Richard Tice confuses carbon emissions and the carbon cycle

I watched Question Time a few weeks ago when the deputy leader of Reform UK was on the panel

A member of the audience raised the topic of Net Zero, the government’s policy to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050. Tice is not a fan of Net Zero.

“The best form of carbon capture is trees,” he said. Well, trees, like all plants, do absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they’re growing, but then when they die and decompose (or are burnt), that carbon they absorbed is released back into the atmosphere in a net zeroish kind of way. It’s part of the carbon cycle. Still, planting trees could help, but there’s not enough available land for this to have a significant effect without it impacting food production.

He then said, as he always says: “The climate’s always changed, for millions of years. Anyone who thinks you can stop the power of the sun is ridiculous…”

Fiona Bruce cut in: “I don’t think anyone’s talking about stopping the power of the sun, I think I think it’s generally about what impact can be had on man-made emissions which are contributing to climate change as I…”

“And how much do they contribute? About 3 or 4 percent, Fiona, as you well know. The rest of CO2 emissions are natural…”

This is where he’s most wrong. He’s confusing the carbon cycle with carbon emissions. They’re not the same thing. The carbon cycle is a natural process whereby carbon moves through Earth’s systems, including its atmosphere. For instance, when plants die they decompose and their carbon is released into the atmosphere, but growing plants take in carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. When the quantities of carbon released into the atmosphere are balanced by the quantities of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere, atmospheric carbon remains constant.

When we dig up fossil fuels and burn them we’re releasing into the atmosphere carbon that would otherwise remain trapped under the ground. We’re adding carbon to the carbon cycle, and we’re adding more than can be absorbed so the levels of atmospheric carbon increase. When considering climate change, it’s the level of emissions that’s significant. That’s what’s adding to the levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

Our emissions of CO2 may well be small when compared with the quantities of CO2 emitted and absorbed in the carbon cycle, but that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t mean human emissions are only responsible for 3 or 4 percent of global warming. According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report over 100% of the warming since industrialisation was caused by human activity. So a lot more than 3 or 4 percent as Tice claimed.

Over 100% though? How can that be right? How can we have caused more than all of the warming?

If it weren’t for human activities the planet would have cooled slightly, that’s how. In other words, natural effects such as volcanic activity and solar variation have likely had a net cooling effect.

Tice implies that you’d need to stop the power of the sun to stop the planet from warming but that’s not the case. The warming we’ve experienced is not down to an increase in solar irradiance. Total solar irradiance has barely changed over the last half century, the period during which we’ve had satellite measurements, and studies show it’s not increased significantly since the 1950s.

I was disappointed that Fiona Bruce did not correct Richard Tice on his assertion that man-made emissions make only a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change, but I can’t say I’m surprised she didn’t. It takes some explanation. It’s not the sort of thing you can fact check in a sentence or two.

According to GB News, Bruce did challenge Tice more than we saw in the broadcast episode, but it sounds like she pushed back on his 3 to 4 percent figure, “stating that according to Nasa, the figure was around a third,” rather than questioning his underlying implication. That one third from Nasa she mentioned is presumably the total increase in atmospheric CO2, which has gone from 280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to just over 420 parts per million now. That increase of 140 parts per million, around a third of the current total, is down to human activity. That’s true enough and a more relevant statistic when it comes to climate change attribution, but it’s not a valid response to Tice’s claim that man-made emissions contribute only 3 or 4 percent to climate change.

Whereas Bruce/Nasa’s one third refers to the proportion of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human activity, Tice is talking about the rates of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere from natural processes and man-made emissons, though ignoring the fact that the rate of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by natural processes is balanced by the rate at which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by other natural processes, photosynthesis, forests and oceans etc.. He’s implying all carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere contributes to climate change, but if an equal amount is being removed from the atmosphere so the concentration of carbon dioxide remains constant, that’s not going to have a warming or a cooling effect.

