There’s been great news that Earth has been greening, and more greening means more photosynthesis, which is the foundation of all food webs. This means more resilient ecosystems. But, the enemies of climate truth want you to believe rising CO2 is killing plants and creating deadly tipping points. NASA posted this illustration showing from 1982 to 2009, using a leaf area index, that the planet was benefiting from a persistent and widespread increase in the growing season. Up to 50% of the global vegetated area had increased its leaf area, and scientists determined 70% of that greening was due to CO2’s fertilization effects, which benefits are reverberating throughout entire ecosystems. In contrast, just 4% of the globe showed decreasing vegetation, or browning.

Now, justifiably, Jordan Peterson told his 5 million followers that rising CO2 has been a great benefit to our world’s ecosystems. CO2 is essential for plants, but as a result of his political heresy, Peterson became a target of the climate crisis thought police and the bogus fact-checking by Rosh, who is intent on convincing you the greening trend was stopped and the climate crisis remains. 

But greening benefits have not been restricted to land plants. Between 1998 and 2018, scientists determined the Arctic Ocean’s plankton had also increased the ocean’s primary production by 57%. More food for fish and seals means more food for polar bears, contributing to the observed increasing bear populations. Such thriving ecosystems make ordinary thinking people mistrust doomsday narratives like Greta Thunberg’s rant that ecosystems are collapsing and people and animals are dying.

So, to support Greta’s fears and counteract any wrong thinking from greening’s good news, publicity stunts around the world organized people dressed in white lab coats proclaiming “the science is clear, there is a climate crisis.” Such contradictory evidence and narratives gravely affect people vulnerable to delusional disorders, making them unable to know what’s real and what is imagined. Before, only lone wackos told us the planet’s end is near, and now, thanks to organized media campaigns, elementary school children are taught our world is dying. Hordes of older people cry we have only 12 years to save the planet. They convince our children with delusions that the Earth is on fire, oceans are boiling, and that they will die from climate change.

So, how can so many people believe doomsday politics in a greening world? This is where the climate crisis thought police intervene to ensure you embrace their catastrophic version of reality, so that you will act the way they want us to, supposedly to save the planet. Rosh Salgado D’Arcy is getting his PhD in climate communications. His tweets, Tik Toks, and videos denigrate critical thinking skeptics as deniers. He reveals that a university degree in climate communications is really a euphemism for the biased training of climate crisis thought police, mastering PhD levels of Orwellian doublespeak. Rosh wants you to believe CO2’s observed benefits were fleeting and can’t be trusted, that rising CO2 only has a net negative effect on the future. But fact-checking Rosh reveals his deception; in Orwellian pig logic, all science is equal, but some science is more equal than others.

Climate communicators don’t promote research which, when its facts debunk a good climate crisis narrative. So, a 2019 study by Winkler that determined 40% of the Earth’s natural vegetation still shows significant increasing trends in leaf area. Rosh doesn’t communicate those results. 

However, Rosh eagerly communicates shaky conclusions by Chen 2022 that support his doomsday forecast, as if that is the only imagined reality people should ever believe. W. Rosh highlights Chen’s claim that greening has reversed across 90% of the global vegetated areas since the year 2000. In contrast to Winkler’s 40%, Chen claims greening only continues in just 10% of the global vegetated areas due to a warming tipping point. Rosh backs that imagined reality up with a Scientific American article by The Washington Post, well-known alarmist journalist Chelsea Harvey, that also promotes Chen’s meme that the greening stopped 20 years ago.

Rosh dishonestly ignores that Chen’s 2022 study presents very contradictory results, so your view of reality solely depends on which graph you want to embrace to determine trends in leaf area. Results from three different satellite databases and models were used. Using the AVHRR database and linear regression statistic, Chen’s results contradicted Chen’s conclusions, showing increased greening has not stopped but has continued since the year 2000, with peak greening at the study’s conclusion in 2018. I highlighted their gray trend line with red. Their second database, designated GLASS, also showed peak greening in 2018. Likewise, a linear regression determined the greening trend has continued since the year 2000. 

