Fossil Fuels

2025 Update: Fossil Fuels ≠ Global Warming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

gas in hands

Previous posts addressed the claim that fossil fuels are driving global warming. This post updates that analysis with the latest (2024) numbers from Energy Institute and compares World Fossil Fuel Consumption (WFFC) with three estimates of Global Mean Temperature (GMT). More on both these variables below. Note: Previously these same statistics were hosted by BP.

WFFC

2024 statistics are now available from Energy Institute for international consumption of Primary Energy sources. Statistical Review of World Energy. 

The reporting categories are:
Oil
Natural Gas
Coal
Nuclear
Hydro
Renewables (other than hydro)

Note:  Energy Institute began in 2023 to use Exajoules to replace MToe (Million Tonnes of oil equivalents.) It is logical to use an energy metric which is independent of the fuel source. OTOH renewable advocates have no doubt pressured EI to stop using oil as the baseline since their dream is a world without fossil fuel energy.

From BP conversion table 1 exajoule (EJ) = 1 quintillion joules (1 x 10^18). Oil products vary from 41.6 to 49.4 tonnes per gigajoule (10^9 joules).  Comparing this annual report with previous years shows that global Primary Energy (PE) in MToe is roughly 24 times the same amount in Exajoules.  The conversion factor at the macro level varies from year to year depending on the fuel mix. The graphs below use the new metric.

This analysis combines the first three, Oil, Gas, and Coal for total fossil fuel consumption world wide (WFFC).  The chart below shows the patterns for WFFC compared to world consumption of Primary Energy from 1965 through 2024.

The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965  oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 81% in 2024.  Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021.  WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. For the 60 year period, all net changes were increases from previous years and were:

Oil 207%
Gas 555%
Coal 183%
WFFC 252%
PE 308%
Global Mean Temperatures

Everyone acknowledges that GMT is a fiction since temperature is an intrinsic property of objects, and varies dramatically over time and over the surface of the earth. No place on earth determines “average” temperature for the globe. Yet for the purpose of detecting change in temperature, major climate data sets estimate GMT and report anomalies from it.

UAH record consists of satellite era global temperature estimates for the lower troposphere, a layer of air from 0 to 4km above the surface. HadSST estimates sea surface temperatures from oceans covering 71% of the planet. HadCRUT combines HadSST estimates with records from land stations whose elevations range up to 6km above sea level.

Both GISS LOTI (land and ocean) and HadCRUT4 (land and ocean) use 14.0 Celsius as the climate normal, so I will add that number back into the anomalies. This is done not claiming any validity other than to achieve a reasonable measure of magnitude regarding the observed fluctuations.[Note: HadCRUT4 was discontinued after 2021 in favor of HadCRUT5.]

No doubt global sea surface temperatures are typically higher than 14C, more like 17 or 18C, and of course warmer in the tropics and colder at higher latitudes. Likewise, the lapse rate in the atmosphere means that air temperatures both from satellites and elevated land stations will range colder than 14C. Still, that climate normal is a generally accepted indicator of GMT.

Correlations of GMT and WFFC

The next graph compares WFFC to GMT estimates over the decades from 1965 to 2024 from HadCRUT5, which includes HadSST4.

Since 1965 the increase in fossil fuel consumption is dramatic and monotonic, steadily increasing by 252% from 146 to 513 exajoules.  Meanwhile the GMT record from Hadcrut shows multiple ups and downs with an accumulated rise of 1.4C over 60 years, 10% of the starting value.

The graph below compares WFFC to GMT estimates from UAH6, and HadSST4 for the satellite era from 1980 to 2024 a period of 45 years.

In the satellite era WFFC has increased at a compounded rate of 1.5% per year, for a total increase of 99% since 1980. At the same time, SST warming amounted to 0.8C, or 5.6% of the starting value.  UAH warming was 1.1C, or 8% up from 1979.  The temperature compounded rate of change is 0.1% per year for HadSST4, and 0.2% per year for UAH, an order of magnitude less than WFFC.  Even more obvious is the 1998 El Nino peak and flat GMT until 2023-24.

Summary

The climate alarmist/activist claim is straight forward: Burning fossil fuels makes measured temperatures warmer. The Paris Accord further asserts that by reducing human use of fossil fuels, further warming can be prevented.  Those claims do not bear up under scrutiny.

It is enough for simple minds to see that two time series are both rising and to think that one must be causing the other. But both scientific and legal methods assert causation only when the two variables are both strongly and consistently aligned. The above shows a weak and inconsistent linkage between WFFC and GMT.

Going further back in history shows even weaker correlation between fossil fuels consumption and global temperature estimates:

wfc-vs-sat

Figure 5.1. Comparative dynamics of the World Fuel Consumption (WFC) and Global Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (ΔT), 1861-2000. The thin dashed line represents annual ΔT, the bold line—its 13-year smoothing, and the line constructed from rectangles—WFC (in millions of tons of nominal fuel) (Klyashtorin and Lyubushin, 2003). Source: Frolov et al. 2009

In legal terms, as long as there is another equally or more likely explanation for the set of facts, the claimed causation is unproven. The more likely explanation is that global temperatures vary due to oceanic and solar cycles. The proof is clearly and thoroughly set forward in the post Quantifying Natural Climate Change.

Footnote: CO2 Concentrations Compared to WFFC

Contrary to claims that rising atmospheric CO2 consists of fossil fuel emissions, consider the Mauna Loa CO2 observations in recent years.

Despite the drop in 2020 WFFC, atmospheric CO2 continued to rise steadily, demonstrating that natural sources and sinks drive the amount of CO2 in the air.

See also: Nature Erases Pulses of Human CO2 Emissions

02/2025 Update–Temperature Changes, CO2 Follows

Energy Realism from Next US Dept. Head

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Last year Chris Wright dished out climate and energy realism in an interview on CNBC Squawk Box hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin.  Now he is to be appointed Secretary of Energy in the coming Trump administration.  Here are his candid and unvarnished views from inside the energy industry.

For those who prefer reading below is a transcript lightly edited from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images. AS refers to Sorkin’s questions and CW to responses from Wright.

