Why 97% of Scientists Say Man Causes Climate Change is a Lie

Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something, agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.

97% Consensus is false propaganda – Scientists for 100 years, can’t decide between warming or new ice age?

They say there is a 97% consensus on climate change. What is the consensus, exactly?

Answer by James Matkin, former Director at Bank of Canada (1992-1995)
Updated Jan 24

Bunk. There is no such consensus. In fact there was a serious divide between the IPCC scientists and the UN on the science of human caused climate change. The UN played the scientists for fools!

The 97% derives from a survey sent to 10,257 people of which the 3,146 respondents were further whittled down to 77 self selected climate “scientists “ of which 75 were judged to agree that human induced warming was taking place.What was the criteria for rejecting 3,069 respondents? There was no mention that 75 out of 3,146 is 0.03%We do not hear that 0.03% of climate scientists agreed that humans have played a significant role in changing climate despite the billions spent on climate research. This offhand one time survey by a junior of a bunch of papers covering many different topics is silly research. Especially when more than 2000 paid scientists from around the world engaged by the UN to research the precise issue of what if any human effect is there on the climate. Yes the 97% meme is a distraction as the real story is the science work of the IPCC summarized in 1995.

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What’s Wrong with the Claim that “97% of Climate Scientists Agree” about Global Warming?

Cornwall Alliance June 8, 2017 By Neil L. Frank, Ph.D.

A variety of studies have purported to find an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists on global warming. However, the studies rarely specify what it is to which the scientists agree. Usually it is nothing more than that the earth has warmed since 1800 and that human activity has contributed significantly to the warming—something almost no skeptics would deny. No study—whether a survey of published articles or a survey directly of scientists—has found anything remotely near a 97% consensus not only that the earth has warmed and that human activity has contributed significantly but also that human activity has been the primary driver, that the warming caused by it is dangerous, and that attempting to prevent future warming by reducing CO2 emissions would do more good than harm—and those are the issues debated.

In 2004 Science published the results of a study by historian Naomi Oreskes claiming that “without substantial disagreement, scientists find human activities are heating the earth’s surface.” But an attempt at replicating the study both found that she had made serious mistakes in handling data and, after re-examining the data, reached contrary conclusions. As Benny Peiser pointed out in a letter to Science (Submission ID: 56001) that Science declined to publish but that the Cornwall Alliance summarized in 2006:

Oreskes claimed that an analysis of 928 abstracts in the ISI database containing the phrase “climate change” proved the alleged consensus. It turned out that she had searched the database using three keywords (“global climate change”) instead of the two (“climate change”) she reported—reducing the search results by an order of magnitude. Searching just on “climate change” instead found almost 12,000 articles in the same database in the relevant decade. Excluded from Oreskes’s list were “countless research papers that show that global temperatures were similar or even higher during the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Medieval Warm Period when atmospheric CO2 levels were much lower than today; that solar variability is a key driver of recent climate change; and that climate modeling is highly uncertain.” Further, even using the three key words she actually used, “global climate change,” brought up [not 928 but] 1,247 documents, of which 1,117 included abstracts. An analysis of those abstracts showed that

only 1 percent explicitly endorsed what Oreskes called the “consensus view”;

29 percent implicitly accepted it “but mainly focus[ed] on impact assessments of envisaged global climate change”;

8 percent focused on “mitigation”;

6 percent focused on methodological questions;

8 percent dealt “exclusively with paleo-climatological research unrelated to recent climate change”;

3 percent “reject[ed] or doubt[ed] the view that human activities are the main drivers of ‘the observed warming over the last 50 years’”;

4 percent focused “on natural factors of global climate change”; and

42 percent did “not include any direct or indirect link or reference to human activities, CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions, let alone anthropogenic forcing of recent climate change.”

Peter Doran and Maggie Zimmerman’s “Examining the Consensus on Climate Change” (EOS, January 2009), concluded, “It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” However, Doran and Zimmerman counted only 79 out of the 3,146 responses to their survey in determining the alleged consensus, and the two questions asked in the survey were framed such that even the most ardent skeptics—like Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer—would have answered “Yes”:

“When compared with pre‐1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”
“Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

Another study, “Expert credibility in climate change” (PNAS, April 9, 2010), by William Anderegg et al., reported that a survey of publication and citation data of 1,372 climate researchers found that 97 to 98 percent believed that “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for ‘most’ of the ‘unequivocal’ warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century.” But Anderegg’s study covered only the 200 most prolific writers on climate change, excluding thousands of others, and even the conclusion that humans caused “most” of the warming doesn’t mean that those scientists consider global warming a crisis or that we should spend trillions of dollars attempting to stop it.

Probably the most widely cited study claiming to find such consensus, John Cook et al.’s “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature,” purported to find that “Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” Of course, “Humans are causing global warming” is something that nearly every skeptic—including myself—could affirm. The question is not whether we’re causing global warming, but whether we’re causing most of the recent warming, whether it’s dangerous, and whether we should abandon abundant, affordable, reliable energy from fossil fuels in exchange for sparse, expensive, intermittent energy from “renewables” in an effort to stop it. Cook et al.’s paper was critiqued in another paper by David Legates et al., who reviewed the same papers Cook et al. had reviewed and concluded that the actual consensus supportable by their abstracts was only 0.3%.

Legates et al. critiqued only Cook et al.’s statistical methodology and methods of interpreting the literature, not the quality of the selection process by which Cook et al. determined which papers to include and which to exclude from their survey. But another scholar, José Duarte, did look at the selection process and found it “multiply fraudulent.” So Duarte called for Environmental Research Letters to retract Cook et al. He pointed out that although Cook et al. had claimed to have excluded papers on “social science, education, research about people’s views on climate,” they had in fact included many such. He also listed some of the many properly scientific papers that Cook et al. ignored but should have included and that would have counted against their conclusion.

Cook et al. surveyed 11,944 papers on global warming that had been published from 1991 through 2012. They did not read the papers or talk to the authors, but they did read the abstracts. The results of the abstracts were divided into 7 categories:

Category	Number of papers
1. Man is causing all of the warming	64
2. Man is causing over 50% of the warming	922
3. Man is causing less than 50% of the warming	2910
4. No opinion or uncertain	7930
5. Man is causing some but far less than 50%	54
6. Man is not causing warming, with qualifications	15
7. Man is not causing any warming	9

It appears that Cook et al. decided to compare only those scientists who had strong opinions. If that is the case, the first 2 categories represent scientists who believe man is causing all or most of the warming (986), while those in categories 6 and 7 believe man is causing none or almost none (24). This ratio is about 97%. But the most important result of this study is that almost 8,000 had no opinion or were uncertain. So much for the 97%.

Why were there only 24 papers published by skeptics? We found out in 2009, when 22,000 email exchanges between senior meteorologists in the U.S. and Europe where released. Many of the emails were published by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller in Climategate: The Crutape Letters (nQuire Services, 2010). We learned the following things from this scandal:

Those promoting manmade global warming:

Controlled the meteorology and climatology journals in the U.S.;
Controlled non-meteorological science publication (Nature, Science, etc.);
Controlled Wikipedia;
Manipulated data;
Demonized skeptics.

Papers by skeptics were blackballed and not published in U.S. professional journals. In contrast, Kenneth Richard has documented over 1,000 peer-reviewed papers published in Europe and Asia in 2014, 2015, and 2016 that challenge the hypothesis that CO2 has been the primary driver of recent global warming (and other aspects of the bogus “consensus”) and support solar, oceanic, and other natural cycles as the primary causes of global warming, but they are not found in the U.S. publications.

[This article is excerpted from Dr. Frank’s review of the book Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment.” For further critique of the consensus claim, see Joseph Bast and (Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow and climatologist) Dr. Roy W. Spencer, “The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’,” Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2014.]

Featured image “Hug a Climate Scientist Day” courtesy of Michael, Flickr creative commons.

97 Articles Refuting The “97% Consensus”

Climate Change Dispatch

The 97% “consensus” study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook’s study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it,

“The ‘97% consensus’ article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country [UK] that the energy minister should cite it.”

Mike Hulme, Ph.D. Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia (UEA)

The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook’s (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% “consensus” study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook’s study is an embarrassment to science.

Summary: Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts of papers (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW and found 7930 (66%) held no position on AGW. While only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (Humans are the primary cause). Their methodology was so fatally flawed that they falsely classified skeptic papers as endorsing AGW, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. Cook et al.’s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

[ Journal Coverage ]

Energy Policy – Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis (PDF) (October 2014)
Energy Policy – Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: Rejoinder (PDF) (October 2014)
Science & Education – Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change (PDF) (August 2013)

[ Media Coverage ]

American Thinker – Climate Consensus Con Game (February 17, 2014)
Breitbart – Obama’s ’97 Percent’ Climate Consensus: Debunked, Demolished, Staked through the heart (September 8, 2014)
Canada Free Press – Sorry, global warmists: The ’97 percent consensus’ is complete fiction (May 27, 2014)
Financial Post – Meaningless consensus on climate change (September 19, 2013)
Financial Post – The 97%: No you don’t have a climate consensus (September 25, 2013)
Forbes – Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring ’97-Percent Consensus’ Claims (May 30, 2013)
Fox News – Balance is not bias — Fox News critics mislead public on climate change (October 16, 2013)
Herald Sun – That 97 per cent claim: four problems with Cook and Obama (May 22, 2013)
Power Line – Breaking: The “97 Percent Climate Consensus” Canard (May 18, 2014)
Spiked – Global warming: the 97% fallacy (May 28, 2014)
The Daily Caller – Where Did ’97 Percent’ Global Warming Consensus Figure Come From? (May 16, 2014)
The Daily Telegraph – 97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock! (July 23, 2013)
The Guardian – The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (June 6, 2014)
The New American – Global Warming “Consensus”: Cooking the Books (May 21, 2013)
The New American – Cooking Climate Consensus Data: “97% of Scientists Affirm AGW” Debunked (June 5, 2013)
The New American – Climategate 3.0: Blogger Threatened for Exposing 97% “Consensus” Fraud (May 20, 2014)
The Patriot Post – The 97% Consensus — A Lie of Epic Proportions (May 17, 2013)
The Patriot Post – Debunking the ‘97% Consensus’ & Why Global Cooling May Loom (August 7, 2014)
The Press-Enterprise – Don’t be swayed by climate change ‘consensus’ (September 10, 2013)
The Tampa Tribune – About that ’97 percent’: It ain’t necessarily so (May 19, 2014)
The Wall Street Journal – The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’ (May 26, 2014)
Troy Media – Bandwagon psychology root of 97 per cent climate change “consensus” (February 18, 2014)
WND – Black Jesus’ Climate Consensus Fantasy (June 25, 2013)