In saying that man-made emissions only make a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change, he’s implying there’s something else that’s contributing the remaining 96 or 97 percent but there isn’t because there is no remaining 96 or 97 percent. Man-made emissions, or human activity to be more precise, contribute over 100% to the observed warming.

Tice is misunderstanding the carbon cycle. He’s confusing the flux of carbon with carbon emissions. What the BBC really needed to do was insert a segment explaining what the carbon cycle is, what emissions are and how they differ.

What should they do then? Populist politicians can throw out highly misleading statements which whilst not in themselves strictly false, do strongly imply something that is false. I’ve previously heard Tice and others say that only 3 or 4 percent of the carbon going into the atmosphere each year is from man-made emissions and that is true. What’s false is the implication, often left unsaid, that those emissions only make a 3 or 4 percent contribution to climate change. On Question Time, since Bruce specifically mentioned the contribution of man-made emissions to climate change, Tice did end up saying something that was not just misleading, it was also downright untrue. As they say on social media, he said the quiet part out loud.

Fact checking after the fact is not enough. Maybe we need implication checking as well, or at least presenters, interviewers, other panellists and audience members on shows like Question Time need to be willing to press people like Tice when they come out with these things.

If man-made emissions only contribute 3 or 4 percent to climate change, what are you claiming contributes the remaining 96 or 97 percent? Volcanic activity? What’s the evidence this has changed significantly over the past half century, the period during which we’ve seen significant levels of warming? Or total solar irradiance? What’s the evidence that this has increased significantly over that period? What increase in total solar irradiance would be required to cause the observed warming?

Total solar irradiance maybe sounds a bit techie. Put it in plain English. “Richard, are you saying the sun has gotten hotter over the past 50 years? Is that what you think is the main reason behind the planet getting warmer? Can you name a single climate scientist who thinks the sun has been getting hotter and that’s the main cause of the planet warming?”

When people make claims that are factually incorrect they need to be challenged forcefully. That’s often done by journalists when political parties produce policy proposals in which the numbers don’t add up, but they tend to be more reticent when it comes to scientific issues, which are often treated as matters of opinion rather than matters of fact.

There needs to be a cost to people being this wrong. If someone can be so confident and so wrong about such a basic issue, how can they be trusted on anything else? If you think this is a highly controversial scientific issue on which the scientists themselves can’t agree, then you might think it’s ok for a politician to be wrong, but I don’t think you could find a scientist, and certainly not a climate scientist, who would agree that man-made emissions are only responsible for 3 to 4 percent of the observed warming, which is what Richard Tice appears to be claiming. They might say yes, Richard, only 3 or 4 percent of the carbon going up into the atmosphere each year comes from anthropogenic emissions, but the non-emissions element of that is part of the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic emissions are not part of a cycle. The carbon is coming from deep underground and is ending up in the atmosphere. If it weren’t for us digging it up and burning it, it would remain trapped under the ground.

He has sort of a point when he suggests planting trees. We do need to develop ways of getting some of that extra carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere out. There’s only so much land on which we can plant trees without impacting agriculture, and besides, most of the planet is covered in ocean. There are proposals to seed the oceans in order to enhance their ability to absorb carbon and such measures will likely be necessary, though in addition to rapid emissions reductions, not in place of them. Anything like that ought to be down with global agreement, under a global framework. It wouldn’t be cheap. We’d all need to chip in, and maybe those who have polluted the most would be expected to contribute the most.

Tackling climate change is a tough problem. Pretending it’s not a thing or not a problem is so much easier than confronting it. Saying “the climate has always changed” is not an acceptance that climate change is a thing. When we refer to “climate change” it’s assumed we’re talking about the current climate change, the current warming of the planet caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. No one is claiming the climate was completely stable until humans started burning fossil fuels, least of all climate scientists who’ve spent decades studying past changes in the planet’s climate. Greenhouse gases, as the name implies, cause the planet to warm. Increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 50% and of course you’re going to get warming.