AS: President Biden conceded last week that the U.S is going to be needing oil and gas for as he says at least the next decade as the country transitions to Renewables. But our next guest says that we are not in the midst of an energy transition and claims the so-called climate crisis is overblown. Last month he railed against what he called an alarmist move away from fossil fuels in a video on LinkedIn. The Microsoft owned company removed the post citing misinformation, only put it back up days later.

So let’s talk right now to Chris Wright–Chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company Chris good morning to you.

Reaction to the State of the Union

AS: Let’s start with your reaction after watching the State of the Union. President Biden makes the statement twice actually. The first time he says we’re going to need fossil fuels for a while. Later he follows up with: We’re going to need it for something like a decade or so. There was laughter in the chamber, certainly from the GOP, but it very well might have been both sides of the aisle at that point.

CW: Yeah, likely it was. Of course it’s great to see an acknowledgment the world run on oil and gas and we need that. But to throw out a decade, it’s just an absurd time frame. We’re not going to meaningfully change the demand for oil and gas one way or the other in the next decade. And I think politicizing energy and opposing infrastructure is standing in the way of Today’s Energy System before we’ve built a new Energy System. There’s just no upside in that.

Realistic timeline for energy

AS: When you think about the timeline, what do you think is a realistic timeline to the degree you think there is one.

CW: It’s multiple, as we’ll talk about that. The Energy Information Administration is our government agency that projects forward demands for varied energy sources, They have in 2050 roughly flat demand for oil and gas as what we have today; maybe it rises a little bit the next decade or two, maybe it comes down a little bit in the next decade or two after that. Maybe that’s true, but I think you’ll see no meaningful change of our hydrocarbon system in the next three decades. I’m all for investing in new energy sources: nuclear has a great future if we could regulatorily issue a permit. We haven’t issued a new permit for a nuclear plant in 50 years.

There’s great new things we can bring; but standing in the way
of what runs the world today just isn’t productive.

Nuclear energy

AS: I’m a big fan but it’s quite unpopular talking about nuclear energy. Usually when I say something on the air it causes some kind of strange firestorm. Do you think there’s any realistic chance we have nuclear energy in the United States in the next decade?

CW: I think probably not in the next decade. Nuclear will have a Renaissance right now, but it more likely starts overseas where there’s a less onerous and less fear-driven regulatory system. I think we’ll see small modular reactors come. What’s great about nuclear is they bring not just electricity which is the only place wind and solar can play. Electricity is less than a quarter of global energy. Process heat that you need for manufacturing is just critical, and nuclear could bring process heat as well as electricity. Today it’s just fossil fuels that bring processed Heat.

SEC disclosure

Rough Seas for Captains of Industry

AS: Chris, I wanted to ask you two big big other questions. One regards the SEC pushing for more disclosure for companies around ESG and and in particular their plans around climate and energy. It
may get softened a bit, in part because of the comments that have come back to them. What is your sense of what the SEC was proposing and where you think they’re going to land?

CW:  Well what they proposed is totally nuts. And I wrote a long comment letter on it. A lot of public company CEOs won’t do that, But it’s just making an enormously complicated expensive reporting thing so people can sue us because they think we didn’t quite properly estimate our scope three emissions. Those are emissions from the products we produce when someone else burns them on the other side of the world or on the other side of the country. No one can really account for that.

Why are they doing that? They’re doing it so this Administration can signal they’re against fuels. Again that’s just unproductive.

LinkedIn censorship

AS: Your LinkedIn post went down tell me what happened. People talk about censorship all the time, who should be the Arbiter of Truth and all of that.

CW: Yeah it was crazy. I made a sort of an amateur video just talking about energy climate transition with just some basic data so you can get background on it. And it was taken down as misinformation. I hit the appeal the decision button, and they came back and said it violated their spams and scams policy.   I posted it again it’s taken down again from misinformation. Then upon appeal they said sorry, on further review it didn’t violate their policy. That’s probably not LinkedIn but people complaining because I’m not talking the climate alarmist narrative. For LinkedIn to go along and take that down is just a symbol of where we are today, unfortunately.

Oil and Gas Industry Productivity

AS: When we finally hit Peak production again, we haven’t yet since 2019. So there’s a lot of finger pointing on why that is. I mean fracking had its own problems when there was a slow period. When we try to reopen from a pandemic we can’t get the workers that we need for the you know for the whole oil and gas industry. But add in ESG and add in President Biden’s pitch: Read my lips, I will end the fossil fuel industry.” How much do you think ESG and that type of of rhetoric scared away producers? Is ESG a positive or negative for society?

AS: I think from an investor movement it’s a negative. Of course we should care about the environment and the societies we operate in. And of course company and government should be aligned with the owners of businesses, that’s a very real point. The other point is of course that’s what businesses do in a free Society. If you’re not a great member of society, if people don’t believe they’re part of something bigger than just getting a paycheck, you’re going to have trouble getting workers.

So the idea is right but it’s really become sort of a top-down thing: if you’re admitting greenhouse gas emissions you’re bad, if you’re reducing them or shrinking your business there you’re good. And then of course a top-down check box list to decide if we’re socially virtuous or not. These are bad ideas. Investors should care about ESG but it shouldn’t be like a third party imposing a scorecard to tell me who’s virtuous and who’s not.

On the on the margin it has indeed reduced Capital to our industry which absolutely raises the cost of capital on the margin. We produce less oil and gas because of it and the main impact of that is higher oil and gas prices.

 

 

 

 

Scientists Say: Net Zero Wins Nearly Zero Results

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Chris Morrison explains at his Daily Sceptic article Net Zero Will Prevent Almost Zero Warming, Say Three Top Atmospheric Scientists.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Recent calculations by the distinguished atmospheric scientists Richard Lindzen, William Happer and William van Wijngaarden suggest that if the entire world eliminated net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 it would avert warming of an almost unmeasurable 0.07°C. Even assuming the climate modelled feedbacks and temperature opinions of the politicised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the rise would be only 0.28°C. Year Zero would have been achieved along with the destruction of economic and social life for eight billion people on Planet Earth. “It would be hard to find a better example of a policy of all pain and no gain,” note the scientists. [Paper is Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase  by Lindzen, Happer and van Wijngaarden.]

