Essay by Eric Worrall
The Trump obsessed media is still talking about Trump and Elon Musk as they disregard climate issues.
The New Wave of Climate Lies
Misleading, uninformed, or simply confusing statements continue to appear despite an increasingly clear problem.
Pilot Clark Journalist
You can sum up the world these days in just one word: hot.
Severe heatwaves have hit every continent this year, with at least 10 countries recording daily temperatures above 50 degrees in places. Forest fires are burning Unusually large areas of the globe and coral reefs have been affected by the fourth global bleaching event on record.
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But last week, during his X platform chat with Donald Trump, Musk said the climate risk is actually not as high as many people think before offering a confusing explanation for why there is still plenty of time to fix the problem.
If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise from the current average of about 420 parts per million to above 1,000 ppm, “you’re going to start getting headaches and nausea,” he told Trump. But since we’re only adding about 2 ppm CO₂ per year, “we still have plenty of time” and “we don’t need to rush.”
This is the ultimate bullshit. The heat, flooding and fire disasters we are seeing now, coupled with the build-up of CO₂, are already insignificant compared to what would happen if concentrations rose to 1000 ppm.
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Fortunately, we have evidence that the claim that a 1000ppm CO2 world would be a wildfire disaster zone is completely absurd. From the PETM greenhouse world, 5-8C warmer than today, CO2 level is estimated at about 1500ppm
Wildfires and ecosystem change in the Arctic during the Paleocene–Eocene Maximum temperature
Author link open overlay panelElizabeth H. Denis a1Nikolai Pedentchouk bStefan Schouten CDMark Pagani e2Katherine H. Freeman One
Episode 467June 1, 2017, Pages 149-156
Highlights
- •Increased PAH concentrations relative to plant biomarkers indicate increased fire exposure.
- • Angiosperms increased compared to gymnosperm based on biological markers of pollen and plants.
- •Hotter and wetter conditions lead to increased angiosperm vegetation and larger fires.
- •During the PETM in the Arctic, climate-induced ecological changes increased wildfires.
- • Fire may have reduced the impact of increased plant biomass on carbon cycle.
Summary
Fire is an important component of ecosystems at many spatial and temporal scales. Fire can influence vegetation distribution, carbon cycleand climate. The relationship between climate and fire is complex, largely because of the important role of vegetation typeHere, we assess the past regional-scale wildfire-climate relationship. global warming event, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), to understand how vegetation influenced the link between climate and fire occurrence in the Arctic. To document concurrent changes in climate, vegetation, and fire occurrence, we assessed biological markers, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon(PAHs), terpenoids and alkanes, from approximately the PETM at a marine deposition site (IODP site 302, Lomonosov Ridge) in Arctic Ocean.
Biological index, fossiland isotopic evidence from site 302 indicates that terrestrial vegetation changed during the PETM. The abundance of C29 N-alkanes, pollen and leaf-wax ratio N-Alkanes related to diterpenoids all show that the proportional contributions from angiosperms increased vegetation compared to vegetation from gymnosperm. These changes were accompanied by increased moisture transport to the Arctic and higher temperatures, as documented by previously published proxy records. We found that PAH abundances increased relative to total plant biomarkers during the PETM and suggest that Burn rate increased relative to crop yield. The fact that fire frequency or prevalence may increase under wetter Arctic conditions suggests that changes in fire conditions are not simply a function of aridity, as is commonly assumed. Instead, We suggest that climate-induced ecological shifts toward angiosperm-dominated vegetation are responsible for the increase in wildfires. Potential for increased terrestrial plant biomass arising from warm, humid, high CO22 conditions may have been alleviated by biomass burning related to changes in the composition of plant communities.
Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X17301577
Wait, didn’t that study just say wildfires increased in the PETM?
Yes, but read that again. Fires increased, but only in proportion to the change in vegetation. The change in fire risk was due to the PETM’s warmer temperatures and increased CO2 changing the type of vegetation that grew in the Arctic.
Angiosperms = trees and other woody flowering plants. Instead of today’s Arctic tundra, the Arctic of the PETM was covered with trees.
The point is, even if a temperature spike like the PETM does occur, wildfire risk can still be managed by implementing state wildfire mitigation policies south of your current home. There will be no CO2-driven wildfire disaster, even if CO2 levels reach 1000ppm or higher. The only changes to wildfire risk will be driven by changing the types of plants growing and improving growing conditions – all of which can be mitigated by implementing wildfire management practices where such conditions already exist.
Pilita Clark, you are supposed to be a journalist for a responsible financial newspaper. You owe your readers a little research, before publishing wild, “nonsense” claims about global warming.
Trump/Musk interview is available This
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