” protesters in his country a “small, fringe minority.”

In addition to the similar attitude they express to disgruntled citizens, both politicians are members of the World Economic Forum, and have both signed their countries up for the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In fact, a December 2020 press release from Canada’s Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food shows that Trudeau has been planning to implement fertilizer policies similar to those being imposed by Rutte for quite some time.

“However, nitrous oxide emissions, particularly those associated with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use have also grown significantly. That is why the Government of Canada has set the national fertilizer emissions reduction target, which is part of the commitment to reduce total GHG emissions in Canada by 40-45% by 2030, as outlined in Canada’s Strengthened Climate Plan,” adds the release, which includes references to “the 2030 Agenda” and the U.N.’s “17 Sustainable Development Goals.”

The World of N2O

Just as CO2 is a small part of a planetary Carbon Cycle, so too is N2O an even smaller part of a global Nitrogen cycle. Some charts below provide a perspective on how N2O fits into a larger picture.

Sources of Atmospheric N2O

Source: Global Carbon Project

The chart above shows several important things to know. First, the atmospheric inputs of N20 from natural sources are about 60% and human sources 40%. Note that the estimates of inputs have a range of +/- 20% for natural sources, and +/- 50% for human sources. Over time N2O breaks down into the main atmospheric gases N2 and O2. No uncertainty is provided for the removal of N2O, leading to suspicion it is not measured but calculated to make a balance.

Source: Global Monitoring Laboratory

The second chart informs on the scale of N2O concentrations. At first glance, it appears comparable to CO2, but on closer inspection the amounts are in ppb (parts per billion), not ppm (parts per million) as with CO2. To get comparable amounts requires dividing by 1000, thus the vertical axis goes from 0.315 ppm to 0.340 ppm. Yes, the dramatic rise over the last 22 years is 0.025ppm.

Then we have the annual global increase of N2O from all sources ranging from about 0.5 to 1.3 ppb. Does anyone believe they can measure N2O down to 0.0005 ppm?

Then there is the matter that Nitrous oxide emissions in the United States decreased by 5% between 1990 and 2020. During this time, nitrous oxide emissions from mobile combustion decreased by 61% as a result of emission control standards for on-road vehicles. Nitrous oxide emissions from agricultural soils have varied during this period and were about the same in 2020 as in 1990. So any increases came from elsewhere, including the majority natural sources.

About Global Warming Potential

IPCC puts out a table like the Ten Commandments listing the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of all the “greenhouse gases.” CO2 is assigned “1”, and all others are given a number as a multiple of CO2. As noted above N2O is assigned ~300, making it a fearful GHG, depending of course on how much warming CO2 actually generates.

Source: GHG Institute

There are no details on the N2O GWP calculation of 300, but one suspects it is mainly due to the projected long residence time (100+ years) compared to about 5 years for CO2 (much shorter for CH4). But no matter the half-life of N2O, consider the above absorption spectra of ghgs. Note that N2O has no peaks, more like three pimples, all on the low energy longer IR wavelengths. Moreover, the one at 4.5m overlaps entirely with CO2, the second at 7.9m is overwhelmed by H2O, and the third at 17.0m can only absorb what CO2 has not.

Getting Perspective on N2O Climate Fear

The Claim: Nitrous Oxide is claimed to be a GHG 300 times as powerful as CO2; claimed to cause 7.5% of warming effect. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas with an atmospheric half-life of 120 years. Environmentalists and ecologists share the consensus that there should be an 80% reduction in the total greenhouse gases below the 1990 level.

The Facts:

Start with a wholistic picture of IR active gases (so-called “GHGs”) . H20 is 95% of all such gases, water vapor in the atmosphere ranging from 0 to 4%. CO2 is a trace gas by comparison, 4% of GHGs, at 400 ppm, amounting to 0.04% of the atmosphere, presumed to be well mixed in the troposphere.

Consider that claimed N2O IR activity is less than 1%. And in fact constitutes roughly 1/1000 of the gold blocks representing CO2. An earlier graph showed N2O is presently ~ 0.340 ppm, or 0.00034% of the atmosphere.

Add in the estimation by Dr. Happer regarding IR activity in our atmosphere. The black line shows gases absorbing radiation at various wavelengths from near IR on the left (shorter wave, higher energy) to far IR on the right (longer wave, lower energy). The big black line notch in the 600s is CO2 absorption in its modern concentration of 400 ppm. The red line shows what will be the absorption should CO2 double in amount to 800 ppm. [See Climate Change and CO2 Not a Problem]

Notice that the difference between the red and black lines is miniscule. Notice also the microscopic effects of N2O across the spectrum. Mathematically, 300 times miniscule = negligible.

Summary

Footnote The Living Soil

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