In the U.K., the current General Election is almost certain to be won by a party that is committed to outright warfare on hydrocarbons. The Labour party will attempt to ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid by the end of the decade without any realistic instant backup for unreliable wind and solar except oil and gas. Britain is sitting on huge reserves of hydrocarbons but new exploration is to be banned. It is hard to think of a more ruinous energy policy, but the Conservative governing party is little better. Led by the hapless May, a woman over-promoted since her time running the education committee on Merton Council, through to Buffo Boris and Washed-Out Rishi, its leaders have drunk the eco Kool-Aid fed to them by the likes of Roger Hallam, Extinction Rebellion and the Swedish Doom Goblin. Adding to the mix in the new Parliament will be a likely 200 new ‘Labour’ recruits with university degrees in buggerallology and CVs full of parasitical non-jobs in the public sector.

Hardly any science knowledge between them, they even believe that they can spend billions of other people’s money to capture CO2 – perfectly good plant fertiliser – and bury it in the ground. As a privileged, largely middle class group, they have net zero understanding of how a modern industrial society works, feeds itself and creates the wealth that pays their unnecessary wages. All will be vying to save the planet and stop a temperature rise that is barely a rounding error on any long-term view.

They plan to cull the farting cows, sow wild flowers where food
once grew, take away efficient gas boilers and internal combustion
cars and stop granny visiting her grandchildren in the United States.

On a wider front, banning hydrocarbons will remove almost everything from a modern society including many medicines, building materials, fertilisers, plastics and cleaning products. It might be shorter and easier to list essential items where hydrocarbons are absent than produce one where they are present. Anyone who dissents from their absurd views is said to be in league with fossil fuel interests, a risible suggestion given that they themselves are dependent on hydrocarbon producers to sustain their enviable lifestyles.

Unlike politicians the world over who rant about fire and brimstone, Messrs Lindzen, Happer and van Wijngaarden pay close attention to actual climate observations and analyses of the data. Since it is impossible to determine how much of the gentle warming of the last two centuries is natural or caused by higher levels of CO2, they assume a ‘climate sensitivity’ – rise in temperature when CO2 doubles in the atmosphere – of 0.8°C. This is about four times less than IPCC estimates, which lacks any proof. Understandably the IPCC does not make a big issue of this lack of crucial proof at the heart of the so-called 97% anthropogenic ‘consensus’.

The 0.8°C estimate is based on the idea that greenhouse gases like CO2 ‘saturate’ at certain levels and their warming effect falls off a logarithmic cliff. This idea has the advantage of explaining climate records that stretch back 600 million years since CO2 levels have been up to 10-15 times higher in the past compared with the extremely low levels observed today. There is little if any long term causal link between temperature and CO2 over time. In the immediate past record there is evidence that CO2 rises after natural increases in temperature as the gas is released from warmer oceans.

Any argument that the Earth has a ‘boiling’ problem caused by the small CO2 contribution that humans make by using hydrocarbons is ‘settled’ by an invented political crisis, but is backed by no reliable observational data. Most of the fear-mongering is little more than a circular exercise using computer models with improbable opinions fed in, and improbable opinions fed out.

The three scientists use a simple formula using base-two logarithms to assess the CO2 influence on the atmosphere based on decades of laboratory experiments and atmospheric data collection. They demonstrate how trivial the effect on global temperature will be if humanity stops using hydrocarbons. After years wasted listening to Greta Thunberg, the message is starting to penetrate the political arena. In the United States, the Net Zero project is dead in the water if Trump wins the Presidential election. In Europe, the ruling political elites, both national and supranational, are retreating on their Net Zero commitments. Reality is starting to dawn and alternative political groupings emerge to challenge the comfortable insanity of Net Zero virtue signalling. In New Zealand, the nightmare of the Ardern years is being expunged with a roll back of Net Zero policies ahead of possible electricity black outs.

Only in Britain it seems are citizens prepared to elect a Government obsessed with self-inflicted poverty and deindustrialisation. The only major political grouping committed to scrapping Net Zero is the Nigel Farage-led Reform party and although it could beat the ruling Conservatives into second place in the popular vote, it is unlikely to secure many Parliamentary seats under the U.K.’s first-past-the-post electoral system. Only a few years ago the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who thinks some women have penises, and his imbecilic Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, were bending the knee to an organisation that wanted to cut funding for the police and fling open the borders. The new British Parliament will have plenty of people who still support Net Zero and assorted woke woo woo, and the great tragedy is that they will still be found across most of the represented political parties.

See Also 

Delusions of Davos and Dubai

 

2024 Update: Fossil Fuels ≠ Global Warming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

gas in hands

Previous posts addressed the claim that fossil fuels are driving global warming. This post updates that analysis with the latest (2023) numbers from Energy Institute and compares World Fossil Fuel Consumption (WFFC) with three estimates of Global Mean Temperature (GMT). More on both these variables below. Note: Previously these same statistics were hosted by BP.

WFFC

2023 statistics are now available from Energy Institute for international consumption of Primary Energy sources. Statistical Review of World Energy. 

The reporting categories are:
Oil
Natural Gas
Coal
Nuclear
Hydro
Renewables (other than hydro)

Note:  Energy Institute began last year to use Exajoules to replace MToe (Million Tonnes of oil equivalents.) It is logical to use an energy metric which is independent of the fuel source. OTOH renewable advocates have no doubt pressured EI to stop using oil as the baseline since their dream is a world without fossil fuel energy.

From BP conversion table 1 exajoule (EJ) = 1 quintillion joules (1 x 10^18). Oil products vary from 41.6 to 49.4 tonnes per gigajoule (10^9 joules).  Comparing this annual report with previous years shows that global Primary Energy (PE) in MToe is roughly 24 times the same amount in Exajoules.  The conversion factor at the macro level varies from year to year depending on the fuel mix. The graphs below use the new metric.

This analysis combines the first three, Oil, Gas, and Coal for total fossil fuel consumption world wide (WFFC).  The chart below shows the patterns for WFFC compared to world consumption of Primary Energy from 1965 through 2023.