[ Organization Coverage ]

Competitive Enterprise Institute – Consensus Shmensus (September 5, 2013)
Cornwall Alliance – Climate Consensus? Nonsense! (June 16, 2014)
Friends of Science – Friends of Science Challenge the Cook Study for Bandwagon Fear Mongering on Climate Change and Global Warming (May 21, 2013)
Friends of Science – Only 65 Scientists of 12,000 Make up Alleged 97% on Climate Change and Global Warming Consensus (May 28, 2013)
Friends of Science – 97% Consensus? No! Global Warming Math Myths & Social Proofs (PDF) (February 3, 2014)
Friends of Science – Climate Change Is a Fact of Life, the Science Is Not Settled and 97% Consensus on Global Warming Is a Math Myth (February 4, 2014)
George C. Marshall Institute – The Corruption of Science (October 5, 2014)
John Locke Foundation – The 97% consensus on global warming exposed (July 3, 2014)
Liberty Fund – David Friedman on the 97% Consensus on Global Warming (February 27, 2014)
Global Warming Policy Foundation – Consensus? What Consensus? (PDF) (September 2, 2013)
Global Warming Policy Foundation – Fraud, Bias And Public Relations: The 97% ‘Consensus’ And Its Critics (PDF) (September 8, 2014)
National Center for Policy Analysis – The Big Lie of the “Consensus View” on Global Warming (July 30, 2014)
National Center for Public Policy Research – Do 97% of All Climate Scientists Really Believe Mankind is Causing Catastrophic Global Warming? (February 10, 2014)
Principia Scientific International – Exposed: Academic Fraud in New Climate Science Consensus Claim (May 23, 2013)
The Heartland Institute – What 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Do (May 12, 2014)

[ Weblog Coverage ]

Rebuttals to Criticisms:

Criticism: Tol (2014) was rejected by other journals for being flawed.

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol’s paper was censored by Environmental Research Letters (ERL), which conveniently has multiple alarmists scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) and rejected by two other journals for being “out of scope” (off topic) not flawed.

Criticism: Tol (2014) has 24 errors in it.

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol refuted all of these claims in a post online and in his published rejoinder.

Manmade Global Warming: The Story & the Reality

By Tom Tamarkin
March 24, 2021

Introduction:

One of the early purposes of Climate Alarmism was to stimulate the reduction of worldwide population over an extended period of time, under the ultimate control of a single worldwide government. It is predicated on the fictitious notion of man produced climate change. The plan was and perhaps still is, to use climate change as a socially accepted reason to force the abandonment of the cheap, abundant energy produced by fossil fuel and nuclear generation.

To maintain a population of over 7.5 billion human beings requires massive amounts of food and energy. Energy is the key. It takes energy to raise, harvest, produce, and transport food. And it takes still more energy to provide for man’s comfort and mobility.

Reducing the amount of available energy by a significant factor assures that sustainable conditions are only available for a similarly reduced population. Such conditions are ripe for tyrannical socialistic control through a unified worldwide government.

History:

The patently false notion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and climate change was first adopted by the Club of Rome in its efforts to promote the need for population reduction. Its inauguratory meeting was held in 1968 at David Rockefeller’s estate in Bellagio, Italy. The notion of AGW and climate change was based on inaccurate understandings of the 19th Century works of John Tyndall, “Heat A Mode of Motion” and Svante Arrhenius, “Worlds in the Making.” The plan was to stress the need for restricted availability of energy, under the guidance of a united worldwide government. Lower available energy would lead to much lower population levels over several hundred years.

The term atmospheric greenhouse effect or “greenhouse gas” appears to have been first coined by Nils Ekholm in his paper published in 1901, “On the variations of the climate of the geological and historical past and their causes”.

On October 10, 1972, J.S. Sawyer, the head of research at the UK Meteorological Office, wrote a four-page paper published in Nature summarizing what was known at the time about potential temperature changes, and predicting warming of about 0.6℃ by the end of the 20th century.

The movement took root in October 1975 when Dr. Margaret Mead, president of AAAS, aided by associates Paul Ehrlich (the author of The Population Bomb), Stephen Schneider, John Holdren and George Woodwell, held the “Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering” conference in North Carolina, where Mead used global warming caused by CO₂ as the predicate for population reduction and eugenics.

Left to right, Paul Ehrilch & Margaret Mead at the conference

In response to a request from the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the President of the National Academy of Sciences convened a study group under the auspices of the Climate Research Board of the National Research Council to assess the scientific basis for projection of possible future climatic changes resulting from man-made releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Study Group met at the NAS Summer Studies Center at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on July 23-27, 1979. By the end of the year the group released what became known as the Charney Report

Jule Gregory Charney, Ph.D., physics, 1946 UCLA

Also in 1979 the World Metrologic Organization hosted its first World Climate Conference which framed climate change as a global political issue, giving way to similar conferences in 1985, 1987, and 1988. In 1985, the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG) was formed to offer international policy recommendations regarding climate change and global warming. At the Toronto Conference in 1988, climate change was suggested to be almost as serious as nuclear war and early targets for CO₂ emission reductions were discussed.

As a result, later in 1988 the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) The IPCC has 195 member countries. In the same year, the UN General Assembly endorsed the formation action.

Book from the 1975 Conference with Margaret Mead

In 1990 the IPCC released its working group First Assessment based on the Scientific Plan for the World Climate Research Program of 1984. A Second Assessment was released in 1995. A Third Assessment was released in 2001. A Fourth Assessment was released in 2007. The most recent Fifth Assessment was released in 2013. A sixth assessment report is scheduled to be released in 2022 and has been previewed. In general terms each successive assessment report projects a higher degree of confidence in anthropogenic warming based mostly on the increased release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere principally as a product of fossil fuel use.

IPCC exemplary structure

It must be stressed that the IPCC and other groups within the UN have no practicing scientists, per se, on their staff. They rely entirely on the input from scientists in the 146 membership countries.

Furthermore there is no empirical proof that the so called infrared emitted greenhouse gas theory is true, and there have been no fundamental experiments designed to prove or falsify the theory. All IPCC predictions of warming are based on computer models programmed as if the theory acts as scientists have postulated it.

Although water vapor is defined as a “greenhouse gas” in the first IPCC assessment, the quantity of water vapor and its ratio to other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide is never stated. Water vapor accounts for over 95% of the greenhouse gases in the lower troposphere portion of the atmosphere at any time. Water vapor is the real, major greenhouse gas. At any given time there is over 37.5 quadrillion (million X billion) gallons of water in the atmosphere in the form of invisible water vapor referred to as humidity by weathermen.

The Kyoto Protocol was formalized in 1997 and operationalizes the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by committing industrialized countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce greenhouse gases emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets. Currently, carbon tax penalties have yet to be defined and agreed to.

Subsequently, individuals in the United States fraudulently established and promulgated “carbon trading” institutions for purposes of levying taxes on those who purchase hydrocarbon based fuels. As a component of this scheme to initiate, mandate, and facilitate carbon taxes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was fraudulently induced to define Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) as a “pollutant”; a ruling which was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court during litigation. The U.S. Congress attempted to hold hearings and issued subpoenas to the leaders of the EPA to investigate why CO₂ was improperly defined as a pollutant. This resulted in outright lies, lack of responses, and the resignation of the Director of the EPA.

The scientific community unknowingly and unwittingly aided and abetted the deceit, based on the computer generated hockey stick curve created by Dr. Michael Mann, et al. It was first publicly discredited by McKitrick and McIntyre in October 2004, in an article published in the “MIT Technology Review“.

Government published statistics show that $178 billion dollars of tax payer funds has been spent on direct climate change related technology, science, and funds given to other nations as a result of the climate change deception, from 1993 to 2017. The government has systematically enabled the continuation of this fraud through billions of dollars spent annually by funding university research and government labs doing “climate research.”

The false notion of AGW and/or man induced climate change has spawned tens of thousands of new businesses worldwide. The total Climate-Industrial Complex is a $2-trillion-per-year business. These companies are virtually 100% dependent on the politically driven notion of “dangerous manmade global warming and climate change.”

The media, public, and political establishment constantly recite the false assertion that 97% of scientists say the problem is real and manmade carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the cause. However, increased concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere do not lead to global warming and climate change. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. The major “greenhouse gas” is water vapor.

An intricate feedback system regulates the Earth’s temperature, maintaining immunity from temperature increases and decreases due to such trace gases. The bogus global warming alarmism has taken root the world over. The United Nation’s IPCC along with the Club of Rome have become political bodies whose intentions are the restriction of energy availability, the (unstated) reduction of population, and the establishment of a one world banking system and ultimately governmental institution. As a result of this reckless activity, millions of people’s lives worldwide will be negatively impacted, including a tremendous loss of life.

It is no small coincidence that President Biden signed an executive order authorizing the United States to reenter the Paris Climate Accords on his first day of office. He further signed an executive order prohibiting the completion and operation of the XL Keystone Pipeline and other executive orders having the cumulative effect of destroying over 200,000 U.S. jobs.

Summary of climate realities

There is no demonstrably measurable manmade warming or climate change on Earth
Carbon dioxide does not cause any measurable warming on Earth but rather adds a slight delay to nightly cooling.
The lack of correlation of the linear increase in the atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide indicated by the Mauna Loa Keeling Curve and the increased use of fossil fuels worldwide over the last 40 years, proves that the increase in CO₂ is not manmade
The Earth’s climate has constantly changed over the course of its 4.6 billion year history
Variations in solar system such as planetary motions, the Earth’s tilt or axis, solar and planetary gravitational fields, and the Sun’s radiative output have a profound effect on the Earth’s climate, and are periodic in nature
Climate change is used as an excuse worldwide by governments to tax carbon as a means of revenue generation
The corner stone of the climate change fraud and deception is the incorrect notion that hydrocarbon fuels contribute to manmade warming; and that nuclear power generation is inherently unsafe, and its use is irresponsible
It is conclusively demonstrated that only hydroelectric, hydrocarbon (fossil fuels) and nuclear generation can supply the vast amounts of energy a worldwide population of 7.8 billion people require.

