‘Pure junk science’

Researchers challenge the narrative on CO2 and warming correlation.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock

By Katie Spence, The Epoch Times

Each year from 2023 to 2030, climate change sustainable development goals will cost every person in economies such as the United States $2,026, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. In lower-income economies, the per-person annual cost ranges from $332 to $1,864.

In total, the global price tag comes to about $5.5 trillion per year.

The trillions of dollars being poured into new initiatives stem from the goals set by the United Nations’ Paris Agreement’s legally binding international treaty to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions” in the hope of maintaining a temperature of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

But most climate scientists say, CO2 isn’t the culprit in the first place.

“CO2 does not cause global warming. Global warming causes more CO2,” said Edwin Berry, a theoretical physicist and certified consulting meteorologist. He called Royal Society’s position on CO2 “pure junk science.”

Ian Clark, emeritus professor for the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Ottawa, agreed that if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the Earth would continue warming—but not because of CO2.

He said that contrary to popular opinion, temperature doesn’t follow CO2—instead, CO2 follows temperature, which, itself, is due to solar activity.

Temperature and CO2

One of Clark’s primary areas of research is paleoclimatology (the study of climate conditions using indirect records such as tree ring data, ice cores, and other proxy records), and in particular, Arctic paleohydrogeology, which is the study of the Earth’s water throughout history. “During the ice ages, we had great temperature variations, and this has to do with, not straight-up solar activity, but the amount of solar activity that is hitting the Earth at certain important latitudes, all caused by celestial events,” Clark said. “The Earth, in our solar system, is moving around and being jostled. And we have different orbiting patterns that affect solar input, and that creates ice ages and interglacial periods—which we’re in now. And CO2 tracks that. So, we’ll see enormous temperature changes, going from ice ages to interglacials, and CO2 gets very low during ice ages and very high during interglacials.

“And that gives the appearance that CO2 is driving the climate, but it’s actually following. It lags by about 800 years.”

Clark said that during ice ages, and particularly the past 10,000 years, scientists have a fairly good idea of the temperature, thanks to proxy records. He said those records show that the Medieval Warm Period was likely much warmer than today, and agriculture and civilization flourished.

But the Little Ice Age followed that from the 1400s to 1800s. “And that’s when we had difficulty with agriculture,” Clark said. “The Thames froze over. We have all sorts of recollections about how cold, and some would say miserable, it was back then. But then it started warming up again. So, about every 1,000 years or so, we seem to have these fluctuations. This is due to solar activity, and that’s where we see the importance of the sun, which is the ultimate source of energy beyond geothermal and nuclear energy. Solar drives climate.”

Another peer-reviewed study, by scientist William Jackson, examined the relationship between CO2 levels and temperature over the past 425 million years.

Jackson is a distinguished research and emeritus professor for the department of chemistry at UC–Davis who specializes in understanding the role that molecules such as CO2, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide play in planetary atmospheres.

His paper, published in 2017, found that “changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not cause temperature change in the ancient climate.”

Inflow and outflow

CO2 flows from the atmosphere into plants through photosynthesis and soil through decomposition, is absorbed by the oceans, and is then released through respiration, evaporation, and fossil fuel combustion. The entire process is called the carbon cycle.

Moreover, Berry said that once CO2 in the atmosphere increases to a certain level, nature automatically increases the outflow.

Berry said the premise that humans are solely responsible for increasing CO2 is problematic.

According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since 1750, CO2 concentration has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) to more than 420 ppm, and the IPCC claims that this increase is anthropogenic, or caused by humans.

“Current concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 [methane] far exceed pre-industrial values found in polar ice core records of atmospheric composition dating back 650,000 years,” the IPCC states. “Multiple lines of evidence confirm that the post-industrial rise in these gases does not stem from natural mechanisms. … Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and from the effects of land use change on plant and soil carbon are the primary sources of increased atmospheric CO2.”

Berry called the IPCC’s statement “totally garbage.”

“I used the IPCC’s own carbon cycle data, which IPCC says is accurate to about 20 percent,” he said. “The model doesn’t give humans producing 140 ppm. It comes out closer to 30 ppm. Which essentially means the IPCC is wrong.”

Berry said there’s no scientific basis for the claim that a “certain amount of carbon dioxide in the air causes a certain amount of temperature increase. They say we have to reduce (CO2) to 350 ppm to cool it down to where temperature was a while ago? There’s no physics to that.”

Climate dictated by sun

“If we completely cut out emissions, CO2 would stop rising at its current rate,” Clark said. “But it would probably continue to rise to a certain point, and then it could come down. But that would be driven by temperature.”

Clark said that in different parts of the world and at different times of the year, CO2 fluctuates “between 15 and 20 percent,” and that’s driven by the temperature of the seasons. “If we start having cooler summers and colder winters, those fluctuations would start driving CO2 further down. But overall, climate is going to do whatever the sun dictates”

In addition to not affecting temperature, Clark said the attempts to reduce CO2 are dangerous because of the anticipated effect on plants. “C4 plants, like corn, evolved in response to the declining CO2 in the atmosphere. So, they’re a relative latecomer to our biosphere and reflect the danger of decreasing CO2”.

A majority of plants, such as trees, wheat, and rice, are what’s known as C3 plants, which thrive at higher CO2 levels of 800 to 1500 ppm.

Clark said one of the benefits of increasing CO2 is improved global grain yields and the general greening of the planet. “Anybody who’s a climate realist recognizes that the money we’re spending on mitigation—where we think that we are turning back the CO2 thermostat or trying to turn back to the thermostat and save the world 1.5 degrees of warming—knows that it’s a fantasy. There’s no way we will affect climate with what we’re doing.”