Dramatic new findings from two climate science professors suggest that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere follows a rise in temperature rather than coming before it and causing it, throwing into doubt the whole of the current theory of human-driven global warming.
The scientists propose that higher temperatures increase the natural processes of soil respiration and ocean outgassing, and hence boost natural CO2 emissions. If confirmed, the information destroys the so-called ‘settled’ science basis upon which the command-and-control Net Zero political agenda depends.
Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Zbigniew Kundzewicz sequenced the changes in temperatures and CO2 growth rates from 1980 to 2019 from widely available sources, and discovered that CO2 values lagged temperature by about six months. The obvious point is made that in attempting to prove causality – as climate alarmists do by arguing that increases in temperature are the result of increases in human-caused CO2 – cause cannot lag effect.
The period under review is shown by the graph below, which tracks the steady rise in CO2 and not-so-steady increase in global temperature from 1980.
At first glance, both lines are rising and appear to be correlated. But as we have seen in previous Daily Sceptic articles, the UAH satellite record displays the two long pauses that have characterised the recent temperature record. The two professors note that the erratic behaviour of the temperature line contrasts with the smooth trend of CO2. From this graph, the authors suggest it “looks impossible to infer causality”.
The scientists are not the only researchers struggling to find evidence to support the notion that carbon dioxide – human-caused or otherwise – is the global climate thermostat knob. In 2015, a group of scientists led by Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo found a similar monthly lag between CO2 and temperature. Again, using a selection of widely available datasets for the period 1980 to 2011, the researchers found that changes in CO2 always lagged changes in temperature. The lag was around 9-10 months for global surface air temperatures, and about nine months for lower troposphere temperatures.
Discussion of the climate role of CO2 in the atmosphere has largely disappeared in mainstream media, on the spurious grounds that the science is settled. At the BBC, for instance, debate on the subject is more or less banned. Humans only produce 4% of the annual CO2 that enters the atmosphere, and if this is seen to have little effect in changing the climate, the reason for pressing ahead with a ruinous Net Zero policy evaporates. Trillions of dollars for green subsidies, development work and academic grants, along with huge numbers of jobs and countless virtuous opinions and reputations, suggest a full understanding may take a little time.
As we have seen, in many scientific circles the climate role of CO2 is still the subject of active debate. No one doubts that the gas has warming properties, but Professor William Happer of Princeton suggests that CO2 becomes “saturated” once it reaches a certain level. Noting the role of the infrared spectrum, he argues that most, if not all, the heat that is going to be trapped will have already been radiated back by the CO2 molecules evenly distributed in the current atmosphere. Of course, Happer’s research is the subject of argument with other eminent scientists, but it would help explain why so little automatic connection can be detected between CO2 and temperature in the current, historical and palaeoclimate records.
Let us go back in time to the palaeo record and see what evidence there is for connections between CO2 and temperature. In an essay published in 2014 on the climate science site Watts Up With That, reference was made to the seminal paper on the Vostok Ice Core, Petit et al (1999). This examined the chemical signals in an Antarctica ice core representing 422,766 years of snow accumulation, and from this it was concluded that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years. Of course, this suggests that CO2 has little influence on temperature change at these times. The thermostat knob is switched off.
Reading right to left, the above graph shows clearly that the temperature plunge to glacial conditions around 120,000 years ago was not matched by an immediate CO2 fall. There are similar time lags of around 8,000 years in other glacial cycles going back 450,000 years. The essay concluded that geochemical cycles made it inevitable that CO2 and methane will correlate with temperature, but it was “totally invalid” to use this relationship as evidence that CO2 was responsible for forcing the climate.
And finally, let’s look at the record going back to the start of life on Earth.
In this timeframe, the monthly lags in the current record obviously disappear, as do the thousands of years disconnect in the historical ice core evidence. But again, where is the link? Huge variations over millions of years are seen. At the moment, Earth is in a colder period with long-term CO2 denudation. A little more of both might even be helpful.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Postscript: This article was fact-checked by a site called News Wise, which concluded it was “mostly false”. Chris Morrison has responded to that fact check here.