Watch the author’s complete video interview on the Climate Change Story and Realities below:

Relationship between CO2 and the Earth’s Temperature

By: Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) http://www.sepp.org/

Logarithmic Relationship: A post in No Tricks Zone on earth’s climate being governed by the Sun led TWTW to search for a 1971 article on global cooling by S.I. Rasool and Stephen Schneider, then of NASA-GISS, now both deceased. Rasool was an atmospheric chemist who has written on the atmospheres of other planets as well as the earth. Stephen Schneider was a climatologist who was a lead author of the Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a strong advocate for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The abstract of the paper states:

“Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”]

The paper made the headlines of the New York Times, the authors later backtracked on their claims in the paper stating they underestimated the warming effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) and overestimated the cooling effects of aerosols. Schneider also gave a famous interview with Discover magazine in which he said:

“On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but & which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” Schneider’s views on abandoning the scientific method to be effective is a major problem in climate science and some other sciences today. That is one reason why policy makers and the public should discount the term “scientists say” as possibly meaningless. What is meaningful is the evidence.

The first quote shows that the authors and the editors of Science Mag realized that decades of laboratory experiments showed that the influence of carbon dioxide on the surface temperatures of the earth is logarithmic. This was in the early 1970s when the fear was that the earth was cooling. By 2001, the fear was that the globe was warming.

Page 6 of the “Summary for Policymakers” of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001) shows that the recognized logarithmic relationship – the declining influence of CO₂ with greater concentrations – has been replaced. It is now the inverse, an exponential relationship –increasing influence of CO2 with greater concentrations. No supporting physical evidence was offered. But discredited Mr. Mann’s hockey-stick was thrown in for good measure. The section is followed by the statement:

“Concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and their radiative forcing have continued to increase as a result of human activities.”

The IPCC, Science Mag, NASA-GISS and other government science organizations conveniently eliminated past concerns of an oncoming ice age and continue to ignore contradicting evidence to assert the popular claim of the day. Is there any reason why the public should believe government scientists who assert dangerous global warming? Or the politicians who claim a climate emergency? See links under Problems in the Orthodoxy, https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1_TAR-FRONT.pdf and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/11/the-person-who-set-the-stage-for-entire-deception-ofhuman-caused-global-warming-agw-stephen-schneider/ by Tim Ball

Radiation Transfer: As discussed in recent TWTWs, physicists such as William Happer, who specializes in Atomic, Molecular and Optical physics (AMO), which deals with the greenhouse effect, call the specific topic radiation transfer, not radiative forcing as the IPCC calls it. Also, the IPCC and its followers ignore the tremendous benefits of the greenhouse effect. Without it, the planet would not support complex life, perhaps except for geothermal vents. Certainly, land masses would be too cold at night to support plant life and animal life that depends on it.

This knowledge of the tremendous benefits of the greenhouse effect is ignored by those who claim carbon dioxide is causing dangerous warming, even though it was established around 1860 with experiments by John Tyndall who showed different greenhouse gases have different properties in absorbing radiant energy (heat). This was a landmark in the history of absorption spectroscopy of gases. Tyndall demonstrated and quantified that visually transparent gases absorb and emit infrared energy. If the goal of the IPCC and its followers is to show the warming effects of CO₂, they are using the wrong field of physics.

The high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database (HITRAN) is a molecular spectroscopic database used to simulate and analyze the transmission and emission of light in gaseous media, with an emphasis on planetary atmospheres. Using the HITRAN database, Wijngaarden & Happer and Howard Hayden have shown the effectiveness of CO₂ in blocking infrared transmission of energy transmission from the surface to space declines significantly even when CO₂concentration reaches about 100 parts per million (ppm) (a concentration below the IPCC-asserted “pre-industrial level” of 280 ppm). Further, CO₂blocks only a rather narrow range of infrared energy. Organizations that ignore the rather narrow limits of CO₂ blocking of infrared radiation are ignoring the scientific method and are not engaged in science, regardless of name.

Paul Homewood posted on his website, in two parts, a study by physicist David Coe who for the past 20 years has been developing a range of sensors for the monitoring of gaseous emissions to atmosphere using infra-red absorption spectroscopy. Coe uses the HITRAN database and concludes:

“CO₂levels of 3000ppm [parts per million, currently the CO₂ level is about 410 ppm] will only raise temperatures by a further 1.5K. These temperature increases are in fact well within natural variations seen in the past, including the medieval warm period and the little ice age of some 300 years ago.

“The possibility of positive feedback from water vapour is discounted by the simple fact that the H₂O spectrum is incapable of absorbing significant further amounts of radiated energy and the modest increase in temperature due to increasing CO₂ levels is unable to deliver any significant increase in H₂O concentration due to the specific relationship of H₂O saturation vapour pressure and temperature. It would take an increase in temperature of 10 deg C to double the mean H₂O atmospheric concentration, and that doubling would only result in a temperature increase of 2 deg C.”

“The ‘greenhouse effect’ is dominated by the absorption spectrum of H₂O with a little help from CO₂. At current concentrations of both gases, it is inconceivable that further increases in concentrations will lead to any significant warming. Increasing CO₂ concentration to 3000ppm and doubling the mean H₂O level to 2% would result in a global temperature increase of 3.4K.

“In short, there is no climate emergency, at least due to ‘greenhouse gases’.

”An addendum posted a week later deals with problems from using the concept of “equilibrium climate sensitivity.” Using this concept requires a large set of assumptions that may be refuted. A major issue is what happens if water vapor changes (the dominant greenhouse gas).

Coe presents numerous tables of calculations for concentrations of CO₂ between 0 and 3000 ppm and concentrations of water vapor (H₂O) ranging from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere. He added a number of calculations for climate sensitivity, not “equilibrium climate sensitivity.” Coe concludes:

“In producing these results no assumptions have been made about the mechanisms of heat transfer within the atmosphere, other than the fraction of absorbed outgoing IR radiation that remains with the earth/atmosphere lies between 0.4 and 0.6. Values outside this range result in unreasonable equilibrium earth temperatures.

“These results are totally at odds with the IPCC version of climate sensitivity ranging between 1.5 and 5deg C and suggest quite clearly that CO2 is not, repeat not, a significant driver of global warming and climate change.” In his Figure # 1 (not shown here) Coe plots the Atmospheric IR (infrared) Absorptivity change with CO2 concentrations changing from 0 to 3000 ppm and atmospheric water vapor at 0%, 0.1%, 0.25%, 0.5%, 1.0%, 2.0% and 4.0%. As suggested in the Hayden paper using calculations from Wijngaarden & Happer, at concentrations of CO2 above 100 ppm the influence of CO2 on temperatures quickly flattens out. There is little change in influence going from 500 ppm to 1000 ppm or above. Those claiming “runaway warming” on earth have no basis for their speculation. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

Climate Sensitivity: Fortunately, Coe added the addendum giving specific calculations for a range of CO₂and H₂O values. Pursuing climate sensitivity by using models is like hitting a barn with an arrow then drawing a target around it. It is whatever the modeler seeks. As stated above, Schneider quickly adjusted his values for CO₂ and aerosols depending on the direction the wind is blowing. Is it an ice age or global warming?

Last week TWTW discussed the Climate Change Information Brief by Christopher Essex: “Can Computer Models Predict Climate?” When discussing the current fad of “ensemble averaging” he writes:

“The average over these is presented as the future. It seems technical, but in terms of the future it is something like the difference between, ‘You will meet a tall handsome stranger,’ and ‘you may or may not meet an average person.’ Forecasts like that are difficult to falsify.

“The depth of difficulty of the scientific problem is obscured by the machinery inherited from the radiative-convective-model picture originating in the 60’s, which is peculiarly imposed on modern models. We imagine in accordance with radiative-convective model thinking that an integral over a temperature field (temperature index) is proportional to an integral over the radiation field (changes in infrared [absorbing] gas amounts). The constant of proportionality is known as the ‘climate sensitivity.’ Much effort has gone into determining its ‘correct’ value in the context of climate models. But such a relationship implies that these integrals can be related to each other in a function, which can ignore the underlying meteorology. That is, it is a claim of closure, and tantamount to a definition of climate. There is no reason to support this claim in Nature. If this function does not exist, neither does climate sensitivity, and the models that conform to this picture are falsified.” See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

Bandwagon Science: Last week TWTW asked the question what to call the thousands of papers that seem scientific but have highly questionable assumptions that are not tested or ignore physical evidence that the researcher or supporting entity wishes to mask. Richard Courtney’s term Bandwagon Science appears appropriate. The bandwagon fallacy is a form of Argumentum ad populum, an appeal to a common belief or to the masses. For example, “97% of scientists believe….”

A great example appeared in “Science Advances” put out by Science Mag. The effort is to find examples in history where high levels of CO₂ coincided with high temperatures to claim the CO2 was the cause of high temperatures. This one covered the Cenozoic Era which started about 66 million years ago after a great extinction wiped out three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, the K–Pg extinction event.

Since the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, the earth experienced significant periods of warming and cooling and CO₂ dropped significantly from about 3000 ppm to about 180 ppm during glaciation periods in the current Quaternary Period, an ice age starting about 2.6 million years ago.

Rather than presenting current observations of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, where it occurs, Science Mag is focused on speculating what the climate was like 66 million years ago when the Pakicetus, the probable ancestor of whales, such as the blue whale, walked on land on all fours. There is no way to realistically apply whatever value the research indicates for CO2 and temperatures to today’s earth. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science

Urban Heat Island Effect: Writing in WUWT, Andy May brings attention to a new paper by Nicola Scafetta in Climate Dynamics, “Detection of non‐climatic biases in land surface temperature records by comparing climatic data and their model simulations.” The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) is largely discounted by the IPCC. Scafetta points out that from 1950 to 2020 the world’s population tripled, going from 2.5 billion to 7.5 billion, an increase of 5 billion. Given that surface measurement instruments are largely located near population centers, this increase has to have a significant impact on measurements, particularly in areas undergoing urbanization. The only temperature-measuring system that averages over the entire earth, giving no excess weight to urban areas is the satellite system.

Urbanization is a major issue in the developing world. Prior to his death Fred Singer was convinced that locating many instruments near airports was influencing the measurements because the land around airports was being developed, also resulting in an increase in UHI. See links under Measurement Issues – Surface

Change in Administrations: No doubt, some of those who joined the Trump Administration to foster an open debate on how increasing CO₂ increases the greenhouse effect are frustrated by the experience. He appeared as erratic as wind power. The American public deserves an independent investigation of the strengths and limits to the claims that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming. The Trump Administration was not willing to provide one. The Biden Administration probably won’t. The demand by some Senators to review the science used to justify the Paris Agreement is a positive step, but one that will likely fail.

Biden has made clear that he is rejoining the Paris Agreement. At this time, the terms are not clear. It is important to remember that the Paris Agreement is an executive agreement, not a treaty. According to Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution:

“He [The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;”

In the US, a treaty has the force of law, an executive agreement does not. Obama danced around the issue of was it an agreement or a treaty? Yet, Obama made last minute changes assuring it was an agreement so he would not have to send it to the Senate for approval.

