The CO2 link to ocean acidification and 19 'mass extinctions' with CO2 levels we're now heading toward

Here is the third claim listed in the paper above (I cut out some of the middle part as it was just embroidery, you can read it above):

Here is a fuller explanation of this claim from the book:

Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters
by Koonin, Steven E.
ISBN 9781950665792

Figure 2.3 illustrates some of those details. It shows how the amount of heat radiation leaving the top of the atmosphere varies with the radiation’s color (that is, the spectrum of infrared radiation). Were there no atmosphere, the spectrum would correspond to the smooth gray line in the graph, a curve which is described by the basic physics of the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The area under that curve corresponds to the cooling power of the radiation. The lighter, jagged gray line shows what the spectrum would look like with all major greenhouse gases present except CO2 (so with CO2 at 0 ppm). Combined, these gases reduce the radiation’s cooling power by about 12.1 percent. All of the line’s ups and downs arise from the detailed properties of the various greenhouse gas molecules, most importantly water vapor, but also methane and ozone. The solid black line shows a further 7.6 percent reduction in cooling power (increase in insulation) when CO2 is present at 400 ppm (about today’s concentration). Finally, the dashed black line shows an additional 0.8 percent loss of cooling power when the CO2 concentration is raised to 800 ppm, roughly twice what it is today; this change is barely visible in the sides of the large dip. There are two takeaways from this graph. One is the complexity of the spectra—hundreds of thousands of molecular properties, many measured in the laboratory, go into creating these simulated spectra, which agree very well with satellite observations. Second, although the effect of CO2 at today’s concentration is significant (7.6 percent), doubling it doesn’t change things much (an additional 0.8 percent) due to the “painting a black window” effect we’ve already discussed.

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The book citation actually goes back W. Happer the author of the article we are discussing. He is actually a well known expert in this particular field.

Some of the specifics are different between the two sources, which I attribute to language ambiguity and timeframes.

1 - Specifically, the article says current concentrations of CO2 decrease heat radiation to space by about 30% while the book says in similar language that this is 7.6%. I think this is due to a difference in what is included in each calculation… in the article it is advantageous for this percentage to be as large as possible to make the next section seem as small as possible, even trivial… I will leave it to the reader to decide if this is intentional misdirection or just a simple ambiguity.

2 - The article states that the additional reduction in heat radiation of doubling CO2 from 400 to 800 is 1%, the book states that this reduction is 0.8%. I think this is simply a case of different studies done at different times producing slightly different but comparable results.

The last part of article states:

In the book this is stated as “painting a black window” has a smaller affect. I think this should be obvious from the information included above. A change of CO2 from 0ppm to 400ppm reduces heat radiation by 7.6% (per the book) while a change of CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm reduces heat radiation by 0.8% (again per the book).

Now, before you go off on me and call me a climate change denier (or worse), you need to realize that a 0.8% reduction in heat radiation is actually a big deal and agrees, generally, with the heat increases that are expected.

My final say on this article is that generally the actual measurable claims made are accurate. However, the juxtaposition of the 30% decrease in heat radiation (and the possibly misleading description of it) from CO2 concentrations with the additional 1% decrease in the same from higher CO2 levels was an intentional misleading presentation, serving to minimize the impact of that statement.

So, if you read all of this, congratulations, you have a high tolerance for pain :grinning:

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Michael Shellenberger I find very credible and persuasive.

A very good analysis and thank you for tracking the references. What’s your background? Curious.

I also follow Bjørn Lomborg. When impacting the environment (or my immune system :wink:) I prefer to live by the Precautionary Principle since even low probability events can have high impact and there are so many unknowns.

Background… nothing really related to the topics we have been discussing. I like to say that I read a lot, with wide and varied interests.

Speaking of reading and at least tangentially related to this topic, I found the book Otherlands by Thomas Halliday to be a very interesting read. He covers several life forms from 500 million years of geological history in an easy to read yet informative narrative. The professional palaeobiologists among us may find it boring but the rest of us will likely learn a lot. Here is a link to the book:

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds , Halliday, Thomas - Amazon.com

Or like me, you could check it out from your local library.

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An interesting comment on this graphic. " The first “tree” appears during the Devonian period, between 350 and 420 million years ago." That is when you see the dramatic drop in atmospheric CO2.

Another interesting fact is when CO2 went dramatically up at about 250 million years ago there was a mass extinction event associated with it. " Somehow, most of the life on Earth perished in a brief moment of geologic time roughly 250 million years ago. Scientists call it the Permian-Triassic extinction or “the Great Dying”.

these two reports may also be of interest.

