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Published Monday, January 28, 2019

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Costa Rica embraces role of carbon dioxide lab

By James Brodell
Editor emeritus, A.M. Costa Rica

Costa Rica has been characterized as an emissions laboratory for the rest of the world. The country already has drafted extensive plans and created a bureaucracy to develop steps to mitigate climate change. Special programs are being promoted for agriculture, livestock producers, the transport sector and energy production.

At the same time some countries, including the United States, are getting off the climate change bandwagon, and more and more evidence is accumulating that the last 26,000 years of warming comes from more complex factors than CO2 emissions.

There also have been claims that global warming proponents are doctoring statistics to remain faithful to the scientific orthodoxy. Prestigious agencies such as the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been accused of issuing distorted or incomplete records.

Certainly true is the statement that 97 percent of active climate scientists agree that the world is warming. So does the statistical record. What is lost in reporting that claim is that a much lower percentage think that human activity is a major cause.

Just 13,000 years ago, megafauna like giant armadillos, giant sloths, camels, dire wolves, mastodons and other fauna such as humans roamed a Costa Rica that included the forested plains of Nicoya, known today at the Gulf of Nicoya. Since then sea levels have risen at least 400 feet or about 120 meters, according to the geological record.

Much of the emphasis on human-caused global warming has been led by the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The goal has been to limit the increase in average world temperature to 1.5 to 2 degrees C. Costa Rican officials have been enthusiastic in participating and have pledged to eventually limit its net release of carbon dioxide to 9.4 million tons.

At one point, officials vowed to make the country carbon neutral by 2021, but current programs show that the country will initiate a five-step plan that year to establish carbon neutrality some years later, perhaps as distant as 2100.

The country has been blessed by heavy rainfall and roaring rivers that allow hydroelectric production.

The country has created a national strategic plan for climate change and set up a revised plan for carbon neutrality. It has also created has been the Dirección de Cambio Climático within the Ministerio Ambiente y Energía and the National System of Measurement of Climate Change.

Climate change efforts so far are voluntary, but the systems are in place to measure compliance even in the workplace. The government's proposals are likely to have a strong impact on society, and they fit nicely into the country's long tradition against petroleum exploration, mining and other environmentally suspect pursuits.

The Trump Administration in the United States has rejected the binding international and financial obligations that Costa Rica embraced in the 2016 Paris Accords. President Trump has stated, “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. A tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America – and this is an incredible statistic – would totally wipe out the gains from America's expected reductions in the year 2030.”

The United States cannot fully remove itself from the accords until November 2020. With Trump's support, the United States is now a net exporter of petroleum, thanks for fracking and a favorable government attitude.

In the south, Brazil's new president, Jair Bolsonaro, known as the ‘Tropical Trump,’ has backed off for now on his promise to withdraw his nation from the accords.

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, made climate change a household word and even won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. His 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” grossed $50 million and was followed by a sequel.

A.M. Costa Rica wire services photo

Evidence is accumulating that the last 26,000 years of warming comes from more complex factors
than CO2 emissions.

Many of Gore's predictions in the film and subsequent speeches have failed to materialize. That also is true of computer models that seek to predict the state of the world.

A major concern for Costa Rica, which is bounded by two oceans, is sea level rise. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that the level is rising an eighth of an inch a year. The U.S. agency predicts an increase in the rate.

In fact, much land already has been taken by the sea. The U.S. State of Florida, for example, used to stretch more than 100 miles to the west where now the Gulf of Mexico flows. Costa Rica's National Weather Institute has had its eye on Puntarenas Centro for years. The spit of sand that juts into the Gulf of Nicoya is the start of a weather institute slide show demonstrating loss of land to a rising sea (http://cglobal.imn.ac.cr/).

Because the annual environmental changes are minimal, climate alarmists are being increasingly discounted. Gore predicted a big increase in hurricanes due to warming seas. The number actually is down, and polar bears are thriving, despite prediction to the contrary.

Even his supporters agree that some of Gore's predictions were overstated. Others criticize him for having made millions for his climate change position. A recent film, “Climate Hustle,” directed by Chris Rogers, calls climate change alarmism a scam www.amazon.com/Climate-Hustle-Marc-Morano.

Highly credible climate scientists have also weighed in. Judith Curry, a major critic, quit her academic job at the Georgia Institute of Technology over what she called the craziness of climate science. She continues to edit a website that analyzes academic reports (see https://judithcurry.com/).

Christopher Monckton, a British peer, has a thriving business speaking against the climate change orthodoxy. He also strongly backed his country's exit from the European Union, showing that nationalism influences climate arguments.

Recent academic studies show that computer modeling of climate is simplistic. Many of the models do not agree, and their predictions of massive change have not been borne out by reality. One reason might be that scientists do not know enough about the climate to construct computer programs.

A report last week said that new calculations show scientists have grossly underestimated the effects of air pollution. A Hebrew University of Jerusalem paper said that new research shows that the degree to which aerosols cool the earth has been grossly underestimated, necessitating a recalculation of climate change models to more accurately predict the pace of global warming (www.sciencedaily.com).

Proponents of human-caused global warming sometimes hurt their own argument, as well when they publish photos of smokestacks spewing dark clouds. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and those dark emissions most likely are water vapor.

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Should the government continue to invest in reducing the carbon footprint? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to: news@amcostarica.com

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