Nature Controls Carbon Dioxide – Not Man

By Tomer (Tom) Tamarkin
October 10, 2022

“The net amount of equilibrated carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere is the same as if human beings never existed. Climate change is a natural phenomenon and not man-made.”

On March 19, 2020 the State of California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order, mandating all residents stay at home except to go to an essential job or shop for essential needs. Within weeks most of the world followed.

For the next three months total energy use across all sectors…transportation, industrial, commercial, and residential…plummeted by over 15% thereafter rising slowly in bursts and spats.

As an avid studier of all things “climate change” related I tracked the impact this significant fuel use reduction had on the Keeling Curve. The Keeling Curve is the chart tracking carbon dioxide in the atmosphere based on near daily measurements at the Mauna Lao observatory located on the big island of Hawaii.

The effect was both shocking and predictable. The marked reduction of fossil fuel use had no effect on the Keeling Curve which continued its virtual 45% upward slope on the highly exaggerated chart expressed as parts per million per year. This was wholly consistent with our findings over the previous 10 years as developing countries increased fossil use with no corresponding change of CO₂ as reflected in this curve..

Notice on the upward slopping blue bar line of the Keeling curve in figure 2, the jagged “sawtooth” line. This jagged sawtooth waveform represents the seasonal variations of CO₂ as affected by plant growth on land and sea. This is a function of the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun and its 23.5 degree axial tilt.

Close inspection of this saw tooth like variance in CO₂ shows roughly 10 parts per million (ppm) variation between the minimum and maximum as affected by sunlight and plant life distribution. This is far more than the 3 ppm increase in CO₂ that the climate alarmist’s community claim is caused by man’s use of fossil fuels. To me, this was the “smoking gun” showing that these claims of fossil fuel increasing total CO₂ were false and without merit!

In collaboration with Mr. Bud Bromley, and with the kind financial support of actor/singer Pat Boone, we engaged two Stanford educated Ph.D.’s, Dr. Shahar Ben-Menahem a physicists and Dr. Abraham Ishihara, a high-level mathematician and control theory expert, to design an experiment using the Mauna Lao Keeling data which is considered by all leading scientists as the “gold standard” of the available CO₂ monitoring data sets.

1. Our scientists took the raw NOAA Mauna Loa data for daily CO₂ tests and filled in data points for days with missing data using standard interpolation methods.
2. Then they transformed the CO₂ ppm concentration versus time data into the frequency domain, like a continuous spectrum of light or radio frequencies. This provides nearly unlimited resolution.
3. Then they notch filtered to remove resonances and seasonal cycles such as the shark’s teeth.
4. Then they low pass filtered out all frequencies above a specified frequency to remove random noise spikes.
5. Then they reconstructed the data again as CO₂ ppm concentration versus time and cleaned the CO₂ time signal.
6. They calculated these data as the time derivative of CO₂ concentration. This is the rate of change of CO₂ ppm concentration. It is like the speed or velocity of a car.
7. Then they drilled into these data to look at the time window beginning about a year before the Pinatubo volcano eruption of June 15, 1991 and a few years after the eruption.

What we proved was that:

