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So why is a journal on radiation safety publishing a work on climate change? Because an examination of the ratios in radioactive carbon isotopes can reveal a lot about the sources of atmospheric carbon. C14 is useful in radiometric dating of organic matter; biologists, paleontologists, and archeologists have known this for decades. But it turns out that C-14, along with the other isotopes, C12 and C13, are useful in distinguishing anthropogenic carbon from naturally occurring carbon. Health Physics has published the research of University of Massachusetts Lowell physicists Kenneth Skrabel, George Chabot, and Clayton French on the topic, and their results are… interesting. But the study is heavy and takes a bit of unpacking.

https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Fulltext/2022/02000/World_Atmospheric_CO2,_Its_14C_Specific_Activity,.2.aspx //

Here’s the interesting bit from the abstract:

These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil 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. //

In other words, the narrative that human-created carbon is driving climate change is not supported by the evidence; the sun, as one might guess, has much more influence, and drastic action in the form of “very costly remedial actions” are not necessary.

I encourage everyone who reads this to go read the entire journal article. It’s long, it’s a bit tedious, as these kinds of journal articles tend to be, and there is a lot of number-crunching and explaining how the observations drive through to the conclusions. But it’s important to understand that this is how actual science is done. This is the kind of science you never see discussed much outside of the journals in which it’s presented, not only because it’s tedious and difficult for lay people to get through, but because it doesn’t fit the Left’s climate change narrative.

First, the paper concludes 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.”

The premise of this argument is incorrect and indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the causal link between anthropogenic emissions and rising atmospheric CO2. The fact that atmospheric CO2 has been rising at only about half the rate of anthropogenic emissions establishes that the natural environment is a net carbon sink and has been actively opposing the rise for at least the last 60 y. Hence, we know that anthropogenic emissions, predominantly from fossil fuel combustion and land use change, involve more than sufficient carbon to entirely explain the post-industrial rise (Canadell et al. 2021). //

Hence, even though individual CO2 molecules coming from fossil fuel emissions will cycle out of the atmosphere on a timescale of a few years, anthropogenic emissions have led to an enhancement in atmospheric CO2 that will have an adjustment timescale of a century or more. As many detailed carbon cycle studies have shown, anthropogenic emissions certainly are the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2, and there are multiple lines of evidence that support this conclusion1 (Prentice et al. 2001). Also, the adjustment timescale is a century or longer, meaning that this enhancement in atmospheric CO2 will persist for a very long time (Ciais et al. 2013). //

Second, throughout the paper the authors have (1) failed to cite numerous related and relevant earlier publications in this field and (2) demonstrated a lack of fundamental understanding of biogeochemical carbon cycle processes. For example: ///

Thus, what has already been emitted will take centuries to stabilize, therefore it is too late to repair the damage and the best we can do is be prepared to mitigate the effects, notably by securing inexpensive inexhaustible energy sources.

Health Physics 122(2):p 291-305, February 2022. | DOI: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485

These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil 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.
[...]
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.