"At Ease folks"

 

Twitter soothes, there's no anthropocene at all in the shaping of the global climate, "David" [whose Twitter account reveals to be a rabid hater of Islam] instructs us:  

Do the Younger Dryas Impact Theorists know about this? So where are the effects of their cometary-winter and consequent civilational collapse and great extinctions on this chart? If it happened, its not in this schematic picture of long cycles in ANTARTICA.

This map, that David uses originates from material disseminated by "The CO2 Coalition" (registered address an office suite in Prosperity Ave Fairfax, VA 22031-4968, USA). This is an advocacy organization and non-profit think tank based in Trump's USA that promotes the view that carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuels are beneficial to the Earth and the economy. It was established in 2015 as a successor organization to the now-defunct George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank known for casting doubt on mainstream climate science. Its stated mission is use selectively-presented material "to educate policymakers and the public about the positive contributions of carbon dioxide to life and agriculture, arguing against mandated emission reductions and questioning climate models". The organization has received funding from energy industry interests, fossil fuel executives, and conservative foundations that oppose environmental regulations.

The group's membership is listed here (with mugshots)., the ultimate appeal-to-authority. The group's roster includes roughly 200 members, they are overwhelmingly drawn from the engineering field, but also hard sciences (physicists, atmospheric physicists, engineers, meteorologists, and mathematicians together with various researchers who challenge mainstream consensus on human-caused climate change) and the energy sector (including geologists and geophysicists, many of whom have career backgrounds in petroleum, coal, or mineral exploration). Tellingly, there are no professional archaeologists or prehistorians listed among the members or experts of the CO2 Coalition.

Even though they lack specialists in human prehistory or archaeology, the CO2 Coalition frequently publishes material regarding the "prehistoric record". They do this by selecting paleoclimatological data in isolation from the archaeological record of human societies. They often cite periods from millions of years ago (such as the Cambrian or Mesozoic epochs) to argue that something or other thrived on Earth when carbon dioxide levels were thousands of parts per million higher than they are today. I wonder if they'd have liked to have lived a decent civilised life on such a planet.

For example in the landscape of the Jurassic, not a lot of crops can be farmed in these conditions. If we today have problems with urban foxes (and in Warsaw, boars and elk) just imagine a large sauropod rummaging through the rubbish bins. 

The vast majority of climate scientists and major scientific organizations dispute the group's assertions, categorizing its messaging as climate disinformation or denial.

Reuters Fact Check: 'Chart of historical CO2 levels misleading, overlooks human-driven increase' January 2, 2024