However, by using different statistical models that look for assumed turning points, Chen argued that since the late 1990s, the Earth was browning, despite the most recent increase in greening. Chen’s browning trend is highlighted by my blue line. The third database used by Chen 2022, labeled LAI3g, diverges from the other two databases, with its outlier data for leaf area dramatically dropping off in the last few years. Still, linear regressions show a slight overall rising trend in the Earth’s greening. But Chen’s use of LAI3g data presents other serious problems. The original 2016 study promoting the Earth’s greening trend and CO2’s fertilization effect, they also use the same LAI3g database. However, while the 2016 showed peak greening around 2010 and 2011, Chen’s version suspiciously moves the greening peak back to the 1990s. Here’s the green arrows for comparison. By that sleight of hand, Chen’s 20-year browning trend was created, yet Rosh never communicates these scientific problems to the public.

So why would Rosh and Chelsea Harvey emphasize the dubious science of Chen 2022? Apparently, it was the best support for their climate crisis narratives. Chen justified his exaggerated browning and, I quote, “on the inhibitive effects of excessive optimal temperatures,” which sounds like too much of a good thing. They also emphasized increased drying out of the land. So Rosh finishes his so-called fact check of greening and Jordan Peterson by proclaiming his climate belief that the net effect of rising CO2 is bad for plants. To that end, he regurgitates the fabricated meme that CO2 has increased the intensity of heat waves, even though that requires Rosh to ignore EPA data showing, in truth, observed heat waves were worse in the 1930s, with no increasing trend. 

Rosh’s false narrative also suggested rising CO2 is causing greater intensity of rainfall and droughts, but scientists have found only 6% of the world has experienced any significant decrease in rainfall (the orange areas), and most of that decrease happens over the oceans. The remaining reduced areas of rainfall partially explain the local areas of browning. 

So, for pushing false realities, increasing people’s delusional disorders, and for uncritically pushing the party line that demonizes CO2, despite the Earth’s greening and greater resilience, Rosh wins our Enemy of Truth award. So, when you see his climate tweets or TikTok, realize it’s just Rosh’s hogwash. 

Lahaina Fire Tragedy: Undeniable Proof that Alarmist Climate Scientist Michael Mann is Misinforming the Public About a Climate Crisis!

 

Undeniable Proof that Alarmist Climate Scientist Michael Mann is Misinforming the Public About a Climate Crisis!

Recently the ambulance-chasing commentator for a DemocracyNow video highlighted the tragic Lahaina fire by opening with “100 deaths and likely far more and linked to the climate crisis” suggesting the fire was was due to climate change drought.

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BzIeQg9R7M)

For proof, she interviewed Michael Mann who was a major force in initiating the climate crisis meme decades ago. Accordingly, Michael Mann reinforced her fear mongering link between fires and climate change, stating climate change increased a naturally occurring pressure gradient causing high winds that “interacted with epic drought”. His first big lie was blaming an epic drought. My attached illustrations present data for Maui County from the US Drought Monitor for the recent 8 years. Unlike Mann, Data doesn’t have a biased opinion. An internet link is provided which includes the longer time series showing how Maui’s droughts oscillate every 4 to 6 years.

Please notice Maui‘s droughts are also seasonal. White and yellow spaces represent times of no drought, typically seen during the rainy season from December to February. Extreme and Exceptional droughts (perhaps Mann’s epic drought?) are the dark reds. The website is interactive, allowing you to see exactly what percentage of Maui County was in drought on any day for 23 years. My redlines represent 4 dates linked to the bottom row of four boxes showing the percentages of Maui County with each classification of drought intensity for that day.

My blue box highlights May 16, 2023. Notice there were zero droughts and no abnormally dry conditions. Red boxes represent similar dates as the Lahaina fire on August 8th. Maui’s rainless period typically lasts from about May 25 to end of July, so early August is typically dry. Yet there were no Extreme or Exceptional droughts on August 8, 2023. Only 15.9% of Maui experienced severe drought, while 64% experienced no droughts at all. Hmmmm, so what was Alarmist Mike talking about?

Clearly, Maui droughts are due to localized moisture conditions. Maui County is just 1,161 square miles, about the size of the small state of Rhode Island. When just 185 square miles experienced severe drought, you need to be brainwashed to believe global warming and evaporation caused Mann’s not so epic drought. Furthermore, Lahaina is naturally dry, situated on the leeward side of Maui’s mountains that wring out the moisture carried by the trade winds. Only 15” of rain fall in Lahaina each year compared to 300” on the mountains to the east.