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So true. Identity politics generally has a lot to answer for. Simplistic crap. The Left really has to look at itself.
“Simplistic crap”
… like the right wing agenda that has, over 40 years got us into this current crap as capitalist corruption reaches its apogee. Self examination by the Right might be equally in order – as opposed to the applying the rightist woke absent-without-leave whine of ” ’tweren’t us, Sir’ to every situation … when the fingerprints show otherwise.
The capitalist corruption, as you call it, has gone hand in hand with the Left. It’s corrupt because there are no morals any more, no ethics, no sense of civic duty. That went away with the assault on the Christian religion.
Self examination by the Right is long overdue, mainly with regard to the complete capitulation to the far Left
So, that explains the Tories’ virtually undisguised corruption when it has come to awarding lucrative contracts to their old school friends? It’s all about capitulation to the far left and not going to Church anymore? When was this golden age of of pure as driven snow capitalism? Might it be fair to say that I don’t think you’ve really thought this through?
Yes agree with that too. They’re all as bad as each other really with not a moral backbone among them.
And it’s mostly based on lies and denial of reality.
The last thing the Left will do is look at itself. Its only interest is power. Its only standards are double. Hypocrisy is its byword.
No – the point is that left/right is irrelevant to this utter shit show. We’re in another descriptive dimension.
A pity. Column inches wasted on hobby-horse riding.
Make no mistake – I dislike posturing – labelled as ‘wokeism’ if against other personal prejudices – whether from left (privileged groups countering inequalities by costless and pointless gesture), right (whining incontinently about imagined slights to bovine stupidity and favourite prejudices) or centre (whining about whatever).
But all this is just white noise in the background of politics. This article, because of the hobby horse, rides past the true significance of all this.
This article is a distraction play from those who really led the way on lockdowns.
So why hasn’t the author had the balls to pit his name to this? Giving in to ‘woke-ism’?
Nothing about the internationally co-ordinated response. Nothing about it being Italian ‘lockdown’ that inspired the Ferguson comment ‘we didn’t know we could get away with it in the ‘domocratic’ west’ ( incidentally there is little ‘democratic’ about the current way Italy is governed, nobody voted them into power). Nothing about Big Pharma, nothing about Dorsten and the PCR test. Nothing about that this happened while Trump was in the WH, not the wokeist Dems.
But above all nothing about the continuing amplification of the ‘new normal’ by the introduction of biotech IDs etc.
Ah poor ‘Boris’ &co they are just poodles caught up in this maelstrom of progressiveness. B.S.!
Johnson has always been an opportunist and he has increasingly seen this ‘crisis’ as a great way of covering up the mess his deal at transend has made to trade with the EU and now the risks of bloodshed reemerging in N.Ireland.
Allied of course to the need for him to be seen as the leader of fatuous green policies which would have inevitably required force to inflict on the UK public once they realised the true costs both monetary and to their standard of living.
Sorry Mr Young, I am not buying the hypothesis put forward, although it nicely summarises a lot of contributory factors.
… and, of course, no focus on a major strand : the venal, significance seeking or lazy ‘scientists’ from the disciplines of epidemiology or public health.
Vain, self-important, amoral, devoid of empathy, unable to imagine they might be wrong despite enormous evidence to that effect. Pantsdowns, the lot of them.
“So why hasn’t the author had the balls to pit his name to this?”
Maybe he doesn’t want to be cancelled from his job, and subjected to threats similar to the ones directed at Toby, i.e. having his throat cut.
To include all those other points you raise would take a small booklet, not a single article.
We already are aware of all of those points, but the question still remains as to why and how such deceit as Drosten and the PCR test could take place and not be more firmly challenged. Twenty years ago it probably could have been, but it’s the current political climate that no longer allows it.
The same cancel culture pervades everything, from climate change, video games, Brexit, Trump, you name it. Only one opinion is allowed. All else must be silenced.
There’s a much bigger picture: a global elite with a long-term plan to bring about global government through the Great Reset and to reduce the world population so that they – the fittest – will survive. Safetyism and victim mentality are definitely contributing factors, but also part of the plan to bring about societal collapse and destroy the Judeo-Christian foundation of western society.