The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965  oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2023.  Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021.  WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. For the 59 year period, all net changes were increases from previous years and were:

Oil 203%
Gas 536%
Coal 182%
WFFC 246%
PE 297%
Global Mean Temperatures

Everyone acknowledges that GMT is a fiction since temperature is an intrinsic property of objects, and varies dramatically over time and over the surface of the earth. No place on earth determines “average” temperature for the globe. Yet for the purpose of detecting change in temperature, major climate data sets estimate GMT and report anomalies from it.

UAH record consists of satellite era global temperature estimates for the lower troposphere, a layer of air from 0 to 4km above the surface. HadSST estimates sea surface temperatures from oceans covering 71% of the planet. HadCRUT combines HadSST estimates with records from land stations whose elevations range up to 6km above sea level.

Both GISS LOTI (land and ocean) and HadCRUT4 (land and ocean) use 14.0 Celsius as the climate normal, so I will add that number back into the anomalies. This is done not claiming any validity other than to achieve a reasonable measure of magnitude regarding the observed fluctuations.[Note: HadCRUT4 was discontinued after 2021 in favor of HadCRUT5.]

No doubt global sea surface temperatures are typically higher than 14C, more like 17 or 18C, and of course warmer in the tropics and colder at higher latitudes. Likewise, the lapse rate in the atmosphere means that air temperatures both from satellites and elevated land stations will range colder than 14C. Still, that climate normal is a generally accepted indicator of GMT.

Correlations of GMT and WFFC

The next graph compares WFFC to GMT estimates over the decades from 1965 to 2023 from HadCRUT4, which includes HadSST4.

Since 1965 the increase in fossil fuel consumption is dramatic and monotonic, steadily increasing by 246% from 146 to 505 exajoules.  Meanwhile the GMT record from Hadcrut shows multiple ups and downs with an accumulated rise of 0.8C over 56 years, 6% of the starting value.

The graph below compares WFFC to GMT estimates from UAH6, and HadSST4 for the satellite era from 1980 to 2023 a period of 44 years.

In the satellite era WFFC has increased at a compounded rate of 1.5% per year, for a total increase of 97% since 1979. At the same time, SST warming amounted to 0.76C, or 5% of the starting value.  UAH warming was 0.85C, or 6% up from 1979.  The temperature compounded rate of change is 0.1% per year, an order of magnitude less than WFFC.  Even more obvious is the 1998 El Nino peak and flat GMT since.

Summary

The climate alarmist/activist claim is straight forward: Burning fossil fuels makes measured temperatures warmer. The Paris Accord further asserts that by reducing human use of fossil fuels, further warming can be prevented.  Those claims do not bear up under scrutiny.

It is enough for simple minds to see that two time series are both rising and to think that one must be causing the other. But both scientific and legal methods assert causation only when the two variables are both strongly and consistently aligned. The above shows a weak and inconsistent linkage between WFFC and GMT.

Going further back in history shows even weaker correlation between fossil fuels consumption and global temperature estimates:

wfc-vs-sat

Figure 5.1. Comparative dynamics of the World Fuel Consumption (WFC) and Global Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (ΔT), 1861-2000. The thin dashed line represents annual ΔT, the bold line—its 13-year smoothing, and the line constructed from rectangles—WFC (in millions of tons of nominal fuel) (Klyashtorin and Lyubushin, 2003). Source: Frolov et al. 2009

In legal terms, as long as there is another equally or more likely explanation for the set of facts, the claimed causation is unproven. The more likely explanation is that global temperatures vary due to oceanic and solar cycles. The proof is clearly and thoroughly set forward in the post Quantifying Natural Climate Change.

Footnote: CO2 Concentrations Compared to WFFC

Contrary to claims that rising atmospheric CO2 consists of fossil fuel emissions, consider the Mauna Loa CO2 observations in recent years.

 

Despite the drop in 2020 WFFC, atmospheric CO2 continued to rise steadily, demonstrating that natural sources and sinks drive the amount of CO2 in the air.

See also: Nature Erases Pulses of Human CO2 Emissions

Temps Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse

Biden’s Dangerous NatGas Game

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tristan Abbey exposes the feds war on NatGas in his Real Energy article Joe Biden’s Dangerous Natural Gas Game.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If the devil is in the details, bureaucracy is hell on earth. Though terrain familiar to the Biden administration, Republicans must prepare to navigate it.

Witness the debacle over liquefied natural gas exports, wherein the White House, by “pausing” most new approvals, has catapulted the energy security of key U.S. allies straight into the buzzsaw of its climate ambitions. (The category of exports that will continue to be authorized is tiny.) The Department of Energy claims that a multifactor impact study due in early 2025 is required to determine whether and how the moratorium will be lifted.

For the 58 year period, the net changes were: Oil 194%, Gas 525%, Coal 178%, WFFC 239%, Primary Energy 287%  Source: Energy Institute stats 2022

Under a certain conception of executive power, it should be simple enough for a second-term Trump administration to end this national embarrassment by pressing “resume” on the authorization process. But as analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have suggested, merely setting aside the study could provide a basis, however tenuous, for future litigation. In the modern administrative state, it is easier to open than shut the procedural door to delays.

Previous administrations have already published macroeconomic impact studies on the question of LNG exports from the U.S. The Obama administration paused its authorizations until its first study was released in December 2012, for example—curious timing, considering the election the previous month and the study’s actual completion in July of that year. Virtually every scenario in every study, including additional analysis in 2015 and 2018, has found net benefits to accrue.

It’s possible reopening the Obama playbook was the Biden team’s plan all along. After all, Secretary Granholm didn’t commission a new study in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023. By waiting so long, the DOE can now claim that the cumulative volume of its authorizations is approaching the upper limit of the range that the 2018 study examined. Under the duplicity theory, approvals resume under a second Biden term as soon as the study is released and the election fades away.

But maybe the administration doesn’t even have a plan. It could be sheer incompetence. Gas exports offend the sensibilities of the Democratic base, but Appalachian swing states reap the economic rewards and European allies are desperate to detach themselves from Russian energy. Political operators will try in vain to triangulate even if it is impossible. We can imagine them now, hunched over the asphalt between the West Wing and the Eisenhower building, desperately chalking angles with a compass and ruler.

