The contemporary political scare that is claimed to be the most important issue facing mankind is the idea that the human emission of carbon dioxide(CO2, a GreenHouse Gas) due to the burning of fossil fuels is warming our planet in an unprecedented, accelerating and dangerous manner. Therefore it is concluded that we need to curtail our emissions of CO2 by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. CO2 is seen as the primary driver of global warming.
There are many reasons to question the CO2 centric theory of global warming.
Scientists tell us that the atmosphere has contained CO2 in various concentrations throughout the history of the Earth. It has been higher and lower than it is now(~400 ppp). Alarmists like to remind us that pre-industrial concentrations of CO2 varied between 180-280 ppm for 800,000 years. It is only since the industrial revolution that CO2 has increased at a much faster rate than experienced in the past. And yet scientists have documented several periods during the last 800,000 years when the global mean temperature (GMT) has been above our contemporary warmth. If 280 ppm is blamed for those warm periods then why aren’t we experiencing an even higher temperature now with 400 ppm in the air? There must be another climate driver.
What caused the warmth required to melt the ice from the last ice age and bring us into our warm interglacial? There were no power plants or SUVs to generate extra CO2 back then. It had to be a natural phenomenon. Without a way to attribute the natural factors responsible for that warming how can we be certain that the same factors aren’t in play to explain our the warming of the late 20th century? We cannot and therefore we have no way to tell to what extent humans may or may not be responsible for contemporary warming. The same natural factors that ended the last ice age could also be in play for the warming the planet has experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age.
Several periods within the last 200,000 years have been determined to be warmer than now. No power plants, cement factories or SUVs were present in human society during those eras.
Eemian ============
MWP =============
Scientists have reconstructed the geological past of the last 600 million years and plotted both temperature and CO2 atmospheric concentration. CO2 content ranged from -2000 - 8000 ppm in warmer & cooler times (see graph). Power plants, cement factories and SUVs (i.e., humans) could not have been responsible.
Please note that CO2 has been way above 400 ppm for most of the last 600 million years. There was no tipping point, no runaway global warming at those higher concentrations.Temperatures were both higher and lower than we currently experience. With CO2 concentration near 4000 ppm, a hundred times more than today the world was in an Ice Age 450 million years ago. If CO2 was the driving force of temperature on the Earth that could not have happened. Looking at that graph there is no obvious correlation between CO2 and temperature. Our current fears are baseless in the context of geological history
For the last 18+ years CO2 has been rising unabated in our atmosphere and yet the GMT has remained significantly flat according to satellite and weather balloon measurements.
This is contrary to the CO2 centric theory and unexpected. This development suggests that the tandem rise in CO2 and temperature during the latter part of the 20th century was coincidental rather than causal.
If we use the HADCRUT4 temperature dataset preferred by the IPCC to compare a 25 year period of warming in the last century with the last 25 years will we find significantly more warming in the latter period than in the former? That’s what the theory would predict.
Here is the data for the 25 year comparison. Datasets are in the links.
Range
|
CO2 Increase
| |
7.4
|
.427C
| |
46.48
|
.424C
|
That is over six times the rise in CO2 in the last 25 years compared to the 25 year period in the 20th century and yet the temperature rose only two one hundredths more than the earlier period. This is an anemic rise and challenges the superpowers attributed to CO2 centric theory.
Any one of the above examples challenges the CO2 centric theory of DMMCC and is enough to sink it beneath the waves of reality.
CO2 didn’t drive these changes.
Room CO2 higher - http://www.theben.de/en/CO2-sensors
1,000 ppm: Average level in a lecture hall filled with students
600 ppm: CO2 level in my office with 2 people in it
490 ppm: CO2 level in an office working alone
Lung content CO2 40,000 ppm. How you feeling?
The permanent gases in breaths we exhale are 4% to 5% by volume more carbon dioxide and 4% to 5% by volume less oxygen than was inhaled. This expired air typically composed of:[7]
- 78.04% nitrogen
- 13.6% - 16% oxygen
- 4% - 5.3% carbon dioxide
- 1% argon and other gases
And yet no harm assails us from these levels of CO2.
Far from being a bane CO2 is a boon to life on this planet. Our Grade 5 science reminds us that CO2 is an input to photosynthesis 
which helps plants to grow. We eat plants. If you like to eat then thank a plant. Does this not mean that the SOCIAL BENEFITS of CO2 are PRICELESS.
which helps plants to grow. We eat plants. If you like to eat then thank a plant. Does this not mean that the SOCIAL BENEFITS of CO2 are PRICELESS.
The increase in CO2 has resulted in the growth of vegetation and the greening of Sahel
Re-greening Sahel - Stockholm Resilience Centre
In the past when the concentration of CO2 was 10 to 20 times as high as it is now CO2 had the opportunity to turn the planet into an uninhabitable cauldron and failed to do so. We are here. There was no tipping point, no runaway global warming. We owe CO2 an apology.
Something else is the primary driver of climate change on this planet. This tidbit of geological history ought to be enough to calm the fears of the most devout believer that humans are turning up the heat.
As we have seen above CO2 has not manifested in reality the heat trapping superpowers attributed to it in the global climate models of climate scientists. They have overestimated the effect of CO2 in our atmosphere.
Has CO2 failed its driving test? You be the judge.
REFERENCES
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