More Research Undermines Climate Consensus
What’s at stake is a threat of punishing all humans (except elitists)
around the globe for what may be a natural phenomenon.
As scientific papers appear that cast doubt on the climate consensus, CEH occasionally points them out as illustrations about politics, ethics, and the philosophy of science. If scientists can become victims of groupthink in one field, they can do so in other fields like evolution.
Keep in mind that the issue here is not whether the climate is warming, but whether humans are responsible for it. Notice that all the sources below come from pro-warmist secular journals and news sites.
Climate change tipping points: back to the drawing table (Utrecht University, Oct 7, 2021). Groupthink is simplistic. Scientists need the courage to examine complex issues and not settle for simplistic memes, no matter how popular.
We regularly hear warnings that climate change may lead to ‘tipping points’: irreversible situations where savanna can quickly change into desert, or the warm gulf stream current can simply stop flowing. These cautions often refer to spatial patterns as early-warning signals of tipping points. An international team of ecologists and mathematicians has studied these patterns and come to a surprising conclusion. “Yes, we need to do everything we can to stop climate change”, the authors said in full agreement with the recent IPCC report. “But the earth is much more resilient than previously thought. The concept of tipping points is too simple.” The scientists have recently published their work in the authoritative journal Science.
CO₂ shortage: why a chemical problem could mean more empty shelves (The Conversation). Mark Lorch at the University of Hull brings some reason back to fix the simplistic belief that all carbon dioxide is bad. The UK needs more, he argues, not less!
As far as the environment goes, carbon dioxide is probably public enemy number one. This makes it all the more ironic that the UK is currently suffering from a shortage of the gas, which experts warn will affect a variety of industries, most notably food and drink.
In the right setting, CO₂ is an extremely useful gas. When added to beverages it gives them their fizz. Trap it in high pressure bubbles in sweets and you get popping candy. Compress it in a cylinder and you have a fire extinguisher. Freeze it and you produce dry ice which is used to keep medical materials (including COVID vaccines) chilled during transport.
Most CO2 from Australia’s megafires has been offset by algal blooms (New Scientist). Reporter Alice Klein shares a surprising finding: the earth can naturally deal with some sources of carbon dioxide.
Most of the carbon dioxide released by Australia’s extreme wildfires of 2019-2020 has already been sucked out of the atmosphere by giant ocean algal blooms that were seeded by the nutrient-rich ash, a surprising new study suggests – though it is unclear how long this carbon capture will last….
The latest study suggests that marine algal blooms may be another tool that nature can use to capture wildfire emissions, says Pep Canadell at CSIRO, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It shows a very nice connection between the land and the ocean and how the system tries to balance things out,” he says.
Klein dare not give the impression that the climate consensus is wrong, so she leaves enough doubt in the natural balancing act to keep the consensus safe. Still, what other tools does nature have to balance things out? This one was a surprise.
Antarctic seal numbers rose and fell with climate over 50,000 years (New Scientist). Can humans be blamed for natural cycles that were taking place long before the industrial revolution? Are climate scientists underestimating the resilience of the biosphere to climate change? All of them admit that there have been wild climate oscillations in the past. To maintain the consensus in the face of evidence like this, they try to argue that humans are causing climate change so fast that animals lack the time to “evolve” adaptations. That’s a rescue device, not data.
Colorado’s legal cannabis farms emit more carbon than its coal mines (New Scientist). Here’s an article that might pit liberals against liberals. Most of them are against coal mines because of global warming concerns. Many of them also are for marijuana legalization. Will the climate consensus folks be willing to admit that “legal” cannabis farms need to be terminated because they, too, are contributing to global warming? Colorado’s legal cannabis farms are emitting more CO2 than its coal mines! If they wish to abolish coal mining, must be fair. Logically, they should go after the bigger target first.
“The emissions that come from growing 1 ounce, depending on where it’s grown in the US, is about the same as burning 7 to 16 gallons of gasoline,” says [Hailey] Summers [Colorado State University]….
The carbon footprint of the cannabis industry is even larger than this study indicates, says Evan Mills, formerly at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, as the team didn’t look at emissions associated with storage and processing.
Pre-Columbian fire management and control of climate-driven floodwaters over 3,500 years in southwestern Amazonia (PNAS, Duncan et al., Oct 5, 2021). Food for thought: humans were altering landscapes due to climate change for thousands of years before oil was discovered as fuel.
Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness (PNAS, Fletcher et al., Oct 5, 2021). Climate activists would have everybody dump their cars and homes and live in mud huts. Modern civilization is destroying the ecology, they insist. They envision a pristine wilderness life as proposed by Rousseau and the transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau. Read this analysis that comes to an opposite conclusion: “wilderness is an inapproprite and dehumanizing construct,” they say. Imagine that!
The environmental crises currently gripping the Earth have been codified in a new proposed geological epoch: the Anthropocene. This epoch, according to the Anthropocene Working Group, began in the mid-20th century and reflects the “great acceleration” that began with industrialization in Europe [J. Zalasiewicz et al., Anthropocene 19, 55–60 (2017)]. Ironically, European ideals of protecting a pristine “wilderness,” free from the damaging role of humans, is still often heralded as the antidote to this human-induced crisis [J. E. M. Watson et al., Nature, 563, 27–30 (2018)]. Despite decades of critical engagement by Indigenous and non-Indigenous observers, large international nongovernmental organizations, philanthropists, global institutions, and nation-states continue to uphold the notion of pristine landscapes as wilderness in conservation ideals and practices. In doing so, dominant global conservation policy and public perceptions still fail to recognize that Indigenous and local peoples have long valued, used, and shaped “high-value” biodiverse landscapes. Moreover, the exclusion of people from many of these places under the guise of wilderness protection has degraded their ecological condition and is hastening the demise of a number of highly valued systems. Rather than denying Indigenous and local peoples’ agency, access rights, and knowledge in conserving their territories, we draw upon a series of case studies to argue that wilderness is an inappropriate and dehumanizing construct, and that Indigenous and community conservation areas must be legally recognized and supported to enable socially just, empowering, and sustainable conservation across scale.
Meanwhile, myths and heroes parade by for consensus propaganda. PNAS on Oct 6th gave a very positive profile of Michael E. Mann, the NASA scientist who most notably sounded an alarm about anthropogenic global warming with his “hockey stick graph.” No questions allowed (cf. 2016 Creation.com article by Jake Hebert).
We just think that people should know these things. If readers wish to continue holding their opinions about climate change, let them do it on the basis of balanced knowledge based on evidence, not on simplistic notions or groupthink. Fair enough?