Finally, the invasive grasslands that carried the deadly fire into Lahaina are dead in August and only require a half day of dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s ridiculous to blame a hundred years of CO2 global warming for the abundance of invasive grasses that dry in one day. But Alarmist Mike never mentioned that fact. Fortunately, several honest research papers have warned Maui residents that they must manage the abandon sugar cane and pineapple fields to eliminate that build-up of fire fuel by invasive grasses. Unfortunately, governments did not act on their science.

Mann’s second big error of omission abused his typical half-truths to suggest the climate crisis caused a bigger pressure gradient that brought abnormally high winds. Being farther north than Hawaiian (the big island ), Maui is affected by stronger northern trade winds that intensify as the normal high-pressure system strengthens each summer. Maui’s topography further intensifies those winds through the mountain valleys. Strong downslope wind events reaching 80 to 100 mph every 8-12 years have "demolished buildings, overturned large power transmission line towers, and uprooted trees." Once or twice a year strong but more moderate winds occur. During the fire, 30 to 40 mph winds with gusts up yo 67 mph fanned the flames. These winds got a special name, the Lahaina Winds. Locals also call them "Lehua winds" after the red blossoms of the ʻōhiʻa lehua tree that shower the landscape during such events. The Lehua winds have been officially reported in the 1995 "A Natural History of the Hawaiian Islands" and in 1985 research reports. Even the http://maui-vacation-expert.com writes about these Violent Winds on Maui.

Ninety-eight percent of Maui’s fires are started by human carelessness. Their extent is fueled by bad landscape management. Nonetheless Mann blames natural climate dynamics for this tragedy. It is like blaming the ocean for a man’s drowning, when his poor seamanship capsized his boat, and he didn’t bring a life jacket. But Mann will keep repeating such climate exaggerations until he gets dumb politicians to only accept his bogus opinions. 

Beware people!

How CO2 Starvation and Plate Tectonics Caused the Greatest extinctions on Earth, the Permian

 

This is the transcript for the video 

"How CO2 Starvation & Plate Tectonics Caused the Greatest Mass Extinction, the Permian Great Dying"

available at https://youtu.be/89imeYT_shs

Welcome back everyone.

This video will explore the wealth of evidence suggesting that the combination of CO2 starvation and plate tectonics caused the greatest extinctions on earth collectively known as the end Permian extinction or the Great Dying.

The end-Permian marked the transition from 300 million years of Paleozoic plant and animal dominance and the resetting of earth's evolutionary trajectory, towards our modern fauna.

The Permian extinctions represented a loss of 57% of all biological families, 83% of all genera, 81%of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species in existence in the end Permian’s last million years.

Coinciding with these Permian extinctions was the decline of abundant CO2 concentrations since the Ordovician period to the stressful low concentrations in the Permian.

For the first time in earth's history, CO2 concentrations fell below 1000 ppm, the concentration that supports maximum photosynthesis productivity.

While plants suffered from low CO2, land vertebrate extinctions were largely a result of oxygen's dramatic roller coaster ride that crashed in the Permian.

It is essential to first understand how changes in CO2 concentrations affect photosynthesis and plant productivity.

The key productivity enzyme, Rubisco, grabs a CO2 molecule and then shuttles it down a metabolic pathway to produce the sugars and carbohydrates essential for all life.

Today various versions of Rubisco are saturated when CO2 reaches 1000 ppm thus maximizing photosynthetic production.

Our current atmospheric concentrations are only 40% of the optimum. For that reason, modern commercial greenhouses raise CO2 to 1000 ppm for maximum crop yields.

During pre-industrial times of the Little Ice Age, CO2 concentrations fell to 280 ppm and evidence shows during that time ocean productivity was much lower than today.

If CO2 concentrations fall below 150 ppm, then photosynthesis can stop completely. So, policies to sequester and lower CO2 must be very careful not to approach this deadly level.

There are many competing theories regards the causes of the massive Permian extinctions, but scientists are nowhere near a consensus.

Click-bait media such as the NY Times have been obsessed only with theories blaming warming temperatures. They then segue those theories into fearful narratives about extinction threats from modern global warming.

However, many researchers have pointed to the competition for the declining CO2, that resulted in severely reduced photosynthesis, the collapse of primary productivity and a significant malfunction of the global food webs. Evidence is rapidly accumulating to support their conclusions.

During the Ordovician with CO2 concentrations 5 times greater than the saturation level, newly evolving photosynthesizing species were not limited by competition for CO2. Thus, the greatest phytoplankton diversity developed then.