Given Biden’s climate team, no doubt they will pretend it is a treaty when it’s convenient for them. They will pretend they use the correct field of physics when they do not; they will pretend they use the correct databases to establish evidence of dangerous global warming when the databases do not; they will pretend that the models they use establish dangerous global warming when the models do not. They will pretend the resulting work is rigorous science when it is deficient speculation. It is questionable whether the team understands the difference between science and science fiction.

Given what has happened in the past, the finger pointing and personal attacks against those who dare stand up and demonstrate deficiencies in the claims of a climate crisis will only intensify, not diminish. But this has been part of the history of the US, and the schoolyard name-calling is minor when compared to what occurred in the effort to abolish slavery in some states and limit it in territories before the Civil War.

Number of the Week: 6.3 times. According to the calculations by David Coe, using the HITRAN data base that is well established and verified, an increase in atmospheric CO₂ from current levels of about 410 ppm to 3000 ppm will increase temperatures by about 1.5 K (ºC), well within the range since the Little Ice Age. The increase in CO₂ concentrations will be 6.3 times the current level. A warming of 1.5 K since 1880 is the latest number the UN and other organizations are claiming to be a climate crisis. To get to 3000 ppm, massive volcanoes will have to erupt, creating a real crisis. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/

Should ‘global warming’ fraudsters spend time in the clink?

Exclusive: Pat Boone offers Part 3 in his series on discredting of ‘hockey stick’ scientist

By Pat Boone October 30, 2019

Gentle reader – and fellow taxpayer – let us again examine an important and unfolding story of global climate science fraud unreported by “fake news,” or to put it more tactfully, inaccurate, biased and selective mainstream media.

The recent Mann v. Ball lawsuit verdict, dubbed the “science trial of the century,” has repercussions so profound it has spurred me to write this series of articles (this is the third, if you’re counting).

Please pay attention – or you’ll feel ashamed in the next few months as the truth of this worldwide deception is totally exposed for all to see.

Penn State professor Michael E Mann’s million-dollar libel case against fellow climate scientist Dr. Tim Ball was recently dismissed due to Mann’s “inexcusable delay.” The judge found in favor of Dr. Ball, the plaintiff, and professor Mann was ordered to pay a large fine and all court expenses, when he absolutely refused to produce the scientific basis for his widely acclaimed and accepted claim that the world is on the verge of deadly “global warming”!

Why is this so important?

Skeptics say that Mann is part of a criminal climate conspiracy. They assert Mann’s alarmist and iconic “hockey stick” graph – the cornerstone of U.N. global warming fears – was created from “secret science” – intentionally secret because it is fraudulent.

Back in 1999 Dr. Mann and his graph were the game-changer on the international scene, appearing, largely unknown and uncredentialed, as if from nowhere. The hockey stick showed “unprecedented” increases in modern global temperatures.

Mann told reporters, “I found myself at the center of what is arguably the most suicidally contentious issue that we face today: the issue of human caused climate change and what to do about it.”

The only thing unprecedented, says Dr. Ball, is how rookie Mann suddenly appeared, soon after being awarded a “rushed through” Ph.D. and swiftly appointed Lead Scientist by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Were you aware of any of this? Was anybody aware of this, including the “mainstream media” that swallowed it, hook, line and sinker?

Mann’s tree ring temperature proxy graph was speedily accepted widely when it suddenly appeared – despite the reality that most scientists who had studied this knew that higher temperatures than today existed during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP).

Understand: It was, and is, known that the overall climate of the world was considerably warmer than now – and there was no industrial revolution existing to blame it on!

The new hockey stick graph was hysterically touted by climate campaigners and policymakers alike, while centuries of painstaking, coolly collated records backing the warmer MWP were instantly ignored.

And those promoting one world government and control were avidly and insistently sounding the “Chicken Little, Sky is Falling” fallacy!

Skeptics smelled a rat, and Dr. Ball was sued by professor Mann – for publicly joking that Mann was a fake and “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.”

This lawsuit dismissal should have been front-page news, but the media have largely ignored it. Wonder why? The main proponent of “global warning” was being called out as a fraud, and in public court!

But if he was truly concerned for his professional and personal reputation, all Mann had to do was show his data and workings in court. He wouldn’t – evidently, he couldn’t – so he refused. And his reputation has now sunk to the point where a reputed 97% of scientists are having to admit that Mann and his hockey stick theory are evidently a fraud.

Made up out of thin air, not globally warming air.

Despite this lawsuit running over eight years, Mann stubbornly hid his secret numbers from the court. His case was therefore dismissed for “unreasonable delay” – Mann’s “secret science” was staying secret.

Like you, I hope, I’m now asking for common-sense proofs.

My previous column was an appeal to reason, addressed to all parties. Even non-scientists can see the dilemma. I urged Mann to “cough up” all the data, which is what any honest scientist would do. If it’s reality-based – let’s all see it! Not just blindly take your word for it, as we have so far.

You know, as well as I do, how all this looks.

If the scientific “basis” for the whole “global warning” scam is bogus, then real scientists should and could have known it long ago. Who and what persuaded them to go along, unquestioning, like proverbial lemmings? Could it be big money, elite interests, even cabals who see this as a means of assuming control over all production, industry and fuels, worldwide, telling us what we can and can’t do – “for our own good”?

These “experts” had us believing temperatures would skyrocket, coasts would be flooded, properties and communities devastated. Remember when President Obama promised he was going to shut down all coal mining?And set about to do it?

The first prominent “Chicken Little,” Al Gore, revealed the “Inconvenient Truth” that he was continent-hopping in his private gas-guzzling jetliner – and the Obamas recently purchased a $15 million beachfront mansion, which the globally warmed oceans will surely wash away – right?

Do they know something we don’t?

If I still have your attention, and I hope I do, you may still be wondering about the real scientific evidence showing that all this “global warning” data are “hokey,” not “hockey” – so let me take you briefly “into the weeds” of actual data.

This is yeoman’s work done by Steve McIntyre, a respected Canadian statistician.

McIntyre checked to see if Mann had done what any diligent scientist would do – perform tests (i.e., an r² statistic) to uncover any unforeseen errors in creating his graph. The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Wegman Commission (2006) asked McIntyre to assist in its investigations.

Wegman wanted answers about the controversial graph and asked Mann whether he had calculated such a verification r² statistic and asked what it was.

Even in response to a congressional inquiry, Mann refused to provide the test numbers. He did provide code, and that code revealed for certain that Mann calculated a verification r² statistic check during the summer of 2005.

Likewise, the National Academy of Sciences similarly asked Mann questions on whether he performed the verification r² regression tests to verify whether his graph’s hockey stick shape was correct.

Then Mann caught himself out in a lie.

Our errant hokey stick professor flatly denied calculating that – saying that it would be a “foolish and incorrect thing” to do – notwithstanding the fact that his own source code, produced for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, showed that he had calculated the r² regression statistic: he simply didn’t report it. Evidently, because it didn’t validate his theory!

Are you smelling what I am? Remember Bernie Madoff – the financial “genius” who blatantly defrauded lots of experienced and very wealthy famous people of a reported $50 billion, and us taxpayers of billions more?

Well, Bernie is in jail for several lifetimes – and this effort to stampede all of us into giving up our liberties to produce and create and go about our lives freely as we have become accustomed to do in modern society is a multitrillion dollar scam that we’ve been sold – on intentionally fraudulent data and pressure.

Might there be a vacancy next to Bernie Madoff?

[My gratitude to scientist Tom Tamarkin for the spadework and verifiable references herein.]

WND

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Controlled Opposition: the strategy to stymie real climate debate

Principia Scientific | October 2, 2019

Written by John O’Sullivan

Why is it that groups like the Heartland Institute and CFACT are very good at spending money holding seminars and presentations to their echo chamber of supporters but don’t change things for the better in the real world?

Have you noticed how ‘lukewarmers’ like Spencer, Happer, Curry, etc will say CO2 does something but none will quantify and qualify their statements with real metrics?

Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous quote by Soviet tyrant, Vladimir Lenin [pictured below] who said:

”The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves”?

Lenin | It's Not Easy Being Red

We need to delve into this question and seek to explain something of the origins of the controlled opposition strategy.

The concept of a ‘controlled opposition’ certainly pre-dates Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. We know that during the French Revolution Count Mirabeau was controlled opposition, fooling the rebels who thought he was supporting the revolution. But in reality he was a personal friend of the king and a secret government agent.

It is when an individual, organization, or movement is covertly controlled or influenced by a hidden third party. The secrecy is paramount because the controlled entity’s true purpose must never be made public, or the plot will be undone.

The point of the subterfuge is to achieve mass deception, surveillance or political/social manipulation. Our ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is dressed up to be loyal opposition battling the ‘hated enemy’ – the controlling party. The ‘sheep’s clothing’ is ‘lukewarmer’ world of skepticism where everyone parrots from the hymn sheet that carbon dioxide must cause ‘some warming.’ (don’t confuse ‘lukewarmers with real skeptics – we ‘Slayers’ (Principia Scientific International) who are vilified as the most extreme ‘deniers’).

To get the ‘ball’ rolling who better to ask than Dr Tim Ball who wryly flips the ’97 percent’ hoary old chestnut:

“I reply on radio to questions about the 97% by after explaining how it was created and is wrong, that it is most likely that 97% of scientists have never looked at the IPCC Reports, Summary and especially the original Science Report of WG1. Here is a good quote that I put on my book.

Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.” [Dr Tim Ball, by email: October 01, 2019]

But the hidden agenda goes back to at least the 1970’s as shown by valued PSI member, Tom Tamarkin who notes:

“I believe that my friend Marge Hecht and I were the first to flag Margret Mead and her side kick back then of Paul Ehrlich, as coming up with the CO₂ AGW scheme before “The Club of Rome” at: “Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born: 1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference” https://climatecite.com/where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/

Now, we did address this perplexing matter once before in our 2018 article, ‘Controlled Opposition’ Keeps Greenhouse Gas Theory On Life Support.’

Back then we examined how the radiative greenhouse gas theory, despite being discredited as a reliable explanation of earth’s climate system, was being staunchly defended by many prominent skeptics of man-made global warming. At the time this author wrote:

“Any such controlled opposition would work to ensure that the CO2-driven radiative greenhouse gas theory was maintained and unquestioned as the ‘settled science’; without that lynchpin no one could persuasively argue that human emissions were dangerously altering earth’s climate.”

We drew a parallel with what began in America in the 1950’s with Operation Mockingbird and a secret campaign by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence the mass media.

