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POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Climate Change Danger – Truth or Misinformation?

A Commentary By Brian C. Joondeph

Rasmussen Reports asked voters and found, “Most American voters want more domestic oil and gas production even though about half believe climate change has reached dangerous levels.”

This means half of likely U.S. voters don’t believe it to be an existential threat, a split verdict reflective of the current electorate.

What about the causes? “Among voters who believe the earth is experiencing climate change, 49% think humans are the primary driver of climate change, while 10% say climate change is mainly from natural causes, and 41% believe both humans and natural causes are involved.”

No one will argue that the climate is changing. We have had ice ages burying the upper Midwest under a mile-thick sheet of ice, the planet cooling enough to create these massive glaciers, with subsequent warming and melting.

Palm trees and camels, now dotting the hot equatorial regions of the planet, once grew and lived in the ice-free arctic. This was millions of years before humans walked the Earth, a time when there was no “man” to create man-made global warming. The modern form of humans only appeared 200,000 years ago. Yet the climate changed long before humans existed or had any influence on the climate.

Perhaps the Earth’s climate is a bit more complicated than the climate models used today suggest.

Today we are treated to “hottest day” stories during our Indian summer.

The Denver Post exclaims, “Mile High City ties 132-year-old high-temperature record.” Does the Denver Post know if there was a warmer late September Denver day in the 1700s? Or the 700s? Or 2700 BC? Or 27 million BC?

When describing planetary phenomena, a much longer time frame measurement is needed. One hundred years is a blink of an eye in the Earth’s history.

What if we looked at a longer time frame, say 485 million years?

The Washington Post surprisingly did that. Here’s their headline from a few weeks ago, “Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now.”

Researchers reconstructed global mean surface temperature using data assimilation, integrating geological data with climate model simulations. They discovered that “the Earth’s temperature has varied more dynamically than previously thought.”

 

 

Screenshot Washington Post and Science

 

This was based on a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious journal Science.

In the graph above, we are now in a small warming blip from the coldest planetary temperature in half a billion years. Today’s global temperature is low, last seen 300 million years ago.

A close-up of this blip shows the planet heating up over the past 20,000 years, almost all of that time devoid of human-induced warming activity. Remember that automobiles and commercial air travel are barely 100 years old. And even with the tiny rise, temperatures are still well below those of the past half-billion years.

It is the blip that climate warriors focus on – 20,000 years – ignoring the preceding 485 million years.

 

Screenshot Washington Post and Science

 

What about CO2, supposedly dooming the planet?

The CO2 Coalition notes that over the past 140 million years, CO2 levels have fallen to dangerously low levels. Current levels are within 30 parts per million (ppm) of the “line of death”, the limit for plant survival. Once CO2 is below 150 ppm, plant life, and animal life, cease to exist.

  

Screenshot CO2 Coalition

 

Notably, CO2 levels have been steadily declining over the past 140 million years. During that same time, in the top graph above, temperatures fluctuated significantly, not at all in correlation with CO2 levels.

What were CO2 levels before 140 million years ago? Around 300 million years ago, CO2 levels were quite low, near the survival threshold. During that same period, the Earth experienced the Karoo Ice Age. Is that coincidental? Given present CO2 levels, are we headed toward another ice age?

  

Screenshot Nelson, et al, Scientific Research

 

Despite CO2 levels approaching the death zone, there is a concerted effort to reduce CO2 further, through government or Bill Gates’ efforts. That seems like pouring gasoline on a fire. Will killing life on Earth save Earth?

How does that work?

The bottom line is that Planet Earth is currently in a long and deep cold period starting 50 million years ago. Small upward blips in the steady decline are normal, including the one we are in now. The current rise has far to go, meaning 20°C higher to be near planetary highs over the past half billion years.

CO2 levels correlate poorly, if at all, to global temperatures, as noted above. Given that CO2 is plant food, and subsequently animal food, and that we are currently at the lowest CO2 levels in 140 million years, efforts at further lowering of CO2 levels are an existential threat to life on Earth. Yet this is the goal of Western governments and environmentalists.

The climate is indeed changing. It always has and always will. Temperatures are likely to rise from their current 500 million year low regardless of what Bill Gates, John Kerry, Greta Thunberg, or any world government agency says or does.

These people have the hubris to believe they influence forces beyond their comprehension. If so, then they should have mitigated Hurricane Helene which devastated Western North Carolina. Or Hurricane Milton bearing down on Tampa, Florida.

In their attempts at regulation and tinkering with Mother Nature, they may inadvertently be destroying all that they are attempting to save. Unless that’s part of the plan.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer.

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See Other Commentaries by Brian C. Joondeph.

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