Human caused fires may have helped lead to the largest extinction event in the last 60 million years of the Pleistocene megafauna.

" The alarming difference is that temperatures today are rising 10 times faster than they did at the end of the ice age, primarily because of the burning of fossil fuels. This human-caused climate change has contributed to a fivefold increase in fire frequency and intensity and the amount of area burned in the state of California in the past 45 years."

UPI News (msn.com)

Business Insider on who in America has the largest carbon foot print.

Insider (businessinsider.com)

I found a better graphic. Better in that it does not use the wacky ratio scale, instead it has CO2 ppmv and it includes temperatures in Celsius.

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Doesn’t change anything said above, I just think it is a better graphic.

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I don’t know how many are aware of this but there has been a dramatic decrease in insect populations. They are a vital part of ecosystems, and their decline does not bode well as they are the bottom of many food chains. Yet that is only one of many ways they are important to life on the planet with Pollination being another as so many plants have evolved to require insects in their reproductive cycle. Anyway, here is a paper on the topic.

The insect apocalypse, and why it matters (cell.com)

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Graph of temperature anomalies. Note temps were showing signs of slowly cooling up until 1910 and by the mid 1960s have begun to rise steadily by about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

What happens to photosynthesis when it gets too hot?

Basically, at around 116F Photosynthesis from tropical trees shuts down. Temperate trees shut down photosynthesis at similar or a little bit lower temps.

A link to the Biology of Photosynthesis.
What is photosynthesis? - Photosynthesis - Edexcel - GCSE Combined Science Revision - Edexcel - BBC Bitesize

A couple of graphics from the link.
Temperature and rate of Photosynthesis.
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CO2 concentration and rate of Photosynthesis.
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Optimum temperature for photosynthesis is 73.4 F plus or minus 10.8 F. Temperatures over 84.2 F result in less photosynthesis with the process shutting down at temperatures of 116 F.

We aren’t going to get much this afternoon. Heat warnings from noon to 8pm.

Low winds and high temps tomorrow mean the Flying Scot racing may be called off Dang It!

Very encouraging news if implemented in a large enough way to offset ocean acidification and reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere by turning it into baking soda and releasing that into the oceans. It is suggested that to be expanded to the needed scale it should be “made a licensing condition of continuing to sell fossil fuels,” by Myles Allen from the University of Oxford.

Direct air capture (DAC) and sequestration of CO2: Dramatic effect of coordinated Cu(II) onto a chelating weak base ion exchanger | Science Advances

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That’s a faked graph from a Nasif Nahle’s (non-scientist) crank blog. The cited scientists say that the plots are not from their work:

Debunked here:

Happer is not an “expert” in Atmospheric Physics and climate change. He made CO2 lasers.
In that unpublished non peer-reviewed manuscript by Happer & van Wijngaarden from 2020 that Koonin is “citing”, Happer refutes his own argument about “saturation”,
where they say climate sensitivity is around 2.2K to 2.3K (within IPCC range)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf

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Happer’s bad analogy and false claim about “CO2 saturation” is refuted here:

I used to do a lot air quality work as an environmental consultant. The Earth has warmed around 1.5 degrees C and we know this because we can measure it. Concurrently CO2 concentrations have gone from 300 to 400 ppm. Keep in mind that is 0.4 parts per thousand.

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I like the self-referential nature of your reply :slight_smile: You post something on Twitter (or X) with no details and a link that does not work. Then you post a copy of the Twitter posting here as “evidence”.

Well, no matter if the graph is faked or not, the point I was making with the graph stands. Which is, CO2 levels and global temperatures have swung widely over the last 500 million years. To me, this is a non-controversial statement.

Now if you take that fact to try to say that CO2 changes now are unimportant, you are making a mistake. The CO2 levels in the past did impact temperatures but there are many other changes over the last 500 million years that also impacted temperatures. It would be silly to only look at those two items in isolation and try to apply it to today.

You can go to this link to see some of the hundreds or thousands of graphs that show these changes over geologic time:

geologic time scale temperature co2 - Google Search

Some of these are obviously the same (fake?) graph posted on other sites. Others have different sources.

There are two graphs in this article that show that over the last 500 million years CO2 and temperatures have swung around a lot:

A Graphical History of Atmospheric CO2 Levels Over Time | Earth.Org

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Nova recently ran a series on the formation of the planet and how the atmosphere has changed over time and how plants changed it by the addition of oxygen and removal of CO2. They end the series with how humanity is changing it today. Very informative series of shows.

The link works fine. Click on it.

Note that most of the graphs from your Google search are actually fake ones from blogs

Here’s another debunking thread for them