By the Permian, CO2 concentrations fell to a stressfully low 200 ppm and very few new species appeared.

There is a strong correlation with origination of new Paleozoic phytoplankton species (illustrated in green) and the concentration of CO2 (seen on the right).

During the great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, the greatest abundance of newly evolved phytoplankton species correlated with high CO2 concentrations. New species typically also suffer higher extinction rates (illustrated in red) as they evolved to survive in niches that are still in flux.

As CO2 concentrations plummeted during the Devonian when land plants competed for and sequestered more CO2, fewer new marine phytoplankton species evolved, and extinctions increased.

By the end Carboniferous and early Permian periods, virtually no new species appeared as CO2 concentrations fell dangerously close to levels at which photosynthesis could no longer be supported.

As a result, much of the green algae clades that had dominated the Paleozoic oceans died off, although this clade also provided the ancestors for land plants.

Phytoplankton from the red clades with more efficient photosynthesis, rose to dominance later in the age of dinosaurs and still dominate ocean primary productivity today.

When CO2 concentrations reached their lowest levels ever in the early Permian, phytoplankton fossils became extremely rare and the Permian experienced what scientists call a "phytoplankton blackout."

So why the Permian blackout?

Biased by the last mass extinction event at the end of the cretaceous when the earth was struck by an asteroid, researchers often search for a single devastating event, like an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption to explain what happened during the end Permian. However, there is a growing scientific belief that the Permian extinctions were more gradual and caused by a protracted decline in environmental conditions that slowly reduced the earth's biodiversity and thus reduced the probability of new species evolving that can adapt to changing conditions.

This notion of a protracted extinction was discussed in the 2021 paper "dead clades walking". A clade is a group of organisms that evolved from a common ancestor. Multiple minor extinction events can gradually reduce a clade’s biodiversity and its resilience, so that the clade is doomed to extinction several million years later.

Clearly a mass extinction does not require an asteroid. The gradual reduction in phytoplankton and photosynthesis can collapse food webs and result in major extinctions that, in the sparse fossil record, are incorrectly interpreted as a relatively rapid extinction event.

The media likes to emphasize the earth's 5 great mass extinctions. But several previous minor extinctions have all contributed to dead clades walking, clades that finally went extinct during the Permian mass extinction.

The first so-called great mass extinction happened during the Ordovician just after the great biodiversity event. Associated with the Ordovician icehouse, 61% of marine life disappeared and mostly culled many of the new species that had recently evolved in a previous warmer climate.

The late Devonian mass extinction was more disruptive, involving the loss of entire carbonate reef ecosystems that had dominated the early Paleozoic oceans. However, many researchers now believe that the end Devonian extinctions were simply the last of up to 7 protracted minor extinction events during a time when the colonization of the continents by land plants was rapidly depleting CO2 concentrations and dramatically reducing phytoplankton biodiversity.

The beginning of another glacial period during the mid-carboniferous caused 14-39% of the marine genera to go extinct.

The carboniferous rainforest collapse driven by drying continents and extremely low CO2 concentrations is considered to be only a minor extinction event, yet it totally altered tropical ecosystems and marked the peak in atmospheric oxygen before oxygen plummeted during the Permian.

Between 7 and 17 million years before the end Permian mass extinction, between 35 & 47% of marine invertebrate genera went extinct as well as nearly 80% of land vertebrates.

Those previous extinction events reduced biodiversity and support beliefs that the end per main mass extinction event was likely the culmination of dead clades walking.

The end Triassic and end cretaceous mass extinctions are the last two of the great extinctions but will not be examined here.

By sequestering CO2 and raising oxygen concentrations, photosynthesis paved the way for its own demise by amplifying photorespiration which greatly reduces photosynthesis in both marine and land plants.

The key enzyme Rubisco first evolved when CO2 was abundant and oxygen scarce. Thus, under those conditions Rubisco could be sloppy about discriminating between CO2 and oxygen yet still be productive.

As oxygen concentrations increased and CO2 decreased throughout the Paleozoic, Rubisco increasingly grabbed oxygen instead of CO2 initiating destructive photorespiration that reduces plant productivity.

Laboratory experiments under current oxygen levels found when CO2 concentrations are as low as 220 ppm, plant biomass production is reduced by 50% and 30% of that reduced productivity was due to photorespiration. When CO2 was reduced to 150 ppm, productivity was reduced by 92%.

