Insufficient Data Drives Gov. Gordon’s Carbon Negative Goal
Gov. Mark Gordon irritated Wyoming conservatives when he told an audience at Harvard University that Wyoming needs to urgently address climate change by going “carbon negative.”
What does it mean to go 'carbon negative' and how do you do it?
Not "net zero," as some states and nations have set as their goal, but below that.
Do we know what net zero is?
How do we go below that?
It turns out that "experts" do not have the data they need to decide what net zero is and the goal may not be achievable.
Britain’s climate watchdog has admitted to insufficient data in their conclusions.
The Brookings Institute recently released a report on the futility of reaching net zero.
Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led the Royal Society study on future energy supply, admitted that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data when it set a goal of net zero.
“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data.
Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s Chief Executive replied,
“Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modeling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”
The Climate Change Committee then admitted that its original recommendations on the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target, were also based on just one year’s worth of data.
The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law. A CCC spokesman said: “We stand by the analysis.”
As for energy production, after they eliminate coal and natural gas, the UK is now realizing that wind and solar will never fill the gap.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that wind turbines would produce less than 10 percent of their potential electricity output. That's far less than was promised.
The state of Wyoming is capturing and sequestering one of the most important gasses necessary for life on this planet.
For some reason, this gas is being treated as a harmful pollutant. It will be captured and stored underground in the hopes that it never escapes into the atmosphere.
Once again there is other data worth considering.
About 70% of the Earth’s post-1980s vegetative greening trend has been driven by CO2 fertilization. More greening has offset or reversed 29% of recent anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Greening also has a net cooling effect on surface temperatures.
Earlier this year we highlighted a study (Haverd et al., 2020) asserting rising CO2 and warming are the dominant drivers of Earth’s strong post-1980s greening trend. This greening expands Earth’s carbon sink so profoundly that by 2100 the greening of the Earth will offset 17 years (equivalent) of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
A 17% offset over 80 years, or net CO2 emissions reversal, would easily supplant the effectiveness of Paris climate accord CO2 mitigation policies.
According to a study by a major university, CO2 makes the planet greener by promoting plant growth. The more plants and the bigger they are, the less the planet warms.
Another NASA study shows CO2 is greening the Earth.
New Paper: CO2 Rise + Warming Are 91% Responsible For The Earth’s Accelerated Greening Trend Since 1990.
Satellite observations indicate the Earth has become much greener in recent decades. According to scientists, the overwhelming majority of the “significant increases in tropical forests and the forests of North America, Eurasia, and China” since the early 1990s can be attributed to the combination of CO2 fertilization (56%) and climate change (35%).
The scientist that has conducted these studies and the institutions they work for is not a minority nor are they minor.
Let's have a look at a major publication that recently wrote about CO2 and how it causes the greening of our planet.
A new peer-reviewed study in Science Mag. reveals the greening of the Earth by rising CO2 levels
The vegetation-climate loop
Just as terrestrial plant biomass is growing in response to increasing atmospheric CO2, climate change, and other anthropogenic influences, so is climate affected by those variations in vegetation. Forzieri et al. used satellite observations to analyze how changes in leaf area index (LAI), a measure of vegetation density, have influenced the terrestrial energy balance and local climates over the past several decades. An increase in LAI has helped to warm boreal zones through a reduction of surface albedo and to cool arid regions of the southern hemisphere by increasing surface evaporation. Furthermore, more densely vegetated areas displayed a greater capacity to mitigate the impact of rapid climate fluctuations on the surface energy budget.Science, this issue p. 1180
The term “carbon pollution” is a deliberate, ambiguous, disingenuous term, designed to mislead people into thinking carbon dioxide is pollution. It is used by the environmentalists to confuse the environmental impacts of CO2 emissions with the impact of the emissions of unwanted waste products of combustion. The burning of carbon-based fuels (fossil fuels - coal, oil, natural gas - and biofuels and biomass) converts the carbon in the fuels to carbon dioxide (CO2), which is an odorless invisible gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet. (ICECAP).
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Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods
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