Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 03/01/2023
Žiga Zaplotnik from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, explained for Razkrinkavanje.si that humankind is responsible for growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because we are burning fossil fuels and changing land use.
“Carbon dioxide, let alone man, has no impact on warming,” claims the moderator of a video by the “International Online Forum” that the creators of the project Creative Society published on their Facebook on 8 December. In December the video was shared by more than 600 other users.
The clip is an excerpt of a longer video by the International Online Forum that Creative Society published on their website on 12 November. The website states that this is “a project of all humanity that provides the opportunity to bring our civilization peacefully to a new stage of evolutionary development in the shortest possible time.”
The video voiceover states that global warming is the result of “Earth’s natural cycle” and not of humankind’s activities.
Data by Berkeley Earth, an American non-profit, show that the average annual temperature last year was 1.21 degrees Celsius higher than between 1850 and 1900.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in last year’s climate report that the main cause of global warming is growing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, which are the result of human activity.
How increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses affect warming was explained by Žiga Zaplotnik, Tomaž Zwitter and Gregor Skok of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Tjaša Pogačar of the Biotechnical Faculty and Matjaž Ličer of the National Institute of Biology in September in response to the claim by Rafael Mihalič, a professor of power systems at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, that carbon dioxide does not affect global warming.
The authors explained that molecules of greenhouse gasses interact with long-wave radiation of the Earth’s surface and lower layers of the atmosphere, which is why the Earth radiates less heat back into space than it absorbs, hence the warming.
Mihalič’s claim that “the trend of global temperatures has not been on a warming trajectory for 17 years” had also been fact-checked by the Razkrinkavanje.si team in September to conclude that global temperatures have been increasing in the last 17 years.
Žiga Zaplotnik, a lecturer of dynamic meteorology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and one of the authors of the retort to Mihalič’s claims, confirmed for Razkrinkavanje.si that human activity alone is the cause of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
He cited the global report on the carbon budget for 2021 published in Earth Systems Science Data, a scientific journal, in which researchers from 80 universities and institutes found that before the start of the industrial age, prior to 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide had been about 278 parts per billion; by 2021 it increased to 414 parts per million.
Zaplotnik explained that the amount of carbon is increasing due to humankind’s impact, in particular land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels. The altered ratio between two isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere – the relative share of a specific isotope of carbon that is created when fossil fuels are burned – is proof that the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the result of human action.
Just under half of man-made carbon remains in the atmosphere, whereas the rest is absorbed by soil and the oceans, which “are to a large extent saving us from carbon concentrations growing too fast.”
Zaplotnik confirmed that the Earth has natural warming and cooling cycles about once every 100,000 years. Based on these cycles we should currently be in a warm period with a slight cooling trend, but the pace of Earth’s natural cooling is about a hundred times slower than the current pace of warming.
Climatologist Gregor Vrtačnik of the Environment Agency told Razkrinkavanje.si that over the last three million years the Earth has indeed transitioned from cooler to warmer epochs and vice versa, but these factors “cannot be the cause of the current global warming since natural climate change is much slower than anthropogenic warming.”
Vertačnik likewise confirmed that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the consequence of humankind’s activities given that the share of the carbon isotope which is created when fossil fuels are burned is growing.
Creative Society’s forum’s on global warmings are claimed to be simultaneously translated from English into 150 languages. A recording of the forum has been uploaded by Creative Society members to the project’s YouTube channel and the platform moderators flagged it with the warning that the content is not appropriate for certain audiences.
The claim that humankind and carbon dioxide are not responsible for global warming is false.