For ocean phytoplankton, reduced CO2 is even more detrimental. When CO2 diffuses into the ocean most molecules immediately react with water creating 3 forms of inorganic carbon. CO2, bicarbonate, and carbonate ions. (Left graph) bicarbonate ions now constitute over 90% of the ocean's inorganic carbon, but rubisco can only use CO2 molecules.

Furthermore, as CO2 is depleted ocean pH rises (seen in right graph). And ocean pH controls how the inorganic carbon is proportioned between more useable CO2 and bicarbonate ions.

When CO2 falls to 200 ppm, ocean pH rises to 8.5 and the amount of available CO2 approaches zero.

To survive the negative effects of reduced CO2, phytoplankton have evolved CO2 concentrating mechanisms that increase the internal CO2 concentration.

Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolved the ability to import bicarbonate ions and shuttle them into a carboxysome where an enzyme converts bicarbonate ions into CO2 while in the proximity of Rubisco.

Algae evolved similar mechanisms with pyrenoids. Without a carbon concentrating mechanism, Paleozoic phytoplankton species experienced limited growth.

All modern phytoplankton have developed various CO2 concentrating mechanisms to survive in today's low CO2 world.

Experimental phytoplankton strains with dysfunctional CO2 concentrating mechanism just cannot survive.

As CO2 has declined over the last 20 million years several clades of land plants (yet still a small percentage of all species) have evolved a similar CO2 concentrating mechanism known as c4 photosynthesis.

In the upper sunlit euphotic zone, phytoplankton generate an abundance of dissolved organic matter and sinking particulate matter.

That organic matter sustains an abundance of marine life in the complex food webs of the dark twilight zone.

Today's oceans contain as much dissolved organic matter as exists in the earth's terrestrial ecosystems.

Several scientists had questioned the reliability of the phytoplankton blackout data because robust invertebrate communities persisted in the fossil record for longer times despite crashes in phytoplankton species.

However, awareness of the bacterial loop, first published in 1983, has altered scientific thinking about ocean food webs. Before 1983, it was widely believed that only phytoplankton could directly sustain the zooplankton, and benthic animals.

However, it is now understood that the bacterial loop recycles dissolved organic matter and thus can maintain a substantial food web until the dissolved organic matter is depleted.

However, unlike oxygen generating phytoplankton, the bacterial loop consumes oxygen and expands the oxygen minimum zones which coincide with the many deadly anoxic events of the Permian.

The complex interactions between, disappearing phytoplankton, cyanobacteria and bacterial loops resulted in the extinction of various Permian marine animals in various niches at different times.

Looking more closely at the stages of the Permian, begining with the ending of the Paleozoic ice age there were large losses in biodiversity with major extinctions during the earliest Permian stages.

Ammonoids had been declining for the Permian’s' first 30 million years with many going extinct 17 million years before the end pemican extinction.

By the Capitanian stage, 75% of the Permian coral families became extinct as well as 82% of coral species.

By the end Capitanian stage, 7-10 million years before the end Permian, 35 to 47% of all marine invertebrate genera had gone extinct. Many researchers now include the Capitanian extinctions as one of the earth's 6 great mass extinctions and separate it from the end Permian. The Capitanian extinctions happened in a cool climate and before the rapid rise in CO2 and the warming that some blame for causing the end Permian extinctions.

On land, North American coal deposits disappeared in the early Permian after the carboniferous rainforest collapsed.

Stressful atmospheric CO2 hovered between 150 and 700 ppm during the late carboniferous.

The lowest calculated values of 100 ppm would have been lethal for many Permian plant species and correlates with the disappearance of coal deposits.

Both laboratory experiments and paleontological evidence show most plant species respond to low CO2 concentrations by producing more stomata to increase CO2 diffusion into the plant.

However more stomata increase water loss and make the Permian plants more vulnerable to the increasing dryness throughout Pangea’s formation. As a result, minor plant extinctions happened throughout the Permian, starting with the Carboniferous Tropical Rainforest Collapse.

The towering lycopsid rainforest trees went extinct leaving only related diminutive species requiring less carbon, some of which have survived until today and are frequently used in terrariums.

As moisture requiring species were extirpated and drought tolerant species increased, food chains were gravely disrupted resulting in the mid-Permian Olson extinctions.

By the Roadian stage 45% of the plant species had gone extinct in the Chinese micro-continents. And by the Capitanian 56% had gone extinct.

