As you can see, as atmospheric CO2 levels have risen, the natural CO2 removal rate has sharply accelerated. (That's a strong negative/stabilizing climate feedback.) sealevel.info/AR6_WG1_Table_…
4/9. Here's the caption, saying that natural removal of carbon from the atmosphere is NOT weakening.
(They should've stopped with the word "No." The rest is a muddled attempt at "spin.")
The AR6 authors did PREDICT a "decline" in the FUTURE, "if" emissions "continue to increase." But it hasn't happened yet.
5/9. What's more, the "decline" which they predicted was NOT for the rate of natural CO2 removals by greening and marine sinks, anyhow. Rather, if you read it carefully, you'll see that that hypothetical "decline" was predicted just for the ratio of natural removals to emissions.
6/9. What's more, their prediction was conditional, depending on what happens with future emissions ("if CO2 emissions continue to increase").
Predictions are cheap. MY prediction is that natural removals of CO2 will continue to accelerate, for as long as CO2 levels rise. (MY prediction is based on scientific evidence, not political spin.)
7/9. The "fraction" which AR6 predicts might decline, someday, does NOT represent anything physical, anyhow. It is one minus the equally unphysical "airborne fraction."
Our emission rate is currently about twice the natural removal rate, so if emissions were halved, the removal "fraction" would be 100%, and the atmospheric CO2 level would plateau. If emissions were cut by more than half then the removal "fraction" would be more than 100%, and the CO2 level would be falling.
8/9. This recent study quantifies the benefits of rising CO2 levels for several major crops.
Their results are toward the high end, but their qualitative conclusion is consistent with many other studies. They reported, "We consistently find a large CO2 fertilization effect: a 1 ppm increase in CO2 equates to a 0.4%, 0.6%, 1% yield increase for corn, soybeans, and wheat, respectively."nber.org/papers/w29320
9/9. If you recall that mankind has raised the average atmospheric CO2 level by 140 ppmv, you'll recognize that those crop yield improvements are ENORMOUS!
BBanana wrote, "Temperature increases have already reduced global yields of major crops."
That's false. It's long been known that warming generally improves agricultural productivity. Here's a CIA study which summarized the relation:
2/10. Fig.7 from that study shows the number of people who could be supported per hectare of arable land, vs. temperature. The 7 curves represent varying precipitation rates. In each case, higher temperatures allow the support of higher populations, due to better crop yields.
3/10. Also, elevated CO2 directly improves crop yields, and mitigates drought impacts. That's helping make famines rare for first time in history.
Those too young to grok how revolutionary that is should count themselves blessed! Famine used to be a scourge comparable to war & disease.
According to NOAA's AGGI chart, over the last 1/3 century CH4 has accounted for just 8.6% of the radiative forcing increase from anthropogenic GHGs. Not 18% or 25%.
That's about 1/10ᵗʰ of the contribution which we get from the ongoing rise in CO2. If that tiny contribution to modest and benign warming worries you, perhaps counseling would help.
Despite the modest uptick in CH4 level over the last 15 years, the rate of rise in CH4's radiative forcing is still much slower than it was 50-60 years ago.
3/4. The relatively sharp rise in CH4 level in the 1960s & 1970s was insufficient to reverse the worrisome 1950s-70s cooling trend.
Here's a clip from CBS TV, in which Walter Cronkite, The Most Trusted Man in America™, reporting:
Hubert Lamb (source for that CBS story) was the founding director of the UEA Climate Research Unit.
Here's a 1974 CIA report, based on the best current science, about the worrisome cooling trend:
Here's an excerpt, from the Summary:
"The western world's leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change… during 50 of the last 60 years the Earth has, on the average, enjoyed the best agricultural climate since the eleventh century… The world is returning to the type of climate which has existed over the last 400 years. That is, the abnormal climate of agricultural-optimum is being replaced by a normal climate of the neo-boreal era. The climate change began in 1960…"
The grim climate to which we were thought to be returning was the Little Ice Age. "Boreal" means cold:
boreal. adj. Relating to or characteristic of the climatic zone south of the Arctic, especially the cold temperate region dominated by taiga and forests of birch, poplar, and conifers…
The global cooling scare was one of the main reasons for the shiny new anti-air-pollution laws governing power plants, in the 1970s. The other main reason was "acid rain." (Note: Unlike "acidified" oceans, which are actually alkaline, acid rain really is acidic.)
1/25. The leading organization promoting the Climate Industry's "climate emergency" PR campaign is the IPCC. It has severe credibility issues. Investigative journalist Donna Laframboise explains some of them in this lecture about the IPCC's 2007 AR4 Report:
(It's 31 minutes but she speaks very clearly, so she's perfectly understandable at 2x speed.)
(Caveat: I've been an IPCC Expert Reviewer on a couple of their assessment reports.)
2/25. It's only gotten worse since then. The IPCC's 2022 AR6 Report explicitly promotes what I call "homeopathic climatology" (TCRE/RCB), which represents an overt rejection of science.
3/25. The TCRE ("Transient Climate Response to cumulative CO2 Emissions") and RCB ("Remaining Carbon Budget") concepts are homeopathy applied to climatology: the belief that the mere memory of a substance is all that's necessary for it to have its effect.
1/13》I remember when @SciAm was a highly respected scientific periodical, rather than a political tabloid that reprinted disinformation like this, from other publications, written by nonscientists.
@sciam 2/13》Back when @SciAm was trustworthy, you could read it to learn about what real scientific research was discovering about a wide variety of topics, including CO2. Here's an excellent Scientific American report — from a century ago: sealevel.info/ScientificAmer…