Existentialism was a philosophy developed by a 20th century French philosopher named John Paul Sartre. It was purposely vague but generally relates to or affirms EXISTENCE. Thus the existential threat posed by the climate delusion, promoted by alarmists, connotes the possibility of the end of mankind.
We know for certain that our atmosphere is made up of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, .9% Argonne, some trace gases and, wait for it, four ten thousands of a % of carbon dioxide. Do you seriously believe that this miniscule volume of life giving gas (the only reason we can inhabit the Earth) is a threat to life as we know it today?
Direct atmospheric CO2 measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. They show a steady rise in CO2 from 314 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 406 ppm in 2017.
The 40% increase from 280 ppm at the end of World War II to 410 ppm in 2019 is widely recognized to be mainly man-made, derived primarily from fossil fuels, including power plants, factories, and automobiles. Are these CO2 levels either unusual or dangerous? Well we know from our fossil record that CO2 levels throughout Earth’s history have averaged more than six times our modern concentrations. We also know that nuclear submarines submerged beneath the ocean for weeks at a time, average 5000 ppm CO2, with no health problem ever reported.
Antarctica has had the longest continuous accumulation of ice. It has provided data going back 800,000 years, while data from Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere gives CO2 data going back to the last interglacial period 128,000 years ago.
Temperature and CO2 levels have varied during this long period, and importantly, temperature changes preceded changes in CO2. In other words, carbon dioxide has NOT driven temperatures for the last 800,000 years
During each glacial advance, CO2 levels dropped to dangerously low concentrations, to below 200 ppm. These low levels were dangerous because the minimum threshold for plant life to exist is 150 ppm, and we nearly reached that “line of death” during our most recent ice age.Not only is rising CO2 not a bad thing, it could save civilization for future generations, centuries and thousands of years into the future.
Patrick Moore the co-founder of Greenpeace, who now battles the scary lies they tell to enrich themselves, believes the day will come when we will be crushing limestone to add more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. He seriously describes this future need because the record shows that going back 140 million years in the fossil record there has been an alarming downward trend toward CO2 starvation.
The forecasters of climate doom say correctly that the current CO2 level has never been as high as today. Well that is only true for the past 800,000 years. They prefer to view the increase of 120 ppm over the past 150 years through the narrow lens of recent geologic time. To properly analyze the current levels we need to put the data into the proper context. During our current geologic period, called the Quaternary, there has existed the lowest average CO2 level in the entire history of the Earth. In the lush vegetative days of the dinosaurs, the CO2 levels stood in excess of 1600 ppm. The average C02 concentration in the preceding 600 million years was more than six times our modern era level.
The combustion of fossil fuels has allowed humanity to increase concentration of this beneficial molecule and perhaps avert an actual CO2 related climate apocalypse. The climate delusion used by alarmists to defeat capitalism and destroy human freedom would set us back centuries into the past, when backbreaking work and shortened life expectancy was a norm.
Carbon dioxide emissions are not an existential threat, but the climate alarmists most assuredly are.
Portions of this article were excerpted with permission of the author of the book “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone, which is recommended for everyone desiring the full story of the climate delusion.