Apocalypse Imminent, Says Computer

A headline from USAToday: Earth's carbon dioxide levels highest in 3 million years, study says. It seems like fake news, at first blush. Is that true, highest in 3 million years? Let's dig in.

Taking those in order:

• If Greenland was green the last time CO2 was as high as today, does that not refute the CO2 = temperature claim?
• Even trace amounts of CO2 raise temperatures. Ergo, we should eliminate all traces of that insidious gas!
• Sounds more like the sinister description usually given to dangerous molecules like carbon monoxide.

“It seems we’re now pushing our home planet beyond any climatic conditions experienced during the entire current geological period, the Quaternary,” said study lead author Matteo Willeit of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “A period that started almost 3 million years ago and saw human civilization beginning only 11,000 years ago. So, the modern climate change we see is big, really big; even by standards of Earth history.”

So the Institute for Climate Impact Research has concluded that the climate is being impacted. Hardly a surprise. Let's see the basis of their conclusions.

Willeit and his colleagues used sophisticated computer simulations of Earth's past climate to reach their conclusion.

Well there you have it. A computer simulation. Golly, that's science!

He said his team compared their results with hard data from the deep sea, which matched what the computers said.

What hard data? No description, no link. Just...trust them, there is evidence that confirms. If so, why the need for the simulation at all?

Today, CO2 levels measure over 410 parts per million. While that may not sound like a huge amount, scientists have known for decades that even trace amounts in the atmosphere can raise temperatures around the world. 

This is bizarre language. They seem to be demonizing "even trace amounts" of the one gas that is required for all carbon-based life on earth.

Finally, at the end of the article is the major premise.

All the nations of the world – except for the United States – are part of the Paris climate agreement, which aims to reduce humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, in order to prevent rising global temperatures.

It's a political ad, more or less. A computer program written by a prejudiced institute says you should vote for the left or Earth is doomed!

[Afterthought]
Having read this, can we conclude that the CO2 levels really are at their highest level in 3 million years? No, but it doesn't matter. The bigger question is whether H2O is at the highest levels in 3 million years. The climate alarmists don't like to admit it (most have no idea what they're talking about anyway) but CO2 is not actually the greenhouse gas that leads to climate apocalypse, in their own models. It is a trace gas, and doubling it has little effect, whatever the article might imply. The mainstream hypothesis is that CO2 triggers low-scale warming which causes more atmospheric water vapor - the most significant greenhouse gas. The whole theory becomes an exercise in absurdity. They propose that earth is a positive-feedback disaster just waiting to be triggered by stupid humans who refused to listen to Al Gore. But, they state in their same argument that CO2 levels were just as high 3 million years ago. So, if previous CO2 levels already triggered the runaway warming scenario, how did Earth ever recover and cool? There is no reason, in their own models, for that to have ever happened.