It’s a multi faceted phenomenon, underpinned by human weaknesses and character flaws. I am beginning to think we’re forever hanging by a thread and ripe to be pushed over the edge by the next perfect storm, be it the idea of a pointless war or a virus.
What baffles me about it is the sheer futility of it. Apart from a very few who stand to gain, it’s a collective own goal of gigantic proportions – one of the biggest in history. Whether you’re “woke” or “left” or “right” or whatever, the life we’ve ended up with now is shit by any standards, and we’ve gained nothing.
Futility.
Got it in one.
Governments panicked.
Governments imitated Communist China because it was stamping on people’s faces.
Governments found that they enjoyed stamping on people’s faces.
Nothing surprising so far.
Zombies enjoyed having their faces stamped on.
That surprised me.
Maybe it shouldn’t have.
NO – this is completely off track. Sorry Toby and the Russel group epidemiologist, but by putting up a smokescreen article like this, you are in effect assisting the WEF elite members with delivering their dystopian master plan. This article is not worth reading in full. It is no more realistic an explanation than the global panic or the group think hypotheses . It doesn’t stack up when critically analysed from every angle and applied to every policy decision and practical response globally, let alone for the UK. Why continue to ignore the obvious – and now blatant behaviour of the WEF partners? The current situation has been in the planning stages for years. The WEF however, were struggling to overcome the barriers to implementing all the stages of the Great Reset – until the coronavirus pandemic. Now all the steps and individual plans are being implemented in a steady, carefully orchestrated accelerated schedule whilst the conditions to do so are favourable – as Klaus Schwab openly described in his address last winter (early 2020). Since Gates funded a WEF international seminar on planning for a coronavirus pandemic in October 2019 – attended by key representatives from the UK cabinet – it is hardly surprising many have referred to it as a plandemic. Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan virology lab which was working on chimera coronaviruses (why?) through infected workers or faulty drains or another means of an accidental leak, or whether it was released deliberately, it is unlikely us ordinary folk will ever learn the truth. But either way, as the core WEF partners have confirmed, it provided the perfect opportunity to put the Great Reset strategy into practice – and during the emergency legislation and lockdowns, with the propaganda campaign of fear, ‘re-condition’ people to accept a ‘new normal’ and whilst all the emergency legislation was still in place simultaneously bring forward the delivery timescales.
Anyone who has spent months studying the WEF plans and the events unfolding step-by-step will immediately recognise what is being orchestrated – and who are leading and managing this programme. China, Gates, Fauci, the WHO, big tech, big pharma and financial institutions are all heavily involved. Boris is no innocent. He is also a key member of the WEF, as are Hancock, Whitty, Valance, Gove and Van Tam. They have even been speakers at WEF conferences and BJ has been seen wearing a WEF lapel badge on television and has quoted from Klaus Schwab’s book on the Great Reset. Plus it was confirmed on the Gov.UK website in 2019 that the UK had formed a partnership with the WEF to deliver the Fourth Industrial Revolution – which includes digital IDs for every citizen and a Chinese style social credit system.
maybe a less smokescreen story: Newspapers educated pupils like Dr.med.Leyen (current EU leadership) over many years that all kind of infections were hand-related.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/gallery/2020/mar/12/soap-saves-lives-adverts-in-the-guardian-after-the-spanish-flu-outbreak
Dr. Snyder found 2010: „absence of data demonstrating that hand hygiene reduces transmission of influenza“
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/7/1146/838461
Dr. Tedros first diagnose in Feb 20:“Ebola and this are not the same. Ebola is lousy. This is airborne, Corona is airborne” would say that the newspaper were wrong
…. delivering their dystopian master plan more an side effect of long term education by newspapers
*Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan virology lab which was working on chimera coronaviruses (why?)*
The Wuhan BSL4 lab was working on gain-of-function coronaviruses on contract from EcoHealth Alliance, this research was deemed illegal in the west – hence why it was shipped East.
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/
The name you need to focus in on is one Dr. Peter Daszak.
And guess who this ties back to?
