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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.
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.