Declining biodiversity reduces the probability of new species evolving that would otherwise balance out natural background extinctions.

The formation of Pangea had a negative effect on biodiversity. Pangea removed unique niches from its converging island-like micro-continents. Studies of modern island biology have demonstrated how only a few species are genetically capable of producing a radiation of new species, and only when vacant niches are available.

The "oldest" existing volcanic Hawaiian island, Kauai, emerged about 5 million years ago which is about the time of the arrival of the ancestor of Hawaii’s honey creepers. Since then, one ancestor gave rise to at least 12 unique species, each evolving varied beaks to exploit Hawaii’s unique vegetation.

Of the hundreds of continental vagrant species that ever arrived on the Hawaiian Islands, only a few remained and they only evolved small changes in size or color. But even fewer possessed flexible genomes that allowed successful speciation that could exploit unfamiliar but available niches.

Likewise, the ancestor of the Galapagos finches arrived about 2 million years ago on the volcanic islands and radiated into at least 14 unique species.

During the early Paleozoic, in the Ordovician, many of today's continental land masses were just a multitude of separate large volcanic islands or micro-continents. Islands provided more coastlines with unique coastal niches for marine species.

There were also more abundant shallow seas that readily recycled critical nutrients that would otherwise be sequestered in the deeper ocean.

The convergence of those Ordovician micro-continents into the fully united single continent of Pangea during the Permian, reduced coastlines, and the areal extent of shallow seas.

Pangea's formation also provided connectivity that allowed more competitive generalist species to invade and eradicate species living in previously unique niches of isolated islands. The loss of productive shallow seas exterminated the least productive species within those habitats.

And the loss of coastlines reduced the flow of water vapor from the ocean to the inland. As Pangea consolidated, the continental interiors dried and inland species that had adapted to previous wetter climates became the first to go extinct, like the lycopsid trees of the carboniferous rain forest.

However, species on the islands of north and south China persisted for millions of years later.

The drivers and timing of terrestrial vertebrate extinctions often differed from ocean extinctions. However, the ultimate drivers were still CO2 starvation and Pangea’s formation.

As plants colonized the land, global CO2 was further reduced to near lethal levels for algae by the end of the carboniferous, while oxygen levels rapidly increased to the highest levels ever in the earth's history, benefiting greater animal speciation.

The abundance of oxygen enabled an increase in terrestrial biodiversity as the more aquatic species could venture further onto the land and survive as sufficient oxygen simply diffused through their moist skin or via other forms of primitive breathing. The legacy of these early evolutionary experiments is still seen in amphibian and reptile species that survive today.

Lungless salamanders still totally rely on simple diffusion through their skin for uptake of oxygen (orange bars) and removal of CO2 (green bars). Many frogs and salamanders have aquatic larvae that breathe in water with gills, then metamorphose to air breathing adults with moist skin and primitive lungs ventilated by constant throat flutters.

Despite better evolved breathing mechanisms, many reptiles still supplement their oxygen via diffusion through their skin.

However, oxygen concentrations plummeted during the Permian as the phytoplankton blackout, the rainforest collapse, and Pangea’s switch to less productive vegetation in drier conditions, had dramatically reduced the photosynthetic production of oxygen. Different clades of land vertebrates that had recently evolved in a climate of abundant oxygen, could not compete with species that had evolved more efficient breathing.

Insects rely on passive diffusion for breathing. The high oxygen concentrations enabled the evolution of the earth's biggest insects and centipedes during the carboniferous. however, those giant insects were the first to go extinct as oxygen levels plummeted during the Permian. In fact, it was the only time our earth had ever experienced the mass extinction of insect clades.

Because true amphibian and reptiles had not evolved yet, and the varied characteristics of Permian vertebrates often blurred the line between reptile and amphibian, many Permian vertebrates are best referred to as just tetrapods (4- leggeds) or amniotes if they no longer needed to lay their eggs in water.

One clade of amphibian-like animals, the lespospondyls, appeared in the carboniferous but were extinct by the mid Permian.

Another clade of amphibian-like tetrapods also evolved in the carboniferous

And some evolved reptile-like characteristics as well. While some species also went extinct by the mid Permian, others survived into the age of dinosaurs.

Synapsids were reptile-like animals whose surviving species gave rise to mammals.

The pelycosaurs were sysnapsids that dominated the early Permian but went extinct by the mid-Permian.

