Cultivated and wild vegetation breathes in far more CO2 (and breathes out oxygen) than mankind emits – the entire “net zero” narrative is bogus

Let’s get the ball rolling with this fun fact (from Brave AI):

“Whales and Large Mammals: In marine ecosystems, whales and other large animals fertilize phytoplankton, which captures approximately 37 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. This process helps remove CO2 from the atmosphere and may also influence cloud formation and sunlight reflection.”

Now put that in the context of offshore wind turbines that decimate whale populations and pollute the oceans with constant noise. I bet this fun fact did not make it into any “environmental impact assessment”.

Now, as you read on, consider that plantations of solar panels and forests of onshore wind turbines are built on, mostly, arable land or are built by chopping down forests to make room for these abominations – all done with vast taxpayer subsidies and charging high prices that are, in effect, a form of rationing.

Here’s the sources of CO2 emissions – which may be totally bogus on the upside or the downside.

From here:

CO₂ emissions - Our World in Data

The US and EU have been reducing emissions – most of this (almost all ad then some) comes from China. The West reduces CO2 consumption by taxing (rationing) for costly, ugly and inefficient wind and solar, whilst India and China benefit from selling cheaper goods made with cheap hydrocarbon fuels (“fossil fuels” – since when has a gas been a fossil?

Here is an article I posted a little while ago, showing that 3 trillion trees on planet earth absorb more than twice the emissions in 2022 – 75 billion tonnes of CO2 absorbed against those 37 billion tonnes emitted by man.

Quick reminder – there are 3 trillion trees on the planet – each tree absorbs 25 kg of CO2 a year= 75 billion tonnes a year – mankind emits 35 billion tonnes of CO2 - so what’s the problem?

Kep in mind that CO2 makes up 0.04% of the air and the “net zero” measures are intended to restrict that to 0.05% - as if that would made any difference to global average temperatures. There is no analysis of the “benefit” to the West of spending 75 trillion bucks (Janet Yellen estimate of 3 trillion a year for 25 years) - or what difference any temperature change would make to anything. Man has lived in areas with temperatures ranging from close to zero to 40 degrees centigrade (100 degrees Fahrenheit) – an increase of one degree in a global average would hardly be noticeable or even unwelcome.

Most of the increase in measured temperatures is driven by temperature increase overnight, in towns and cities! Note that the total surface area of the planet is a little less than 200 million square miles.

In the table below, mankind occupies around 80 million hectares (cropland and grazing land units are in billions of hectares) = a little over 300.000 square miles - or just .0.15% of the Earth’s total surface area.

It may be that crops don’t absorb as much as grass but leave that aside for now and make the simplifying assumption that the absorption by grass or cereal crops is the same.

We have seen how the sycophants preaching their faux science religion of “net zero”. The high priests of this scientific quackery do not comment on the absorption of CO2 by trees or plants or whales/large sea mammals.

Here’s a back pf the envelope calculation of CO2 absorbed by “Cropland and Grazing” land. “Cropland and Grazing”.in the above table totals 4.8 billion hectares = around 18.5 million square miles?

Brave AI has this to say:

“The search results highlight that grasslands, particularly in warm and dry climates, could grow faster as CO2 levels rise, according to a long-term ecological field experiment in Minnesota (Reich et al., 2018). This finding runs counter to long-established ideas about how plants will respond to increased CO2 levels.”

Uh huh, I am so shocked!

“The snippet from “Soil carbon sequestration in pastures” mentions a sequestration rate of 1 metric ton CO2/acre/year (0.3 ton C/acre/year) for pasture establishment, as part of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) carbon credit program. This rate is specific to new pasture establishment and does not provide a general rate for existing pastures.”

2,780 acres (one square mile) × 0.66 metric tons CO2/acre/year ≈ 1,823 metric tons CO2 per year per square mile.

“In conclusion, while we cannot provide an exact value, a rough estimate for the CO2 absorption rate for one square mile of pasture could be around 1,823 metric tons per year, assuming an average sequestration rate of 0.66 metric tons CO2/acre/year. However, this estimate should be treated as a rough approximation and not used for precise calculations or decision-making.”

A rough approximation is fine for our “back of the envelope” purposes. So, let’s multiply those 1,800 tonnes of CO2 absorbed per quare mile per year of pastureland by the 18.5 million square mils of “Cropland and Grazing”.

1,800 tons of absorbed CO2 ex 18.5 million square miles = 33.3 billion tonnes of CO2 absorbed by “Cropland and Grazing”.

We can compare that to the 75 billion tonnes absorbed by trees and the 37 billon tonnes emitted by mankind (and the 3 billion tonnes that whales help out with via their body processes!

Bottom line: nature absorbs almost three times more than mankind emits – over 100 billion tonnes absorbed by nature v 37 billion tonnes emitted by mankind.

Incidentally, an average human being emits one kg of CO2 a day = around 3 billion tonnes a year has a coincidental symmetry with the amount whales cause to be absorbed!

To close, here is a cuter provided by MIT:

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-earth-naturally-absorb

“The planet naturally releases and absorbs far more carbon dioxide than humans emit by burning fossil fuels. The problem is that human activities have thrown the Earth’s carbon cycle out of balance.”

“The Earth’s natural carbon cycle moves a staggering amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) around our planet, says Daniel Rothman, MIT professor of geophysics. Some parts of the planet, such as the oceans and forests, absorb carbon dioxide and store it for hundreds or thousands of years. These are called natural carbon sinks. Meanwhile, natural sources of CO₂ such as undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents release carbon. Altogether the planet absorbs and emits around 100 billion metric tons of carbon through this natural cycle every year, Rothman says.”

“That's equivalent to over 350 billion tons of CO₂. (Scientists often measure the carbon cycle in terms of the weight of carbon atoms, not whole molecules of carbon dioxide, because the carbon has the same weight no matter what form it takes as it moves between plants, ocean, atmosphere, and other parts of the natural world.)”

Ots more in that article about carb cycles running to thousands or millions of years and how humans burning “fossil fuels” does not allow the carbon cycle to “catch-up and cope”.

Seems to me that we have a problem than could be solved by planting billions of trees, rather than spending trillions on useless renewable energy.

It would be good to see how past levels of much higher CO2 levels were reduced to the current very ow levels by vegetation – including forests ad jungles (and whales).

Onwards!!!

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