Appliances are just the thin end of the wedge against NatGas.

More ominously, Energy Secretary Granholm may be laying the groundwork for a Kafkaesque application process designed to punish an industry this administration has only ever pretended to tolerate. The fact that DOE’s approving authority is now housed in the Office of Resource Sustainability is suggestive, as is the Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to triple programmatic funding for export authorizations, primarily in the form of “anticipated studies and environmental reviews.”

In any event, undoing what the Biden team has done will take careful work by a putative second-term Trump administration. Putting the matter to rest on a more permanent basis will require legislative action, chiefly amending the Natural Gas Act signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938. In the meantime, “death by study” works both ways.

 

The Bigger Picture from Master Resource

The Fossil-fuel Era: Still Young

“Oil, gas, and coal are ascending despite determined government efforts to reverse energy progress. With criteria air pollutants on the wane and carbon dioxide (CO2) benefits laboratory-proven, the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels is evident.”

Each year brings record production of the three fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. Peak demand is not in sight–nor should it be in a world of rising population, the aspiring poor, and new ways to employ inanimate energy to improve living. But what about future supply to meet growing demand?

In most nations of the world, free-market energy
plenty is held back by government intervention.

Government ownership and operation of fossil fuels and related infrastructure impedes supply and demand. But fossil fuel plenty is very hard to hold back, and enough is produced to reasonably meet demand. Such is true in the United States despite two hundred impediments from the Biden Administration. “The U.S. now has 227 years of oil supply, 130 years of natural gas supply, and 485 years of coal supply,” the study below reports.

Canadian oil soldiers on despite the anti-energy
policies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) has just released an update to its 2011 study, 2024 North American Energy Inventory. As more oil, gas, and coal is produced, more is discovered to be produced, the amazing (but not biblical) story of resource expansion from free-market resourceship. 

The fossil fuel era is very young in human history, having eclipsed the renewable energy era just several centuries ago. IER’s recent inventory study confirms the benefits of even a quasi-free market can do. Resourceship forever!

After COP28: What Transition From Hydrocarbons?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

How Do You Want Your Energy ‘Transition’?

Mario Loyola wrote at The Wall Street Journal The Impossible Energy ‘Transition’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.

In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. This is the vision of the International Energy Agency, according to which the more rapid the transition from fossil fuels, the more precipitous the decline in fossil-fuel prices. In its “Net Zero Emissions” scenario, oil demand drops faster than supply this decade, pushing oil prices below $30 a barrel soon after 2030, which corresponds to $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.

In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. This is the dark vision of “Stop Oil” and Greta Thunberg. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar. That means windfall profits for energy companies, scarcity for everyone else, and electoral danger for the governments responsible. Ms. Thunberg claims that climate change is a “death sentence” for the poor, but the poor are far more vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. In the 1970s, an oil boycott aimed at the U.S. caused famines in Africa.

Putting into context the desire to stop consumption of fossil fuels. The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965 oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2022. Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021. WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. (Source: Energy Institute)

While the stop-oil view was popular at Dubai, there were enough adults in the room to keep the conference from committing to it. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C” (the Paris Agreement’s proposed limit on 21st-century temperature increases), said conference president Ahmed al Jaber, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman dared countries to try to choke off the oil supply: “Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Poor countries are clear-eyed about the danger of energy poverty. “We are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth,” said India’s minister for power, R.K. Singh. China has more coal plants under construction than are in operation in the U.S. Few rich countries have announced plans to stop drilling for oil or gas, and none of those are major producers. Even President Biden ran away from increasing the gasoline tax as soon as prices went above $3 a gallon in the summer of 2021.

The administration’s answer to this conundrum is to defer political consequences via the regulatory state. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.

Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.

Mr. Loyola teaches environmental law at Florida International University and is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Foornote:  Advice from Berkeley Earth

Hydrocarbons Are the Greenest Fuels

Posted on by Ron Clutz

I’ll summarize a recent paper that was published by our Coalition stating that coal, oil and natural gas are the greenest of the energy sources. The paper was published by one of our distinguished members Dr. Indur Goklany. This is no lightweight scientist we’re talking about here. Dr.Goklany opens his paper with his clear statement: Contrary to the claims of proponents of the green New Deal and Net Zero, fossil fuels are the greenest of fuels. In summary Dr Goklany’s findings and our paper are consistent with our view that fossil fuels are Treasures to be valued and used for the benefit of humanity. Their demonization is irrational and destructive to our society.

Coal and oil fueled the Industrial Revolution which gave us unprecedented prosperity and health. Together with natural gas they promise to raise billions of people in developing countries from poverty and deprivation.

in short we love CO2 and so should you. And in order to forestall a question I know will be coming, let me answer it ahead of time. What is my solution. You may have driven the Pennsylvania Turnpike and seen our billboard up near New Stanton. It’s a picture of a woman resting comfortably in bed and the title is: Sleep well, there is no climate crisis, there is no climate emergency.

There is no climate crisis. We see modest warming and increasing CO2 leading to gigantic benefits to our ecosystems and Humanity. We should celebrate that.

Fossil Fuels are the Greenest Energy Sources by Dr. Indur Goklany

 

No Green Energy Future Without Coal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Teresa Mull writes at American Spectator Why ‘dirty’ coal is vital to a ‘clean’ green future. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

‘Any time you have energy, you have to dig something out of the ground’

The under reported truth, however, is that coal is key to the continuation of civilization as we know it. Apart from “providing more than 36 percent of global electricity” and accounting for “nearly one-quarter of the electricity in the United States” (per the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration), coal is necessary in the production of steel and other metals and is used in the manufacturing process of other materials city folk love, including cement. Coal is also critical in bringing about the “green, renewable” future we are told is inevitable (not to mention our first-world luxuries: smartphone batteries, fluorescent lights, computer monitors, etc.).

There are fifty critical minerals and metals in our beautiful black coal, and in the clay beneath needed to produce electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, rechargeable batteries, and so forth. Sarma V. Pisupati, professor of energy and mineral engineering and director of the Center for Critical Minerals at Pennsylvania State University, explains that the United States imports more than 50 percent of forty-three of those elements from other countries, and twelve of those fifty minerals are 100 percent imported.