The dinocephalians were synapsids that replaced the pelycosaurs. But they went extinct by the Permian’s end Capitanian stage.

Diapsid clades replaced the synapsids in the mid-Permian. This clade's more versatile genetics withstood the end-Permian extinctions and enabled the Mesozoic evolution of crocodiles, dinosaurs, birds, snakes, and lizards, many of which have persisted though today.

In light of all the many extinction factors, the NY Times' promotion of only climate warming as the cause of Permian mass extinctions simply to maintain fear regards our current climate warming, is egregiously irresponsible. The serial reduction of biodiversity for most clades from the Ordovician to the end Permian, strongly suggests CO2 starvation was a far more powerful ecosystem disruptor than periodic warming episodes.

The loss of 61% of marine biodiversity during the Ordovician glaciations, not only demonstrates the lethal power of colder temperatures, but also calls into question the role of CO2 as a temperature control knob.

The Ordovician icehouse happened when CO2 concentrations were ten times higher than today at 5000 ppm.

Some scientists argue solar output was 4% lower and thus counteracted any warming from high CO2. But a solar drop of 7 w/m2 of insolation, does not counteract 13.5 w/m2 of calculated greenhouse warming.

The late Paleozoic icehouse has been attributed to falling CO2 concentrations, even though the glaciations were initiated in the early carboniferous when CO2 was about 2000 ppm. Scientists have proposed other theories for glaciations happening under high CO2 concentrations, suggesting the formation of Pangea prevented warm ocean currents from moderating the polar climate of the southern hemisphere.

By cherry-picking the rise in CO2 only during the very end Permian, such blinkered analyses have allowed some researchers to echo the narrative that it was deadly CO2-driven global warming that caused end Permian extinctions and then fearmonger their conclusions to rant we're in danger of extinction from today's 1-degree Celsius warming climate.

However, such theories totally fail to account for dead clades walking and the numerous extinctions that set the stage for the end Permian extinctions via colder conditions and CO2 starvation.

So, I encourage you to heed the warning from Aesop 2500 years ago. We must avoid any remedy that is worse than the disease. Rash attempts to sequester CO2 and lower its concentrations to levels approaching plant starvation, will prove to be disastrous.

Likewise, shun bill gates' "block the sun" proposals. Such lunacy will definitely disrupt the earth's life-giving carbon cycle and upset global productivity and devastate all ecosystems! Scientists must take a closer look at how CO2 starvation caused the world's greatest extinctions and act accordingly. Furthermore, click-bait media needs to be shamed into honestly educating the public about all the science.

Thank you.

For more superb educational climate science Bookmark my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/uc7xnhez2qcj_phf2mvdfk0q/videos 

 Or read the transcripts at perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com 

 Jim Steele is an ecologist and Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, (whose research restored a critical watershed), author of Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to climate Skepticism, and proud member of the CO2 Coalition.

UCLA's Daniel Swain and NPR’s David Romero Collude to Flood Our minds with a River of Climate Fear Mongering!

 

UCLA’s Daniel Swain and NPR’s David Romero Collude to Flood Our minds with a River of Climate Fear Mongering!

There have been many news articles about the human suffering caused by the floods that inundated the town of Pajaro in Monterrey County, California on March 11, 2023. But NPR’s article This Winter's Floods May Be 'Only a Taste' of the Megafloods to Come, Climate Scientists Warn was the most disgusting example of how Daniel Swain and National Public Radio dishonestly use any tragedy to fearmonger a climate crisis. Alluding to CO2 driven climate change Swain stated, “As disruptive as this year's events have been, we're nowhere near to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California.”

However, the real story is about government ineptitude and the human risky penchant for building in natural flood plains. When California’s county lines were being drawn up in 1850 as California achieved statehood, the concern was not how to best manage a watershed, but the result of compromises between competing political interests. Thus, the Pajaro River and its main tributary the San Benito River became the dividing line between 4 different counties.

The town of Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County on the north side of the river, and Pajaro, in Monterrey County on the south side, were first developed by non-natives in the 1850s in the middle of the Pajaro River’s flood plain. Floods were common and inevitable. Each winter the returning rains turned the flood plain into a mosaic of meandering streams, marshes, ponds, and flooded fields. So, levees were constructed to prevent flood damage to buildings and agricultural fields. The first levees were built to protect the relatively wealthier town of Watsonville on the north side of the river. Still these levees frequently failed as evidenced by this man canoeing down Watsonville’s main street in February 1922.

