“Net Zero by 2050”-Activists Stumped by New Evidence Showing No Link Between CO2 & Temperature Over Last 2.7 million Years

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The climate science world (the “settled science” division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago.

Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a small 20 ppm variation recorded for the 2.7-million-year period. during which there were multiple glaciation periods

In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period.

Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial temperature increases appear to have occurred with very minor changes in ‘greenhouse’ gas concentrations, ppms. This revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.

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Activists had assumed CO2 was around 400 ppm about 2.7 million years ago, a convenient mark that has been used to explain the subsequent glaciation and a CO2 decrease to 250 ppm due to decreased flora.

Due to the recently published paper, based on ice-core data, this explanation has become more problematic. The paper notes natural climate variation has occurred with the temperature changes.

The title of the paper, produced by 17 America-based scientists, was enough to set alarm bells ringing in the ‘settled science” community: ‘Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past three million years’

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COMMENTARY BY THE NET-ZERO COMMUNITY

A related paper examining ocean heat content derived from the ice core record was also published.

Study lead author Julia Marks-Peterson noted: “We were a bit surprised. If correct, the findings may suggest that even small changes in greenhouse gas levels could trigger major shifts in climate.”

Carrie Lear, Professor of Past Climates and Earth System Changes at Cardiff University, claimed that the papers “don’t rewrite the role of CO2, they underline how sensitive the climate system is… that is why today’s rapid CO2 rise is so alarming”. She totally ignores any natural variations.

She says, even if CO2 movements are minimal, probably within the margin of measurement error, these small CO2 changes are still responsible for large variations in temperature.

Therefore, the laws of climate science are ‘settled’, i.e., if the CO2 ppm is rising, falling or generally stable, it is almost wholly responsible for large movements in global temperature.

Under this rather shaky assumption, humans must stop burning hydrocarbons and return to a neo-Malthusian pre-industrial age.

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Quoted in New Scientist magazine, Tim Naish, Professor of Earth Science at Victoria University in New Zealand, said it was “way too early to thrown the baby out with the bathwater”.

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The latest research paper was published in Nature.

It gives a snapshot from ancient Antarctica ‘blue’ ice drilled in the Allan Hills area.

It looks back further in time past the usual 800,000 ice core records.

The key finding is that over the last 2.7 million years, when sea levels decreased up to 120 meter, and 1 to 2 km of ice covered much of the Northern Hemisphere, the level of the so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases remained remarkably stable.

For the first time, the work has pushed the direct gas measurements back into the late Pliocene era.

Over the last 2.7 million years moving into the Pleistocene, global temperatures showed a long-term cooling trend of several degree C. This cooling trend was periodically interrupted by large temperature oscillations.

Temperatures between glaciation periods, such as during the current Holocene, increase by 5 C and more.

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Critics seeking to downplay ice core evidence often suggest it is too imprecise to provide a wholly accurate record of gas levels and temperature.

However, it is accurate enough to give a broad cyclical insight. Ice cores remain the source of some of the best data we have on the past climate. It is undoubtedly more accurate than most proxy evidence from millions of years ago.

But whatever the evidence used, it is hard to detect any obvious and continuous link between CO2 and temperature across the entire geological record going back 600 million years to the start of abundant life on Earth, when CO2 ppms were much higher than at present..

Certainly, none to justify the political notion that humans control the world climate thermostat by burning hydrocarbons.

In fact the evidence is so slim that Les Hatton, Emeritus Professor in Computer Science at Kingston University, was recently able to determine from ice core records that 100-year rises of 1.1 C in the current interglacial, (meaning warm periods between glaciation periods) which started about 20,000 years ago, have occurred in one in six centuries , with or without any burning of fossil fuels.

Going back 150,000 years, the frequency was around one in six to one in twenty centuries.

These findings suggest, during recent times, the minor warming of the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Present Warm period are entirely natural. These warm periods were separated by the cold Dark Age Period and cold Little Ice Age Period.

All these periods have nothing to do with burning fossil fuels.