Such a strong reliance on foreign countries, especially China, which the German Marshall Fund of the United States reports “dominates global critical mineral supply chains, accounting for approximately 60 percent of worldwide production and 85 percent of processing capacity,” is “an urgent matter of national security,” says Pisupati.

Which is where Pennsylvania — and Penn State — come in.

Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) shows that “abandoned mine problem areas have been identified in forty-three of Pennsylvania’s sixty-seven counties.” Pennsylvania has some 5,000 miles worth of streams that have been polluted by acid mine drainage (AMD). In my own backyard (in Centre and Clearfield Counties), abandoned strip mines, described by our township solicitor as “lunar in nature,” are a playground for us backwoods folk. “The strippin’s” are where teenagers meet up to party under cover of steep high walls, coal refuse (or “boney”) piles and scraggly trees, side-by-side riders rip over rutted roads in packs each weekend and hillbillies sight-in their hunting rifles.

Yet in recent years, these “legacy coal mines,” as Pisupati calls them, have been garnering attention. Not because environmental agencies have seen the light about how important coal is, the strides the industry has made to purify the process, or because they’ve realized that re-mining is sometimes the only way to get to underground water discharges and address them, but because coal and its byproducts are a source of the critical elements necessary for a “greener” future.

“Because the old [pre-1977] coal mines were not under the new regulations, they were left abandoned, and there is a lot of water flowing through those old mines which gets oxidized, and there is a lot of acid coming out of that,” Pisupati says. “That acid actually brings out the rare earth elements and critical elements from the mines, so nature is doing some of this extraction for us. It could be viewed as a blessing in disguise, because right now we are importing these critical minerals from elsewhere.

“Acid mine drainage is flowing through those old mines and polluting our streams, so if we treat them to get these elements out, we’re actually doing a favor, and taxpayers don’t have to pay to clean these waters up if we generate money off of [the pollution]. There is work to be done, but it can be achieved so we can reduce our imports, we can make these materials right here, and we can clean up our environment.”

“Waste” produced from extracting and burning coal is increasingly becoming a misnomer. That “boney,” comprised of low-quality, “junk” coal mounded together with shale, clay, and other materials discarded during the mining process, for instance, is strewn in mountains, or “spoil piles,” throughout the region, “and the fly ash associated with coal-fired power plants are a potential source of critical minerals,” reports Penn State.

At one time, this low-quality coal and boney had no use and was piled up along old mines. Mountains of it literally surround my hometown. But now boney can be used in cogeneration (“cogen”) plants to generate electricity. According to Arnold, cogen plants “use fluidized bed combustors that operate at a lower temperature to capture all the sulfur.”

So if mining coal has the effect of unearthing the rare earth elements we so desperately need to combat “climate change,” and we need coal to make the cement and steel necessary to erect solar panels and wind turbines, and re-mining old abandoned mines offers the opportunity to extract even more rare earth elements while also cleaning up badly polluted lands and waters — the government should be handing out mining permits liberally, right?

“Getting remining permits is not easy,” Pisupati says.

Not only is obtaining a permit an expensive, onerous challenge, but one of the area’s few remaining coal operators likens getting a mining permit to “a criminal sentence.” It used to be that DEP inspectors would work with operators, or as a former operator puts it, “They’d tell me what we needed to do, and we’d do it.” Yet as fossil fuels, and coal in particular, are increasingly demonized, the regulatory rope tightens, unfriendly administrations impose harsh mandates.

And mining coal becomes more of a complicated, extremely costly burden
than the prosperity-generating industry that
helped the US win back-to-back world wars.

“You can’t get anything done with DEP breathing down your neck,” one coal operator tells me. “When you do get it done, it costs four times what it should and takes four times as long. And while green energy doesn’t work, and gets subsidized, we can’t survive without coal — and coal gets taxed like crazy!”

To mine coal, you see, you must first get that permit, which can take months, if not years. The engineering required to apply for the permit could run you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, before you’ve dug so much as a shovel full of dirt.

Next, you invest millions in heavy equipment (a new Caterpillar 992 loader runs about $1.8 million — you’ll need a couple at each job site), fuel, wages, etc. You have payments on those machines and payroll to meet, so you hope your permit gets issued quickly!

Then the coal operator must post a performance bond, carefully calculated on each cubic yard of dirt he moves, combined with the prevailing price of diesel fuel. After the operator has removed the coal, but before he backfills, he must purchase and add hundreds of tons of limestone per acre to offset the possibility that he has exposed acidic rock that could affect nearby water quality. Meanwhile, his every move is scrutinized, and he is frequently fined by an overzealous career bureaucrat.

Then, if you happen to “touch” water associated with an old mine that predates the 1977 regulations, says Rachel Gleason, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, “You’re responsible for treating it for the rest of its life.”

“Meanwhile,” as an operator remarks, “it’s been making a mess for 100 years.”

Gleason points out that all active coal operations in Pennsylvania are fully bonded to the cost for DEP to reclaim them, to the tune of more than $1 billion. Despite the operators putting up — and risking — so much of their own fortunes, ESG initiatives inhibiting would-be operators’ abilities to get bank loans, and the fact that operators must have a proven track record to be permitted at all, there is “definitely a lot of regulatory uncertainty” that makes it “more difficult to mine, more expensive, and the [regulations] are constantly changing.

“When efforts to shut down industry outright aren’t accomplished,
they try to kill the industry with the strike of a thousand swords.”

“If you take a step forward,” an operator tells me, “the inspectors just want to push you a step back.”

Pisupati acknowledges there are “some gaps still in knowing how much we have, what we have, and where we have [it],” and that more exploration is needed to find the highest concentrations of critical elements. He says we “definitely need a project like the Manhattan Project to get out of this import-reliance situation.”

We also need to raise awareness to “every walk of life that they are using these rare earth elements in their daily life and to educate them about their importance and dependency [and how extracting them] can revitalize the entire region that is affected by abandoned coal mines,” Pisupati adds.