In the 1930s the US Army Corp of Engineers began drawing up plans to expand and rebuild the Pajaro River levee system but due to various delays the levees weren’t completed until 1949. Within only 10 years of levee completion in 1955 and 1958, two major floods exceeded the level design capacity. Unlike NPR, no honest scientist would ever suggest that climate change caused those failures within just 6 years of its design.

In 1963, the USACE acknowledged poor planning in levee design, and congress authorized re-construction of the flood control system, however no funds were provided from the federal government. Since 1949 seven major floods over the next 50 years exposed the flaws in the designs by these so-called flood control experts.

In an interview with the NY Times, Mark Strudley, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency’s executive director said “federal, state and local officials had talked since the 1960s about the need to shore up the water infrastructure around the Pajaro River, but the property values in the area were so low that they did not meet the threshold for repair under the cost-benefit formula that the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers were using.

After winning several lawsuits regards the levee failures in the 1995 flood, politicians finally developed a new plan to rebuild the levee system, set to begin in 2024. But NPR simply pushed gloom and climate doom asking, “whether those plans will account for the changing climate and the increased frequency and ferocity of storms expected.” NPR ignored that the 2023 Pajaro flooding was undeniably caused by another failed levee which was largely due to the political battles regards how each county contributes to the maintenance and repairs of an aging levee system.

The root of the political battles goes back to 1850 county boundaries. On the west side of the Pajaro Gap lies 2 counties comprising the river’s lower basin and on the east side another 2 counties that comprise upper basin. Most of the rainfall happens in the upper basin, then flows through the mountain gap into the floodplains of the lower basin to threaten Watsonville and Pajaro. The lower basin counties argue that the rapid urbanization in the upper basin had created an “asphalt effect” which increased runoff and river water volume. Thus, those counties should contribute the most money for levee upgrades in the lower basin. The upper basin blames the lower basin counties for not maintaining the levees and stream channels. For decades such squabbles delayed funding for improvements that could have definitely prevented the 2023 flooding.

But climate alarmists always push the scientific factoid that in a warmer world the atmosphere holds more moisture thus CO2 is causing bigger floods. But that factoid is totally irrelevant here. They ignore California’s rainy season happens during the cooler winter and historically the greatest amount of flooding in over a thousand years happened during the cold Little Ice Age.

And worse, NPR and Swain failed to share NOAA’s data showing global warming never caused the Pajaro River to reach flood stage. Pajaro River’s flood stage is set at a level determined by its history of numerous floods. The Pajaro River did not exceed historical levels that naturally happened during floods for the past century. The only honest attribution for the devastating flooding was that the people of Pajaro were victimized by political infighting between county governments who had agreed to maintain the levees needed for Pajaro to survive in this natural flood plain. Levees and government promises have long been known to give people a false sense of security, only to settle them into more dangerous locations.

NPR and Swain never addressed any of the natural and political issues leading to the flooding of Pajaro, incessantly choosing to fear monger climate change and push catastrophic speculation about the future. They interviewed Antonio Hueso, a 72-year-old retired farmworker, whose home was damaged for the 2nd time during levee failures. Hueso wisely said “I’m going to fix my house, and when people forget about the flooding, I will sell my house and move to Madera or Fresno”. Such a wise and simple solution of moving out of harm’s way didn’t fit NPR’s narrative, so in the radio version they added “But In a warming world will a move to higher ground suffice?”, as if the climate gods have warned us about coming floods of biblical proportions.

Daniel Swain, who was groomed by climate alarmists Noah Diffenbaugh and Michael Mann, chose to rant that warming of the climate has doubled the likelihood of a mega-flood and every degree of new warming increases that likelihood even more. What was once considered unlikely to happen in our lifetimes “has become quite likely.” Swain wouldn’t be surprised if as many as four megafloods happened just in this century. “We're not necessarily talking about 100 years from now. We're talking about the next 20 or 30 years.” Of course, such catastrophic predictions have served Swain very well as he frightened California politicians into funding his flood-modeling project.

NPR finished with an interview with Denia Escutia, a high school senior. “I think Pajaro deserves climate justice. I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don't want to help us?” Her final reply to NPR was her future is gone. Then NPR closed with one last scare tactic blaming broken levees on climate change by saying, “gone because the climate the levees were designed for no longer exists.”

And once again climate alarmists obscure the real problems and real solutions. It is disgusting!