Of course, many who inadvertently serve as ‘controlled opposition’ wouldn’t even regard themselves as such. For example, a scientist employed by a university and protective of their position, is subliminally motivated to toe the official line. These may be among the jobbing supplicants who peddle the ubiquitous fake ‘lab experiment’ claimed to prove CO2 ‘trapped heat’?

“Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment (from the 24 hour Gore-a-thon) shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised.”

Time and again, we challenged government researchers, exposed fake data and corrupt scientists (e.g. Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph.) Of course, Tim Ball was even prosecuted in court for his troubles but was finally victorious in August 2019.

We are faced with people who will ‘accidentally on purpose’ rig their science to fit the groupthink narrative. These groups fight for money and their high-level staffs are well paid. They don’t want to quickly solve the problem because their reason to exist ceases and any organism’s instinct is for survival.

Dr Pierre Latour, a renowned international expert in thermodynamics has repeatedly called out the insane ‘trick’ of government researchers who ‘simplify’ complex calculations of the innumerable variables in climate by mixing scalar numbers with vectors (a huge ‘no, no’ to real science). Latour took great issue with Dr Roy Spencer’s bizarre article, ‘Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still’ (July 23, 2010).

Spencer’s is regarded by believers in the greenhouse gas theory (GHE) as one of the most authoritative defenses. It claims that CO2 is causing the climate to be “33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be” absent this gas. The crux of the argument which Latour powerfully disputes is Spencer’s bold admission:

“Well, I’m going to go ahead and say it: THE PRESENCE OF COOLER OBJECTS CAN, AND DO, CAUSE WARMER OBJECTS TO GET EVEN HOTTER.”

Yes, Spencer actually makes this unphysical claim and alarmists and ‘lukewarmers’ alike buy into it. Latour’s authoritative rebuttal of the GHE is his ‘No Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still‘ (January 2012).

Another good example of such ‘bad measuring’ by a government ‘expert’ who even got called out in the courts for his shenanigans, is alarmist Oxford Professor Myles Allen [pictured below] who was taken to task by a US Federal judge in California. See here. [1]

Professor Myles Allen wins 'Lifetime Award' from ...

Professor Allen’s science was grossly exaggerating the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the judge spotted the ruse:

“It’s 400 parts per million but you make it look like it’s 10,000 part per million,” he said.

Professor Allen was forced to admit his slide was misleading. “Your honor is quite right,” he agreed.

Astrophysicist, Joseph E Postma is also no stranger to seeing scheming resistance to climate skepticism in academia. Postma has long taken issue with the fudging of data and over-reliance on averaging techniques, which can be a convenient means to falsify and distort mathematically what occurs in reality.

Postma, in his new book, ‘The Layman’s Guide to the Greatest Scientific Fraud in History,’ deftly exposes how the standard model of the greenhouse gas theory depicts the earth as a flat surface:

“Just because you can think of an average or a way of computing an average, it does not mean that that average has anything to do with reality. And so although you can think of spreading sunshine over the entire Earth’s surface at once as an average and you can compute that with mathematics, it actually has nothing to do with reality because in reality sunlight does not fall on the Earth in such a fashion.”

Postma then goes on to elaborate how government climate modelers took the step to remove the need for a time variable (night/day) and actual incoming sunlight across one hemisphere in their equations. They wanted to use a simple averaging technique (spreading strong sunlight from one hemisphere thinly over both earth’s hemispheres simultaneously as a tepid twilight). This thus created the false condition in the models that sunlight, itself, is not strong enough to melt ice. As a result, the academics then opted to fudge an additional 33 degrees into their numbers so that the model can replicate the true strength of sunlight which they had unphysically botched into tepid twilight in the first place!

But surely, don’t the best and brightest NASA climate scientists diligently apply super computers to fix this problem? Well, no, not if you speak to an actual NASA climate scientist who worked alongside Dr James Hansen and Dr Gavin Schmidt.

Let me introduce you to Dr Duane Thresher. In his revealing article ‘Follow The Money II’ (September 21, 2017) Thresher exposed the utter incompetence among his fellow government workers:

“The unqualified physicists and mathematicians carpetbagged it into climate science. (Just because everything has some physics/math in it doesn’t mean physicists/mathematicians know everything. While I (Dr. Duane Thresher) was at NASA GISS, we used to make fun of the physicists/mathematicians at the National Bomb Labs for getting into climate modeling.)

Everybody had to have their own supercomputer to model climate. I talked about NASA GISS’s experience with this: no proper place to put it, no tech support, no qualified climate modeling programmers. This was true at most climate research institutions.”

The closer we look, the more we see that despite having the best hardware for contemporary computer climate models, government employees still rely on those over-simplified algorithms devised a century ago that were only intended to serve as mere estimates. Back then, before insane climate alarm and trillion-dollar climate ‘fixing’ policies became the rage, no faculty of climate science even existed.

There is thus a distinct and disconcerting chasm between what has been believed in (government-funded) academia for three decades versus what is daily proven objectively in the highly-competitive, real world (results-focused industry) by applied scientists and engineers.

Now factor in the truism that the best and brightest brains seek lucrative careers in the cut-throat private sector, while mediocre, unambitious minds tend to opt for the safer job security of government work.

It appears to be more than coincidence that the ‘lukewarmers’ are invariably from academia; while the ‘slayers’ mostly are comprised of applied scientists and engineers (plus a smattering of retired academics).

To help unclutter the confusion, PSI provided ‘The New Three-Sided Climate Debate: A User Guide.’ [2] Our guide exposed Three Paradoxes in the Consensus Climate Theory as follows:

Paradox One: (the blatant fraud) Despite thousands of years of proxy data (e.g. from ice cores) proving all past rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels FOLLOW not cause increases in global temperatures, alarmist scientists have falsely reported the opposite;

Paradox Two: (an irrational love affair with models) Despite hard empirical evidence that solar energy first heats earth’s surface before rising up to warm the air, alarmists have turned this fact full circle to program their models to suggest it is the cooler air that somehow heats earth’s warmer surface even more;

Paradox Three: (the mathematical errors inc. L R Richardson’s etc.) The direct heat of the sun, which can only impact half of our three-dimensional planet at any time, has been crudely modeled as constant; a ‘flat earth’ heat source with one-quarter of the intensity averaged out over the entire planet (the ‘P4 number’)

Now, the general make-up of the membership of PSI (AKA the ‘slayers’) comes mostly from the applied sciences and engineering. A good few hold PhD’s in thermodynamics – the perfect discipline to help understand earth’s climate system. What really bothers such ‘hands on’ experts in empirical science is the glaring anomaly among climate academics – who dodge the question: why does carbon dioxide become a super heater in their theory when free roaming the atmosphere, yet it’s only commercial and laboratory use is for super-cooling?

After well over a decade engaged full-time in the fractious man-made global warming debate, it strikes many a seasoned ‘slayer’ skeptic that some of our fellow ‘lukewarm’ skeptics are not of the same flock. Perhaps, more than one or two really are the ‘wolves’ who serve as controlled opposition to stymie real progress?

Some, in all sincerity, simply don’t want to countenance that their life’s work was premised on a false assumption – that CO2 ‘must cause some warming’ of the atmosphere might be bogus. That would be a bitter pill to swallow if your last name was Spencer or Lindzen.

We don’t especially want to be mean about Dr Judith Curry, who has now retired from the academic hullaballoo. As we wrote in 2018,

“Perhaps Dr Curry is less the willing operative and more the unwitting groupthinker.”

Yes, groupthink may be the bigger villain here. As it is for the alarmist camp where so many scientists from various disciplines, not wanting to tread on the toes of a scientist in another discipline, will merely acquiesce along consensus lines. But as we all know, ‘consensus is not science!’

So, just consider that the purposes of controlled opposition include:

Coopting or preempting a resistance movement to neutralize the threat that a grassroots movement would pose to an established power structure
Preempt or neutralize true but negative information by having it be championed in a skewed or stigmatized fashion by a person or group. The truth can be peppered with misinformation or the truth of the message can be neutralized by association due to the extreme, radical, or unpalatable positions held by the controlled entity (person or group) who is disclosing the information or “championing” a position. The stigmatize truth or adulterated truth in turn steers people away from truthful information which would normally cause criticism or a serious backlash against the controlling party
Hijack the goals and actions of an organization or movement for purposes other than those that were the original intentions of the grassroots movement
Give the public the false illusion of choice by presenting a political party or organization that superficially speaks to the desires or frustrations of the people but whose actions do not further the stated goals of the organization
Disinformation or deception of the masses. Steering the masses in the wrong direction or misdirect their energies, beliefs and actions
Unmask and monitor the true opposition
Create a chaotic and divisive environment in which the opposition cannot band together and there is general mistrust thereby ensuring that an organized opposition with clear goals and priorities never manifests
Act in such a way that superficially appears to benefit the opposition, but in truth furthers the ends of the controlling party

Do you not get a sense that these factors are in play in the fractious climate debate?

The strategy of controlled opposition works best under circumstances in which the masses are gullible, credulous, lack critical thinking and are unable to connect the dots and see how the actions/inaction or manipulation of information from the controlled entity benefit the controlling entity. Isn’t that a fair description of every-day, average non-scientist voters?

For further edification we recommend watching this insightful video featuring Tim Ball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1VJtER2IUE&feature=share

[1] Full report by Phelim McAleer, Producer/Director FrackNation here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/fracknation/a-bloody-nose-for-global-warming-alarmists/1737130993018427/

[2] The New Three-Sided Climate Debate: A User Guide https://principia-scientific.org/the-new-three-sided-climate-debate-a-user-guide/ (Published on September 15, 2017)

Funding the Climate-Industrial Complex

Principia Scientific

Published on August 27, 2019

Written by Tom D. Tamarkin

Why Big Green energy investors rely on the man-made global warming myth

Supposedly “green” or “renewable” energy has become a trillion-dollar-plus annual industry that has spawned tens of thousands of new businesses worldwide. The total Climate-Industrial Complex is a $2-trillion-per-year business. Major fossil fuel companies like Shell Energy now have green energy divisions.

These companies are virtually 100% dependent on the politically driven notion of “dangerous manmade global warming and climate change.” The media, public and political establishment constantly recite the assertion that 97% of scientists say the problem is real and manmade carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the cause.

However, increased concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere do not lead to global warming and climate change. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. The major “greenhouse gas” is water vapor. An intricate feedback system regulates the Earth’s temperature, maintaining immunity from temperature increases and decreases due to such trace gases.