This vid outlines some of the detail (though a tad theatrical)
https://youtu.be/dUzrEn8nmFo?t=68
The bigger question accident or deliberate?
Thank you for these links Galene77. Gates and Fauci cropping up yet again was not a surprise. One, or both of them, seem to crop up just about everywhere one looks in connection with the pandemic (or plandemic). 100% not coincidental; and of course they are both core WEF partners. Had not looked into EcoHealth Alliance before. I did notice quite a few WEF partners listed on their website. How on earth people can still ignore or dismiss their part in this I simply cannot understand.
There’s a lot on that ecohealth website – what should we be looking for specifically?
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/corona_und_die_neandertaler
Wokeism only plays a role for that in sofar as it laid the groundwork for some of the necessary preconditions.
Obviously, it has gained in importance and zealousness since.
Others were demographics and here in particular that a majority of people in the West is now living from handouts from the state and low/no interest on government debt.
No, sorry. This is buck-passing for Boris and his henchmen, “We were only doing what the public were clamouring for.” It won’t wash.
It’s an oversimplification, and an error, to ascribe the turn to Lockdown purely to “progressive” poltics.
IMHO, Lockdowns and other NPIs came about due to a positive-reinforcement cycle involving the media, the political establishment, and the scientific community. A cycle that was started at a time when very limited reliable data was available. This data-poor positive reinforcement cycle continues today. We see it, for example, in the decision of Governments and health agencies to curtail the use of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. We see it in the continuation of social-distancing and other restrictions at a time when deaths, hospitalisations, and infections are falling fast.
When European nations, starting with Italy, first went into lockdown in February and March of 2020, it was not widely understood that by far, mortality was concentrated in the 80+ age cohort and those with serious health co-morbidities. This information had not been reported by China. It was not reported from Italy.
It is my contention that if people had understood that most, if not strictly all, of the deaths from covid-19 were going to be amongst people in their 80s and 90s – then there would have been much greater public and political pushback to the scandalous restriction of social and political freedoms.
why not name the billion dollar business from coarse hero (hammer & dance) that advertise to follow Italy instead Japanese lockdownsceptics?
The media – particularly the BBC – clamoured for lockdown and businesses being closed. To me they jointly share the blame with the government and when it became sufficiently obvious that questions needed to be asked they were found massively wanting.
Good article,as far as it goes, thanks Toby.
There has been a lot of pondering the role of “the left” during this disastrous year, but only at Offguardian, left lockdown sceptics, here and one/two other sites.
Much of the left- right thing is used to keep people apart
We need to quickly form up under a wider principle of preserving the essential elements of our freedoms and privacy this will unite many of all political persuasions against the encroaching tyranny.
We need somehow to bring together the popular publicly recognised but disparate voices who’ve been against this agenda but have struggled to sustain their opposition and build on their individual efforts as a movement on social media/internet/leaflets/posters/demos eg the french flash musicians .
Toby , you and Delingpole are much better placed to help start this than us, do you want to spend the rest of your life in a surveillance gulag being injected every year by the state ..
The CCP’s 50 cent army was very active in pushing the idea of lockdowns in the west. By their very numbers they can make it seem like there is a consensus.
The sad fact that the author is scared of revealing his identity says it all.
He may have a doctorate, but he needs to learn how to use paragraphs to make his work readable.
I have a different theory. The approach to covid has all the elements that we have been conditioned to accept in the approach to Climate Change:
This approach is now embedded in our mindset, even for many who can’t be accused of Wokeism.
Very true
The public’s willingness to comply might be partly explained by wokeist indoctrination but the political consensus is due to the G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism that makes all participating countries work in “Lockstep” and driven by whoever funds the “scientists”.
An excellent piece of work and a classic example of why the failure to have epidemiologists on SAGE has cost this country dear. Just exactly why did the Government listen to a mathmatical modelling team, the accuracy of whose previous forecasts had always been miles out, and as a result of their consequent panic throw out the pandemic preparedness strategy. You would almost think that money had crossed palms?
This is the most lucid analysis I’ve read this year of the roots of the madness that has engulfed us.