As for awareness, one coal operator offers this as a starting point: “Any time you have energy, you have to dig something out of the ground,” he says. “But you never see a billboard with a windmill up top and a coal mine underneath saying, ‘We’re getting our rare earths out of here for this windmill!’”

 

 

CO2 Fluxes Are Not Like Cash Flows

Posted on by Ron Clutz

I learned alot from a recent extended discussion at Climate Etc. Causality and Climate responding to a paper Demetris Koutsoyiannis et al. (2023) On Hens, Eggs, Temperatures and CO2: Causal Links in Earth’s Atmosphere.   My previous post on this paper was:

Confirmed: Temperature Drives CO2, not the Reverse

I recommend the discussion thread at climate etc. (on going) as a tutorial for the competing paradigms regarding the CO2 cycle.  I gained clarity from the lead author (a frequent and constructive participant) as well others on the core misunderstanding that has plagued such discussions for decades. Some comments are below in italics with my bolds.

First, note that the paper had a narrowly defined scope:  to demonstrate from available data that changes in atmospheric CO2 lag rather than lead temperature changes.  Because the authors recognized that this finding is contrary to IPCC consensus climate science, appendices were supplied to counter the expected objections crediting human CO2 emissions from hydrocarbons as the main, or sole source of rising CO2 since the Little Ice Age (LIA).  As Koutsoyiannis explained in a summary comment near the end:

Demetris Koutsoyiannis September 29, 2023 at 4:54 pm

I think I have rebutted all the different critiques ON MY PAPERS. I am not going to reply to critiques on any other issues related to the issue of climate. Please make your critiques SPECIFIC, by quoting phrases in my papers that you think are incorrect. And before it, please read the papers.

For example you say:

> And that would be the cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere?

If you read the paper you will see that we write (p. 17): *What is the cause of the modern increase in temperature? Apparently, this question is much more difficult to reply to, as we can no longer attribute everything to any single agent. We do not claim to have the answer to this question, whose study is far beyond the article’s scope. Neither do we believe that mainstream climatic theory, which is focused upon human CO2 emissions as the main cause and regards everything else as feedback of the single main cause, can explain what happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years of changing climate.*

We have proposed a necessary condition for causality, which is time precedence of the cause over the effect. I hope you accept that necessary condition, am I wrong? We make our inference based on this necessary condition. Your numbers make no reference of time succession. When you find a way to test whether the direction in time is reversed, that will be great. But for now, all this looks to me an unproven conjecture. I hope you can excuse me that, being a Greek, I have to stick to Aristotelian logic.

You also say:

> While there is an elephant in the room, human emissions that released twice as much CO2 as measured in the atmosphere…

If this is the elephant, what is (copying from our paper, p. 25), *a total global increase in the respiration rate of ΔR = 31.6 Gt C/year. This rate, which is a result of natural processes, is 3.4 times greater than the CO2 emission by fossil fuel combustion (9.4 Gt C /year including cement production)*.

My Comment: The confounding issue in all this was identified as the mistaken analogy treating CO2 fluxes as though they are cash transactions between bank accounts.  Within that notion, a natural source/sink must net out intakes and releases.  Yet as others commented, geobiologists know that both absorption and release can be increasing or can be decreasing.  The source/sinks function dynamically, not statically as assumed by the analogy.

clydehspencer | September 29, 2023 at 3:07 pm | 

“Our knowledge of net global uptake over this period is good to 15%.”

How do you justify making such an assertion when no one has mentioned what is happening in the Arctic, the NASA observation of ‘greening,’ and the utterly unknown situation of submarine volcanic emissions?

How do you propose to identify and dismiss spurious correlations?

Ferdinand Engelbeen | September 29, 2023 at 4:13 pm |

Clyde as said elsewhere, we do not need any natural flow for the carbon balance: that is exactly known from human emissions minus increase in the atmosphere: that is exactly what nature did in the same year: always more sink than source in the past 60 years…

Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 4:23 am |

“In detail: both the oceans and vegetation are proven, increasing (!) sinks for CO2, thus these two can’t be cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
It really is that simple…”

And ironically, this is exactly where you are wrong. Just because they are increasing as sinks does not mean they cannot be increasing as sources. I think you are too stuck on the idea of a “budget”, it’s a linear view. It’s the “net” thing that is where the misunderstanding is.

The biosphere is indifferent to our contribution. If there is more CO2 available it will expand regardless of where it came from. Temperature increase, particularly in winter, means that more CO2 is released in biodegradation than normal. If it releases more than is fixed during the summer growing season, then atmospheric CO2 levels will increase.

During the growing season, if there is more CO2 available, then the biosphere can grow more vigorously and expand. Some of this is semi-permanently fixed, and some will only fix during the growing season to be available to be released as CO2 during the next winter.

If the humans made no contribution, the atmospheric CO2 would still go up, though perhaps not by as much, just as it did in other warm periods during the holocene. This “budget” idea is what is causing the confusion.

Agnostic October 1, 2023 at 4:02 am 

Ferdinand writes: “If humans are not to blame, what is the “other” source (both oceans and vegetation are increasing net sinks) and where resides all that human CO2?”

The same question has to be asked to explain the high variability of CO2 atmospheric concentration prior to industrialisation. The CO2 had to come from somewhere: during the MWP it was as high as 380-390ppm before dropping to 285ppm. During the Bolling-Allerod CO2 increased to as much as 420ppm while temps were actually cooling, a break in the pattern of Temp leading CO2 which holds over all timescales.

The answer is that the biosphere is massively more complex than you are appreciating. You claim that the biosphere is net sink because our emissions are grater than the amount that atmospheric CO2 is rising, but that thinking is too simplistic. It is likely, almost certain given previous periods of warming, that atmospheric CO2 would have risen anyway, but perhaps by not as much, which is our contribution.

The biosphere is expanding because more CO2 is available and is therefore a source as well as a sink. Were we not contributing our share, it would be a net source.

Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 5:38 am |

“All the variability is in the net sink (not source!) rate of CO2 into nature, while sinks are increasingly negative and temperature is slightly increasing over the same time 60+ years time span…
Thus temperature is NOT the cause of the increase.”