Furthermore, the false notion of CO₂-driven climate change is responsible for the potential massive redistribution of wealth from now-wealthy industrialized nations to poor countries. This has led to the corrupt worldwide business of carbon tax credit trading and more money to fund wind, solar and biofuel energy. Green industries should not predicate their business models on false claims about climate change.

They should base their businesses and R&D budgets on the fact that fossil fuels will become less economically viable over the coming decades as easily recovered reserves are depleted. Renewables such as solar and wind cannot provide material amounts of energy required worldwide – and require vast amounts of metals and other materials that are themselves not renewable or sustainable.

Utilities and energy companies must be free to use petroleum, coal, natural gas and biofuels at market-demand costs and must increase nuclear energy production. New sources of high energy density power generation must be created.

Today the “green energy” or “renewables” sector of the power generation industry is driven by the perceived but not scientifically proven notion that carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and bio-fuels cause “global warming” or “climate change.” This is based on incorrect ideas about the real practical effects that “greenhouse gases” cause when introduced into our atmosphere.

This illustrative chart shows that there is no causational relationship, either liner or logarithmic, between steadily rising CO2 levels and nearly stable to slightly higher average global temperatures over the past four decades which decreased in 2018 and is on a continued downward curve. The chart uses an expanded temperature curve to demonstrate this lack or correlation let alone causation.

Furthermore the water vapor content in the lower atmosphere varies from 100 PPM or .01% to 42,400 PPM or 4.2% – whereas carbon dioxide is ≈ 400 PPM or 0.04% of the atmosphere. That is over two orders of magnitude difference when water vapor is at its peak concentration. This suggests that water vapor has a much greater effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Water vapor and clouds account for 90% of greenhouse gas volume in the atmosphere.

It is theoretically possible that carbon dioxide and other non-condensable greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide and ozone can create minute increases in thermal absorption and therefore could increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere via a “positive feedback cycle,” leading to warming and an increase in evaporation of sea water. However, the trace amounts of these gases would lead to virtually undetectable and immeasurable temperature and water vapor increases.

Moreover, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere would also produce a negative feedback effect. This could happen as more water vapor leads to more cloud formation. Clouds reflect sunlight and reduce the amount of energy that reaches the Earth’s surface to warm it. If the amount of solar warming decreases, then the temperature of the Earth would decrease.

In that case, adding more water vapor would result in global cooling, rather than warming. But cloud cover does mean more condensed water in the atmosphere, making for a stronger greenhouse effect than non-condensed water vapor alone. It is warmer on a cloudy winter day than on a clear one.

Thus the possible positive and negative feedbacks associated with increased water vapor and cloud formation will largely cancel one another out and further complicate the ability to model these feedback cycles using computer simulation and mathematical modeling.

Many in the “renewables energy” industry will object to this analysis, because they see it as undermining their reason to exist, affecting investor interest and sales opportunities. They miss the key point.

Today the only viable energy source beyond fossil fuels is nuclear fission. Our nuclear energy industry must be rebuilt if America is to remain a leader in energy, economic growth and opportunity. We must also continue our research and development in fusion energy which has many advantages over nuclear fission, if it is ever perfected.

We commissioned an objective science-based analysis of solar power as a means to generate 100% of baseload power in the USA based on current demand. The results are clear: solar power for baseload electricity is simply unrealistic. It is a virtual impossibility to power America from solar energy based on the science, let alone the economics, reliability or land and material requirements. Electrifying the transportation infrastructure will increase this impossibility several fold. The same is true of wind power.

We must develop the next generation of very high energy density nuclear power – first nuclear fission, to be replaced possibly by fusion in the mid to late 21st Century. We must also learn to conserve energy and materials better, not to save the planet from man-made climate change, but to give man more time to develop high flux density energy generation science and technology.

In December 2018, both Excel Energy and Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) announced plans to convert to 100% renewable green energy generation by 2050. That is a scientifically impossibility, unless policy makers and environmentalist alike redefine nuclear energy as green.

Why would they make such claims? For Excel boosting stock prices through subsidies comes to mind.

NIPSCO is a government-protected monopoly utility, with Indiana state government guaranteeing NIPSCO a profit of approximately 10% for every dollar it spends. That means NIPSCO has an obvious financial self-interest to engage in costly business practices. Building expensive new power facilities, even when existing facilities are working perfectly well, is one of the most effective ways for NIPSCO to ramp up its spending and guaranteed profits. Of course both companies do so at the expense of consumers, many of whom have no knowledge that their electricity bills are about to rise substantially.

(To learn more about fusion energy, its promise and scientific difficulties facing it, visit our website Fusion4Freedom.com. For information about what energy is and where it comes from, see “Energy Basics: Where does energy on our planet come from?” Go here to learn more about Excel Energy’s deceptive and wholly unrealistic plans – and here for more about NIPSCO’s wholly unrealistic plans.)

Let energy buyers beware. Politicians, activist groups and industrialists are all using “climate change” to increase their power and income. We need to figure out what they’re doing – and fight back.

Tom Tamarkin has been involved with the utility business and energy since 1985. He is founder and president of EnergyCite, Inc, in Sacramento, CA and founder and GM of the Fusion Energy Consortium.

Climatic Effects of Manmade Carbon Dioxide

Principia Scientific
Published on August 13, 2019
Written by Bud Bromley & Tom D. Tamarkin

Abstract: Carbon dioxide is the “gas of life” providing the carbon on which all plant and animal life on earth is based.

The IPCC and the anthropogenic climate change community have asserted that carbon dioxide or CO₂ is a pollutant because it enables global warming or climate change.

Computer models have been generated based on the unproven “Radiated Greenhouse Gas Emissions” theory which predicts catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate leading to much future death and destruction.

No demonstrable, empirical evidence of this theory is available. No signs of anthropogenic climate change have been discovered. Yet the climate alarmist’s community has convinced elected leaders and policy makers to implement proposed solutions to prevent this hypothetical destruction. The proposed solution is the vast reduction of energy leading to enormous worldwide population reduction under the control of a single socialist worldwide government. Furthermore governments are implementing significant taxes on carbon dioxide. The IPCC and global warming community assert that mankind is responsible for a 33% increase in total atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the last forty years.

However a mathematical analysis shows that the human produced carbon dioxide concentrations are so low as to be unmeasurable and there is no correlation to the increases in carbon dioxide and man’s burning of fossil fuels. Plant life thrives on increased levels of carbon dioxide which in turn provides increased food production for animals and mankind. Satellite records show a significant “greening” of the Earth in terms of increased plant life.

Climatic Effects of Manmade Carbon Dioxide

All human lifeforms on Earth…plant and animal…are carbon based. Carbon is a key component of all known life on Earth, representing approximately 45-50% of all dry biomass. Complex molecules are made up of carbon bonded with other elements, especially oxygen and hydrogen and frequently also with nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. Carbon dioxide or CO₂ is a naturally occurring compound consisting of carbon and oxygen atoms and is the gas of life. Carbon is exceedingly abundant on Earth.

Research by Rice University Earth scientists suggests that virtually all of Earth’s life-giving carbon came from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to Mercury.

The most abundant element in the human body is oxygen, making up about 65% of the weight of each person. Carbon is the second most abundant element, making up 18% of the body. Although you have more hydrogen atoms than any other type of element, the mass of a hydrogen atom is so much less than that of the other elements that its abundance comes in third, at 10% by mass.

Animals get carbon from eating plants as well as other animals who obtain carbon from plants. There are no carbon based vitamins or food supplements. Plants obtain virtually all their carbon from the air.

Air is mostly made of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air. This carbon makes up most of the building materials that plants use to build new leaves, stems, and roots. The oxygen used to build glucose molecules is also from carbon dioxide. Energy to fuel the chemical reactions comes from sunlight and the process is referred to as photosynthesis.

Yet the IPCC, UN, many government funded laboratories & universities, and various other political bodies say carbon dioxide is a pollutant. In fact the United States Environmental Protection Agency included carbon dioxide in its 2015 Endangerment Ruling. Why? So government agencies could impose taxes on carbon dioxide. An example was the attempt to require all households to deploy carbon dioxide monitors so that the homeowners could be taxed for the CO₂ they generated from the use of natural gas and a derivative of electricity use. Even Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack would have potentially benefited from these taxes and developed plans to implement enforcement.

Why would these international and even U.S. governmental organizations embrace the deceptive and fraudulent concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming now conveniently called climate change?

To impose new burdensome taxes on something all people use; energy.
To advance socialists based one world government.
To force a worldwide order of magnitude population reduction over the next few hundred years through the total elimination of inexpensive abundant energy required to sustain agricultural, transportation and advanced human lifestyles.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), now called climate change because the world is not warming, originated at the 1975 “The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering” conference, organized by anthropologist Margaret Mead, and Paul Erlich, author of the “Population Bomb.” In the early 1980s “The Club of Rome” embraced the empirically unprovable “Radiated Greenhouse Gas Emissions” hypothesis as a means to scare people into believing abundant inexpensive energy must be restricted because it creates catastrophic global warming. It has not and does not. Forty years of lower troposphere average global temperature readings show the Earth’s temperature has gone up and down by slightly less than +/- 0.75 degrees C.

Water vapor comprises 95% of all greenhouse gases. Carbon Dioxide is a trace gas. Manmade CO₂ can only be responsible for 0.117% of any warming from all combined greenhouse gas including water vapor. Most of the recent increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentration come from gasification of the oceans which is a function of temperature. Cold water dissolves more CO₂ than warm water. Temperature increases always precede CO₂ increases with a significant lag. The amount of “warming” enabled by manmade CO₂is so low it is virtually unmeasurable.

A comparison of the atmospheric CO₂concentrations from 1979 to 2018 shows no Pearson Correlation to temperature. However there is strong correlation to decreases in temperature caused by volcanic activity and increases in temperature caused by El Niño events, as shown in the chart below.

The Earth is over 4.6 billion years old. It has had an atmosphere for over 4.4 billion years. The composition of the atmosphere has changed many times due to natural causes and local climates have varied periodically over periods measured in thousands of years.

However it is unreasonable to study climate records for say 200 years and conclude man has an effect. Two hundred years is only 4.5 X10^-8 of the Earth’s age.

What tools have the climate alarmists used to convince a mostly scientifically illiterate world population?

