After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase.
Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.”
Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO2 emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper.
Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the C14 (Carbon-14) specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750.
The specific activity of C14 in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO2, which is devoid of C14, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components.
All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures.
These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil [fuel] component.
We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs.
Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.
h/t Rúnar O.
Read rest at Health Physics
Climate remains the coldest it’s been since multicellular life began nearly 600 million years ago. It remains well within the normal, natural temperature pattern of the ONGOING three million-year-old (so far) Pleistocene Ice Age. The Pleistocene Ice Age is characterized by Milankovitch Eccentricity driven Glacial/Interglacial phases, each pair of which last one hundred thousand years. During the 85 thousand year glacial cold phase, global temperatures drop so much that ice sheets thousands of feet thick accumulate and advance as far south as NYC! And during fifteen thousand year interglacial warm phases permanent ice retreats to today’s current northern latitudes (and similar equivalent latitudes in the southern hemisphere). These climate cycles have a normal, natural 12 degrees C range of temperature! Dwarfing the insignificant influence of 0.04% atmospheric CO2 on the earth’s temperature. Climate today remains well within its natural one hundred thousand year temperature cycle. Milankovitch Eccentricity is caused by the gravitational influence of our solar system which alternately pulls earth’s orbital shape from a warm near circular to a more oblong colder shape and back again every one hundred thousand years. CO2 has NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE. Eight hundred thousand years of ice core data prove that CO2 concentrations are followers of temperature changes – not causes. CO2 LAGS temperature changes. In thirty years of baseless fearmongering, politicians and television “journalists” haven’t even learned that life is entirely composed of little carbon sacks of water called cells. That life was born in CO2 concentrations more than twenty times those of today. That fossil fuel powered civilization has made us the best fed, longest living, most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. That the two basic ingredients of life on earth – of the environment – are CO2 and H2O! Only communist China benefits from this baseless fearmongering of our energy. That’s why they sink so much money into undercutting our confidence in the energy that keeps us warm. And that feeds us and most of the world.
Carbon dioxide emissions from volcanic activity are also devoid of C14, making them indistinguishable from fossil fuel emissions. For years I thought this didn’t matter because I assumed such emissions were constant. However, the book “The Plate Climatology Theory” reports that volcanic activity in Antarctica has been increasing over the past 50 years. This increase inflates the contribution of mankind when C14 is used to estimate what comes from fossil fuels.
Volcanoes might add 1% or 2% of the CO2 increase in the past 170 years,
And slight ocean warming might hac ve added a small percentage.
But almost all the increase of CO2 from 280ppm to 415ppm
can only be explained bu man made CO2 emissions of approximately
_200 ppm, roughly half of which was absorbed by nature.
If you disagree with this, you must explain where the
+200 CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels went,
if not into the troposphere, and what else
would have caused that atmospheric CO2
increase from 280ppm to 415ppm.
There is no other explanation
besides the obvious one
that I have explained
in my comments here.
You don’t know how much CO2 came from volcanoes, you can’t know that. The Earth’s surface is 70+% water, so most of Earth’s volcanic activity is submarine, like Antarctica. How convenient!
Who is to say what concentration of CO2 is bad for Earth? It is a moving part in the carbon cycle. In the past its concentration has been higher and lower. There have been and will be winners and losers from the fluctuations.
Don’t play God.
We can’t know how much volcanoes have contributed to atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, with and estimated 900,000 active under sea volcanoes and vents it is unlikely that it is 1% to 2%. The impact of volcanic activity has been large. It is estimated by geophysicists that only three volcanic eruptions, Indonesia (1883), Alaska (1912) and Iceland (1947), spewed more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all of human activities in our entire history.
The higher level of carbon dioxide is greening the earth. This is one factor that has enhanced agriculture production and has had a big impact on uncultivated vegetation. This can only happen by removing significant CO2 from the atmosphere. Man is probably increasing CO2 levels, but there is a lot more going on than a simple explanation.
The above isn’t that important. What does matter is if carbon dioxide controls the earth’s temperature as the average climate model claims. The empirical data says that it doesn’t. One of the most compelling is that 40% of the warming blamed on man occurred between 1910 and 1941 when the carbon dioxide levels were relatively low and raising very slowly. Yet, the warming pause earlier in this century happened at a time when CO2 level were rising rapidly.
Comments by Steeves, Lewis and “SonnyHill” sound like third-hand descriptions and omit the actual numbers which show the whole of what is going on. Richard Greene provides actual numbers which refute this article. Greene’s comments should be the article, although it is too bad that he allowed his frustration to resort to name calling. I don’t think anyone here is a dimwit, but I think there is insufficient misunderstanding behind the conclusions, including the article’s conclusion regarding the 12% (which Greene nicely shows as grossly understated). Mike318 @ http://www.CO2.Earth
This is an article for climate science illiterates.
The atmosphere had about 300ppm CO2
before man made CO2 emissions
Man made CO2 emissions are estimated at about +200ppm
Nature absorbed 100ppm, of the +200ppm,
and the atmosphere moved up +100ppm,
from 300ppm to 400ppm
That is an increase of about 33%, not 12%.
Dimwit articles like this one do not belong here.
Ichard Greene, It’s the dilution effect that you completely ignore. Our Earth has its own checks and balances. Plus it’s been decades of this bullshit being spewed. Every prediction they’ve ever made has been completely wrong. Climate crises is a retardation of science. It is pseudo science.
It is true every prediction of environmental doom for the past 60 years has been wrong. I point out that fact frequently on my climate science and energy blog. Climate predictions are not real science. They are based on unproven theories and speculation, with a poor track record. There are no data for the future climate, just predictions by people who have failed in their past climate predictions, for over a century.
But the fact that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary cause of the last +100ppm increase of CO2 in the atmosphere has nothing to do with predictions. That is reality. Co2 is a greenhouse gas. More greenhouse gases should impede Earth’s ability to cool itself, by some unknown amount, This affects night time temperatures (TMIN).
Not knowing exactly what CO2 does, one can merely assume all global warming in the past 120 years was caused by CO2, as man made CO2 emissions increased, This worst case assumption would identify CO2 a mild, harmless greenhouse gas. And there has also been mild, harmless global warming in the past 47 years. If the worst case estimate for CO2 adds up to “mild and harmless” warming, that strongly implies adding more CO2 to the atmosphere in the next 47 years would also be “mild and harmless”.
I round CO2 levels to the nearest 100ppm because there are no precise measurements before 1958. The 280ppm claim for the 1800s (pre-man made CO2 emissions) is based on Antarctica ice cores. Not an accurate real time measurement. I round that number to 300ppm . Without rounding, the increase of CO2 from 280ppm in the mid-1899s, to 415ppm today would be an increase of almost 50%..
Down load the Law Dome C CO2 time series, examine the irregularities in depth and then study the use of splining techniques, which is what was used in filtering out depths that show CO2 concentration above a critical standard deviation. In essence, the Law Dome C and other Antarctic CO2 time series are fabrications.
The ice core estimates are rough approximations like all climate reconstructions are. You have no basis for claiming they are fabrications, especially for recent centuries.