No – this is where you are completely wrong.

The source is ALSO variable. Highly variable. The sinks which you describe as “variable” are ALSO sources, they are interdependent and non-linear in their relationship.

During the growing season, some of the growth fixed via photosynthesis is trapped and some decays during the winter. How much decays is predominantly temperature dependent. The is why you see CO2 follow temperature on ALL timescales that we reliably measure.

Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 5:33 am | 

Processes that release C into the atmosphere (biodegradation) are far more temperature dependent than processes that fix it (photosynthesis). So there is already a systematic imbalance regardless of anything we do. It is not just a linear “budget”.

During cooler periods, the rate at which CO2 is removed is greater than the rate at which it is released, leading to lowering of CO2 in atmosphere such as LIA. During periods of warmth, especially winter, more CO2 is released than is fixed leading to an increase. But the relationship is not linear.

As more CO2 is available, the transient biosphere expands and grows more vigorously. Some is trapped and some is released at the end of the season. How much is released is dependent on warmth (and to a lesser extent moisture in soils).

We hear the biosphere being described as a “net sink” which is growing because humans emit more C than is remaining in the atmosphere. But it is faulty thinking.

If we did not contribute, then atmosCO2 would still go up, making the biosphere a “net source”. That’s because the biosphere expands and contracts depending on how much CO2 is available and how warm it is. The CO2 comes from trapped sources particularly in the soils, released by increased temperatures which is a much larger overall source than human emissions.

IMO, it is better to think of carbon sources and sinks as dynamic reservoirs that are never perfectly in balance and which have a non-linear relationship with each other. We contribute to the source side, but the biosphere can’t tell the difference between man’s CO2 and naturally emitted, so characterising it as “budget” is where the confusion arises. The “budget” is always changing in non-linear interdependent way. It is not fixed.

Agnostic | October 1, 2023 at 7:59 am |

I have read other similar papers that came to the same conclusion, one in particular by statistician. They were adamant that from a statistical POV you cannot claim causality the way round it is traditionally viewed.

I am NO expert on the carbon cycle, by any means. But it has been bone stuck in my head for a long time because I AM interested in paleoclimatological record. Ice core data is what is generally used to show that CO2 levels are at “unprecedented levels”, yet we know that ice core data is unreliable and too low resolution to speak about short intervals of warming of 300 to 400 years which we appear to be in.

High resolution proxies clearly show similar concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
to today, yet that is not put into context. Where did THAT CO2 come from?

The other thing that bothers me is the “budget” approach to CO2 as if there was a fixed amount of C that can be released or absorbed yearly. Yet just the tiniest forays into biodegradation and soil hydrology shows how an incredibly complex and interdependent picture it is, and that’s to say nothing of the oceans.

As usual with climate science, conclusions are made to support a narrative
or a pre-existing conviction and the complexity be damned.

Footnote:  What It Means:  CO2 flows through Dynamic Reservoirs

The other puzzle piece is described by Ed Berry following his peer-reviewed paper Nature Controls the CO2 Increase II.  A summary comment ties his analysis into the above discussion.  Early in the thread the point was made that all CO2 sources are involved in supporting the level of atmospheric concentration at any point in time. Ed Berry made this point  in this way.

He explained that when you look at the flow of carbon dioxide—”flow” meaning the carbon moving from one carbon reservoir to another, i.e., through photosynthesis, the eating of plants, and back out through respiration—a 140 ppm constant level requires a continual inflow of 40 ppm per year of carbon dioxide, because, according to the IPCC, carbon dioxide has a turnover time of 3.5 years (meaning carbon dioxide molecules stay in the atmosphere for about 3 1/2 years).  140 ppm divided by 3.5 is 40 ppm CO2.

“A level of 280 ppm is twice that—80 ppm of inflow. Now, we’re saying that the inflow of human carbon dioxide is one-third of the total. Even IPCC data says, ‘No, human carbon dioxide inflow is about 5 percent to 7 percent of the total carbon dioxide inflow into the atmosphere,’” he said.

[Today’s level of nearly 420 ppm means that 120 ppm of inflow is required annually, or 120 +2 ppm if it is to increase as it has been.  Where does 122 ppm of CO2 come from?  Well, let’s say we can count on 6 ppm of FF CO2 (5%) and  the other 116 being non-human emissions.]

So, to make up for the lack of necessary human-caused carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere, the IPCC claims that instead of having a turnover time of 3.5 years, human CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years.

“The removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence). Depending on the RCP scenario considered, about 15 to 40% of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years. This very long time required by sinks to remove anthropogenic CO2 makes climate change caused by elevated CO2 irreversible on human time scale.” Source:Chapter 6 Working Group 1 AR5

“[The IPCC is] saying that something is different about human carbon dioxide and that it can’t flow as fast out of the atmosphere as natural carbon dioxide,” Mr. Berry said. “Well, IPCC scientists—when they’ve gone through, what, billions of dollars?—should have asked a simple question:

‘Is a human carbon dioxide molecule exactly identical to a natural
carbon dioxide molecule?’ And the answer is yes. Of course!

“Well, if human and natural CO2 molecules are identical, their outflow times must be identical. So, the whole idea where they say it’s in there for hundreds, or thousands, of years, is wrong.”

Footnote: 

A commenter summed up the discussion this way:

Botanist | November 2, 2023 at 9:09 pm |

Until a few weeks ago I’d always thought like Ferdinand. This elegant paradigm (below) now seems so simple and obvious, I’m not sure how I did not see it before reading the Hens paper and the article hereabove and contemplating certain helpful comments hereabove. Am I crazy; this strikes me as genius. Can something so simple be.

” My premise is that nature does not make individual balance per source but works holistically. Hence, my version of the carbon balance is roughly this:

Ins: 4% human, 96% natural
Outs: 0% human, 98% natural.
Atmospheric storage difference: +2%
(so that: Ins = Outs + Atmospheric storage difference)

Balance = Atmospheric storage difference: 2%, of which,
Humans: 2% X 4% = 0.08%
Nature: 2% X 96 % = 1.92%
where 1.92% : 0.08% = 24:1 “