Popular media stating that increased carbon dioxide levels result in increased temperatures while the fact of the matter is that increases in temperatures lead to increased carbon dioxide concentrations as evidenced by the well understood paleogenic records.
Popular media claims that today’s carbon dioxide levels are at a record high, while in fact over paleogenic time frames today’s records at near record lows.
Popular media making false claims about extreme weather events and sea level rise without full disclosure and explanation of the facts.
Manipulated data sets of temperature records and poor reporting stations both on land and at sea.
False claims that the science is settled and 97% of scientists agree that additional CO₂ contributed by man is increasing the global average temperature. The media never mentions things like the 31,487 American scientists…9,029 of which have doctorate degrees…who signed a petition urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto AGW agreement.
Use of computer models based on the false theories of greenhouse gases and temperature sensitivity with the intent to sell a catastrophic future based on events forecasted tens of years out, predicated on unproven theories and causal behaviors.

We produced a chart showing the Mauna Loa, HW Keeling CO₂data and a forty year average global temperature based on the UAH6 satellite data base. There has been a 33% increase in atmospheric CO₂ from 1971 to present however there is there is no causal statistical correlation between CO₂ and temperature changes.

Although the IPCC and others claim that the recent 33% increase in atmospheric CO2 is totally anthropogenic, that is manmade due to burning fossil fuels, there is no correlation between the CO₂ concentration levels and the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels over the last 40 years.

However, when we overlaid a forty year time line of El Nino events on the same chart there is a pronounced correlation to temperature increases and specific El Nino events.

Next, we compared annual decreases in temperature with major volcanic eruptions producing very significant amounts of volcanic ash dissipated into the upper atmosphere. Again, there was a distinct correlation to decreases in annual average global temperature.

Now we have on one simple to understand chart the correlation of average annual global temperature and natural events causing annual increases and decreases in annual average global temperature.

The Earth has a natural built in thermostat and the dwell of that thermostat maintains a remarkably consistent average annual global temperature given the fact that the Earth’s heater, the Sun, is 93 million miles from the earth. Over the last 40 years, the annual average global temperature has had a +/-0.75 degree C variation.

To further aid the scientifically lay population in the understanding of climate science and natural variations we have produced an extremely detailed climate tutorial.

The combined worldwide consumer and taxpayer burden of the Climate Industrial Complex including that of the related Big Green Energy Scheme is over $2 trillion USD annually.

Simple math can be used to calculate the rate of change of one variable versus another variable. The rate of change of one variable versus another is known as its slope or velocity, also known as its first derivative. The change in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration over a period of time is the slope of CO₂concentration, or the first derivative of CO₂ concentration with respect to time. The change of slope with respect to time is the second derivative, also known as acceleration. We can use this simple math to calculate the change of atmospheric CO₂ concentration versus time, that is, the slope or 1^st derivative of CO₂ concentration. And, we can also calculate the change in slope of CO₂concentration versus time, that is, the second derivative of CO₂ concentration with respect to time, or the acceleration of CO₂concentration. This simple math is the basis of this letter.

Decades ago, a professor named Keeling set up a laboratory on the Big Island of Hawaii at 11,000 feet altitude on the side of Mauna Loa. The instruments in this laboratory have been measuring atmospheric CO₂ concentration since then. These measurements show atmospheric CO₂ concentration has been steadily increasing since the instruments on Mauna Loa were installed. In other words, the laboratory provides us with the slope of atmospheric CO₂ concentration, which is also known as the first derivative of atmospheric CO₂ concentration with respect to time. Since CO₂ is generally accepted to be a well-mixed gas in air, the Mauna Loa data is generally accepted to represent the global average atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Here is the graph from the Keeling laboratory on Mauna Loa.

In the data files underlying the above graphic, we have the raw date to calculate the change of atmospheric CO2 concentration over time (the slope or first derivative) as well as the rate of change of slope over time (the second derivative with respect to time.)

In the graphic and raw data, we can see the increase and decrease in CO₂ levels due to seasonal changes. This seasonal change appears as jagged shark’s teeth on the consistently upward sloping CO₂ concentration. In the spring and summer, when plants are growing and oceans are warming, CO₂ concentration increases slightly. In winter, when plants lose their leaves and algae die, and oceans cool, CO₂ concentration decreases slightly. The instruments in the lab on Mauna Loa and the Keeling graph are sensitive enough to record these relatively minor seasonal CO₂ concentration changes within the overall data and graph of changing CO₂concentration over time. In other words, we can see the second derivative of CO₂concentration, the change in slope with respect to time, in the graphic.

We know from other sources CO₂ concentration was increasing long before data collection began at the Mauna Loa Keeling lab. But, we do not need that information for the purpose of this short paper.

The Keeling graph reports 414 CO₂ molecules per 1,000,000 molecules of air in the earth’s atmosphere, or 414 ppm, or 0.0414%. PPM is only one of several different possible measures of concentration. The chemical composition of air consists of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, water vapor and various trace gases as well as various aerosols held in suspension.. CO₂ is one of those trace molecules. Nitrogen comprises 78% of the gases in the atmosphere while Oxygen comprises 21% and Argon comprises 0.93%. Water vapor concentration in air is highly variable, from less than 1% to 4%. CO₂, methane, ozone and the other gas molecules in air are known as trace molecules and all of these trace molecules taken together make up less than 1% of the molecules in a volume of air. A cubic meter volume of air at sea level is 99.9% empty space. Air is not dense compared to any liquid such as water where molecules are so closely packed together that they are in physical contact and can share electrons and conduct heat among them.

The 414 ppm or 0.0414% concentration of CO₂ in air represents the net sum of all CO₂ absorption and desorption events on earth. It is the sum of trillions of events which are occurring every second.

For example, the oceans in the far north and in the far south are absorbing CO₂ because cold water absorbs and holds more CO₂than warm water, like a cold soda pop keeping its CO₂bubbles. Another example is the absorption of enormous amounts of CO₂ from the air by all green plants. All green plants use CO₂ from the air along with water and sunlight in a process called photosynthesis which converts CO₂ into carbohydrate molecules.

Sugars are a group of common carbohydrate molecules. Carbohydrate molecules are the building blocks for all plant cells. Animals, insects, fish, humans, all life on earth is based on carbohydrate molecules in cells which are made by green plants from carbon, water and sunlight. Animals, insects, fish etc. eat plants, then those plants are in turn eaten by other animals, insects, fish, humans and so on in a continuous process called the food chain.

Another example of an enormous and ongoing change in CO2 that contributes to the net atmospheric CO₂concentration is methane (CH₄) emissions. Methane is continuously emitted by warm water, just as is CO₂, and is continuously absorbed by cold water, just as is CO₂. About 50 to 60 times more CO₂ molecules are dissolved in the water of earth’s oceans compared to earth’s air. This ratio, expressed as a partition co-efficient, is determined by Henry’s Law. It is a constant of nature. It’s neither a theory nor a hypothesis, it is a scientific law that is more proven and far better understood than gravity. Henry’s Law determines the ratio partition of a gas between liquid water and the gas above the liquid water.

Henry’s Law is dependent on the pressure of the gas, the temperature of the gas and water, and to a minor extent, the minerals like salt in the water. Since air pressure at sea level is nearly constant, the primary determinant of the amount of CO₂ in air is the temperature of ocean water. Oceans are like your soda pop. If the soda pop is cold, then the CO₂bubbles stay in the pop. If the soda pop warms, the pop loses its CO₂ bubbles. As mentioned, determined by Henry’s Law, there is 50 to 60 times more CO₂ in the oceans than in the atmosphere.

Warm ocean water emits huge amounts of CO₂and methane which contribute to the net atmospheric CO₂ concentration reported in the Keeling Mauna Loa data. The largest source (by orders of magnitude) of CO₂ and methane in the air is the emission of these molecules by warm water in oceans and soils. CO₂ and methane are absorbed back into cold water in amounts also etermined by Henry’s Law, which also is a component of the net atmospheric CO₂concentration reported in the Keeling Mauna Loa data.

Chemists know that methane (CH₄) released into the open air at the average temperature and air pressure at sea level converts spontaneously (oxidizes) to CO₂ and H2O when in the presence of a gaseous molecule such chlorine. On average, a CH₄ molecule in air will be oxidized to yield a CO₂ molecule and a H2O molecule within 8 years, a natural process occurring continuously.

Chlorine is found naturally near the surface of warm salty ocean water. Oceans cover more than 70% of the earth’s surface. Like CO₂, most methane is emitted from warm ocean water. Secondly, methane is emitted from the natural breakdown of plant material in soil. In other words, methane emitted by warm ocean water and soil is also a huge source of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere and is a component of the net atmospheric CO₂ concentration reported in the Keeling Mauna Loa data.

Thus, the slope (or first derivative) of net atmospheric CO₂concentration which we see in the above Keeling curve is determined mostly by Henry’s Law which is determined mostly by the temperature of the oceans. The warming oceans since the end of the last ice age are the dominant source of net atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Summarizing so far, we have a huge amount of absorption of CO₂ by nature and a huge amount of emission of CO₂ by nature. The net sum of all these absorption and emission events appears as the upward sloping line of the net atmospheric CO₂ concentration as measured by the instruments on Mauna Loa and displayed in the graphic above.

Now we must address human-produced CO_2. Most human-produced CO₂ results from burning methane, propane, butane, gasoline, kerosene, jet fuels, oil, and coal. We commonly lump these together and call them fossil fuels. An additional majo r source of human-produced CO₂ is the production of cement.

Government agencies, academia and industry scientists estimate that CO₂ emissions from humans burning fossil fuels increased by 300% (approximately 15% per year) since the year 2000. Measured in millions of tons of CO₂ or carbon, this appears to be a large amount and a large increase. It is calculated based on the CO₂ emitted by burning an amount of fossil fuel. It is not a measurement of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Statistically or visibly examining the slope (first derivative) or examining the rate of change of slope (second derivative) of net atmospheric CO₂concentration in the Keeling data, this apparently large amount of human-produced CO₂since 2000 is not detectable as a change in the first or second derivative. There are no ‘shark’s teeth’ or other peaks or anomalies caused by the surge in human CO₂ emissions; there are no detectable changes in first or second derivative due to the emission of this apparently large amount of human-produced CO₂ which has been emitted into the atmosphere in the relatively short period of time since year 2000.

The emissions of human-produced CO₂ are so tiny compared to the net atmospheric CO₂ concentration that the human-produced emissions cannot be measured or detected as a change in net atmospheric CO₂ concentration, nor a change in the rate of change of net atmospheric CO₂ concentration. In science and statistics, we say that the human-produced CO₂is statistically insignificant with regard to the net atmospheric CO₂concentration. The human contribution of CO₂ to the net CO₂ flux cannot be differentiated from random noise in the measurement of the very much larger net atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Therefore, human-produced CO₂ has no measurable effect on our environment or on Earth’s temperature or on global warming or on global cooling.

Accordingly, it logically follows that humans could not change the planet’s temperature by either increasing or decreasing the amount of CO₂ in the air. If humans stopped using all fossil fuels and even stopped breathing, there would be no detectable change in the net CO₂ concentration in the air. The planet will warm, or the planet will cool, or the planet’s temperature will be flat as an average, climate will change, but in any case, human-produced CO₂ does not significantly contribute. It is very important to understand that point.

Therefore, everything else regarding anthropogenic “greenhouse gases” and so-called anthropogenic global warming or anthropogenic climate change is a purely academic subject. Interesting to some people, but none the less an academic subject. Hundreds of computer models have been developed costing many millions of dollars to calculate “greenhouse” warming due to anthropogenic CO₂(including the burning of fossil fuels, the volume of cow flatulence, the eating of meat, etc.), but all of these are purely academic subjects for discussion and study. They have no measurable effect on Earth’s climate.

Professor Dr. D J Easterbrook BSc, MSc, Ph.D. Prof Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University pointed out in 2015 that “CO₂ is not the “greenhouse effect.” AGW CO₂ is adding 0.0000000006342 watts/m² (joules/second.)” This is a calculation only. There is no method to actually measure such a small amount of energy. “Water Vapor is 90-95% of the “greenhouse effect.””

Regarding methane (CH₄) as a “greenhouse gas,” on a molecule by molecule comparison between CO₂ and CH₄, CH₄ absorbs about 80 times more infrared radiation during a 20-year period than CO₂. But, on the other hand, CO₂ concentration is two orders of magnitude more than CH₄ concentration. And, the reason for this, as explained earlier, is that the methane spontaneously oxidizes to CO₂ and H2O in the open air. The amount of infrared absorption by a gas is determined by Beer’s Law, which specifies that amount of infrared radiation absorbed is linearly proportional to the concentration of the gas. Thus, CO₂ absorbs far more infrared radiation than CH₄, and water vapor – which is about 100 times higher concentration than CO₂ – absorbs far more infrared radiation than CO₂. Obviously, humans have no means to control water vapor.

Another part of the Earth’s carbon cycle is worth mentioning again. The slope of net atmospheric CO₂concentration in the air has been consistent since the end of the last ice age. Net atmospheric CO₂ concentration has been increasing. Henry’s Law says that 50 to 60 times more CO₂ is dissolved in the oceans than in the air. Logically that implies that the amount of CO₂ in the oceans is now and has been decreasing since the end of the last ice age. So, what happens to the CO₂ that is dissolved in the oceans?

This is a major part of the earth’s carbon cycle. CO₂ dissolved in water is a weak acid. This weak acid reacts with calcium (for example but also other minerals,) which is dissolved in ocean water. There is far more calcium on earth and dissolved in the oceans than the total amount carbon in all its forms on earth. There is enough calcium in ocean water to chemically combine with all of the carbon that exists on earth. Aquatic chemists describe this as oceans being an infinite sink for carbon. This weakly acidic form of carbon dioxide in water combines with calcium in water to form limestone, also known as calcium carbonate, or CaCO₃.

Limestone is a solid which settles in water to become sediment on the floor of oceans and seas. Over years of sedimentation, the limestone is compressed by more and more sediment and becomes rock, or it could be incorporated by mollusks and small sea life into their shells and skeletons.

Humans harvest limestone to make buildings and floors. We also burn limestone at high temperature, which is how cement is produced. Burning of limestone to produce cement releases CO₂ back into the atmosphere where once again it can be absorbed by plants to start the carbon cycle again. The other way limestone releases CO₂ back into the air is by the high heat from volcanoes, fissures in the earth and similar tectonic events.

There are perhaps thousands of these events continually occurring on land and on the ocean floor, a process which has been occurring continuously for billions of years. The CO₂ emitted from tectonic heating of limestone contributes to the net atmospheric CO₂concentration we see in the Keeling Mauna Loa data. These tectonic processes are orders of magnitude larger than anything humans could do.

In another part of the carbon cycle, enormous amounts of methane (CH₄) are formed on the continental shelves in the ocean in a chemical complex with water and a mineral. It is slurry similar to mud, which, if you bring it to the surface, can be lit with a match. The amount of CH₄in this slurry and silt on the floor of the oceans is far larger than the total amount of oil ever discovered, perhaps larger by three orders of magnitude.

Where does it come from?

This methane is the product of slow and continuous degradation of the carbohydrate molecules in the cells of every living thing. When the cells die and are digested down through the food chain by one animal, insect, fish, human, bacteria after another, when it is rotted, then methane remains. When the molecular bonds in the carbohydrate polymer molecule are broken, the eventual result is methane and water. Rain and rivers eventually carry that CH₄ into the oceans, or else it is emitted into the air and oxidized to CO₂ as previously described. This degradation process and the food chain described earlier are part of what is known as the earth’s carbon cycle.

The slurry complex is known as methane clathrate or methane hydrate. In places around the world there are pools of clathrates that are kilometers thick or slowly flowing down the walls of canyons in the oceans. Near the boundaries of continents and oceanic plates, deep under the oceans, are subduction zones where the plates of ocean floor meet the continents and are pressed (subducted) beneath the continental shelves.

Clathrate slurries of methane are subducted beneath the continents along with the oceanic plate. In a very slow process taking millions of years but occurring continuously for billions of years, methane under heat, pressure and containment is reformed into longer and more complex hydrocarbons. The CH₄ forms bonds with other CH₄ and larger hydrocarbon molecules are created. This is the reason we will continue to find more gas and oil and the reason we find gas and oil miles beneath the continents and ocean floor where life has never existed.

The movement of the oceanic plates and continents has been as is today creating oil from the continuously dying and rotting cells of living matter, the slow and continuous breakdown of carbohydrate molecules that were originally created by plants absorbing CO₂ from the air.

In summary, the human contribution to the net atmospheric CO₂ concentration and to the temperature of the earth is trivial and statistically insignificant; negligible and of academic interest only. How insignificant? As an example, let’s say that the earth was cooling, and humans decided to warm the oceans in order to warm the air. Water is denser than air, so water retains heat better than air. The heat content of the oceans is about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the atmosphere, 5.6 X 10²⁴ compared to 5 X 10²¹ Joules/degree Kelvin.

If we calculate or look up on a website the total power output of all of the power facilities of all kinds on earth, and then assume we will use all of that power to heat the oceans and do nothing else with that power, it would take about 10,000 years to raise the temperature of the oceans by a mere one degree centigrade. That is how insignificant the human contribution would be.

However, working to make engines better and fossil fuels burn as efficiently as possible will make our lives more pleasant. But it is not CO₂ that is dirty, or polluting. As explained above, CO₂ is plant food and necessary for life on this planet. More CO₂ is better. But inefficiently or partially burned fossil fuels release hydrocarbons like benzenes into the air which are not good; this is true air pollution. Reducing real hydrocarbon pollution from inefficient fuel mixtures and inefficient engines is the engineering and chemistry challenge for humans. Attempts and costs to remove or reduce human-produced CO₂ are wasted effort and money.

Another real problem is plastics that have been designed to be non-bio-degradable or non-recyclable. They are ugly to look at, problematic garbage, and destructive for sea life, birds, insects, etc. Ultimately, these poorly designed plastic products are harmful to the environment and delay the carbon cycle. But these materials too will eventually break down over long periods of time and release CO₂ into the air so that it can feed plants. Bio-degradable plastics are sensible.

As we are discussing the purely academic subject of AGW, there are a few other points worth noting.

Antarctica and Greenland are currently accumulating ice mass, not losing ice mass. The peninsula of Antarctica that points north toward Argentina has been warming due to sub-ice and sub-sea volcanic activity. That area has been losing ice on land and sea, but in the last few years, overall the Antarctica continent a net increase of ice on land is observed. The ice mass gained on land exceeds the ice mass lost on land. The ice mass on land is increasing and becoming thicker. The weight of that ice is causing an increase in glacial calving at the coastlines. And all of this is also observed in Greenland.

Once again, we come back to slope. The rate of change in sea level (i.e. the slope) has not changed. That is, the second derivative of sea level has not changed. Sea level has been increasing (i.e., the slope or first derivative has been positive) since the end of the last ice age; at that time sea level was perhaps 400 feet below today’s sea level. However, if ice continues to accumulate on land, or if ice mass begins to decrease on land, then we will see a change in the slope of sea levels, (i.e. a change in second derivative of sea level with respect to time.) So far, there has been no detectable change in slope of sea level. Sea level has been very slowly rising.

Ice floating in the oceans or floating in lakes, so called sea ice, does not affect sea level.

Multiple studies by NASA and others show that the earth is becoming greener as the net atmospheric CO₂concentration has increased. Many science studies, and databases of studies, show that more CO₂ and more warming increases the growth of green plants in forests, in grains and other foods, etc. See graphic below. The human contribution is trivial. But we can all hope that CO₂continues to increase and that temperatures stay flat or once again begin a slow warming trend. Average global temperature has been essentially flat (zero slope) for about 20 years now.

The only way carbon gets into plants and thus into animals, insects, fish, humans etc. is when the plants absorb CO₂ from the air for photosynthesis. When plants use CO2 to make carbohydrate molecules, they produce oxygen as a byproduct. Humans and most other non-plant life survive on the oxygen which is produced as a by-product of plant photosynthesis. Higher net atmospheric CO₂ concentration results in more plant growth. Lower CO₂ concentration results less plant growth, which also implies less food and a less green earth.

We now have over 35 years of Landsat satellite imagery showing that a positive (increasing) slope of atmospheric CO₂ concentration is greening our planet. Plant life is flourishing.

Finally, satellites measuring infrared radiation emitted from earth’s upper atmosphere into outer space are reporting that infrared radiation from earth to outer space is currently decreasing (i.e. the slope or first derivative is negative.) That means that the earth is receiving less energy from the sun and is therefore emitting less energy into outer space.

In other words, the earth is presently cooling. It may take years before we perceive or measure this cooling down on earth’s surface due to the insulating effect of the oceans and atmosphere. The oceans especially act as an enormous insulator, far more than the atmosphere, delaying radiation of energy from the surface back into outer space.

Once again, the impact of human activity on climate change, while purely academic, is interesting to study, but, as you can see from the information provided above, the actions of humans with regard to CO₂ emissions will have no measurable impact on global warming or global cooling. Probably the most significant thing we can do is to plant more forests and stop cutting rainforests.

References:

Professor Murray Salby: What is Really Behind the Increase of Atmospheric CO₂?

Professor Jamal Munshi: Responsivenes of Atmostpheric CO₂ Emissions: A Note

Wolfgang Knorr, Postdoctoral fellow, Lund University : Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions increasing?