1. The NOAA-Scripps “Keeling curve” dataset from Mauna Loa is responsive to CO₂ changes even though the event causing those changes is physically remote, thousands of miles away from the NOAA measurement site on Mauna Loa in Hawaii. We now know this NOAA data will be sufficient for further data science. Confirming this was one of the primary purposes of our first phase of work.
2. Our results confirm that human CO₂ emissions are insignificant compared to net global average CO₂ concentration. We demonstrate this by simple calculations in our written publication of the results of this Pinatubo study and in 2 addenda.
3. The software and method we used is sensitive to changes in the CO₂ daily records from Mauna Loa and well suited for further research.
4. The result of this first phase of our study is consistent with Henry’s Law in conjunction with the Law of Mass Action, Le Chatelier’s Principle, Graham’s Law and Fick’s Law. CO₂ concentrations in air, ocean, soil, and biosphere began to rapidly re-equilibrate to the cooler Earth surface caused by reduced insolation due to the cloud belt. As the cloud belt dissipated and surface warmed, CO₂ concentrations rapidly re-equilibrated.
5. Following Henry’s Law, human-produced CO₂ can only temporarily change CO₂ concentration in air and ocean surface. Our results, confirming NOAA-Scripps results, suggest that human CO₂ emissions are a temporary perturbation to an ongoing CO₂ trend, like the perturbation caused by the Pinatubo volcanic eruption and its aftermath, but much smaller. Perturbation by human emissions will be rapidly returned to the CO₂ trend. CO₂ concentration in air is controlled by CO₂ solubility in water surface. More than 90% of Earth’s water is in the ocean, and ocean is 70% of earth’s surface.
6. Solubility of any gas in any liquid is an intensive property of matter, like a boiling point, or a specific heat. Intensive properties of matter are not a function of the amount of material present. Instead, solubility and diffusivity of a gas in a liquid are a property of the matter itself; in this case, diffusivity of CO₂ is a function of the molecular weight of CO₂. Adding more CO₂ to the air, whether done by a volcano or by humans, or by decaying biological material, does not change the ratio of CO₂ gas concentration in ocean surface versus CO₂ gas concentration in air above that surface, this is Henry’s Law. Surface temperature does change that ratio.
7. Solubility or diffusivity of a gas in a liquid depends on the surface temperature and the molecular weight of the gas, not on the amount of the gas or the source of the gas. Diffusivity of a gas in a liquid is inversely proportional to the square root of the molecular weight of the gas; this is Graham’s Law.
8. There are many variables that affect surface temperature, some are systematic like Earth’s orbital distance from the sun, and other variables may be chaotic, such as ocean and air currents, storms, humidity and clouds.

The bottom-line results of our experiment and analysis of the NOAA Scrips Keeling data conclusively PROVES that “the net amount of equilibrated carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere is the same as if human beings never existed.” Climate Change is a natural phenomenon, and not manmade.

Let that sink in. The total net amount of CO₂ in our atmosphere today is no more or no less than if humans never existed on our planet.

Why does the Keeling curve show an increase of roughly 3 parts per million (ppm) per year?

The Keeling curve is highly exaggerated by its scale or presentation of 10^6 on the Y axis and 10^2 on the X axis. The curve represents the rate of change per year of CO₂ measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory monitoring station which has become the de facto “gold standard” of CO₂ tracking.

The specific causes of such a small annual increase in CO₂, if accurate, are theoretical. There are several possible causes, but 3 ppm is an increase of only 0.75% based on the 2018 total of 400 PPM and is an annual increase of only 0.0003% of the total amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere; an amount so small it cannot be distinguished in open air from random measurement noise. Human exhaled breath is about 4% CO₂, and higher if one is exercising.

Systematic and chaotic random perturbations in sea surface temperature (SST) and/or humidity, under water volcanoes, cyclical deep ocean currents dense with CO₂ rising to sea surface, destruction of photosynthesizing plants and plankton, and changes in gravitational forces due to solar and planetary movements are among possible causes. These are both systemic and chaotic with unique multiple root causes.

The corollary to the above is the total amount of CO₂ in the atmospheric reservoir of CO₂ remains at a near constant equilibrium with that absorbed by the ocean regardless of how much or how little CO₂ is liberated by plants, animals, and human fossil fuels and is a function of Henry’s Law in conjunction with the Law of Mass Action, Le Chatelier’s Principle, Graham’s Law and Fick’s Law.

And yet only today the New York Times writes Hurricane Ian “rapidly transformed from a relatively weak storm into a strong one, a phenomenon that has become more common due to climate change. Ian embodies several of the major hurricane trends in recent years, as the world copes with the effects of climate change.”

Indeed, Ian was devastating, but well within the bounds of natural variability.

Two days ago, the Vatican released a new documentary on climate change based on what it calls the “reckless new use of fossil fuels.” through Cardinal Czerny, and calls for “zero emissions” by 2050.

Only a few weeks ago, Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib tried to browbeat the nation’s largest bank CEOs into not lending to oil and gas companies. Thankfully, and correctly, JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, responded to the Congresswomen when asked if Chase would cease lending to energy companies as follows:

“Absolutely not and that would be the road to hell for America.”

In a recent private exchange with Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of over 200 scientific papers and books on the atmosphere, I pointed out that the climate change farce drivers are purely and totally financial and political.  The science is clearly on our side. Of course I was preaching to the Choir.

Dr. Lindzen points out: “…the importance in propaganda of establishing the narrative (i.e., the accepted story line).  One of the more subtle techniques is to pepper the narrative (climate change is caused by man) with many obviously dubious features.  This may seem counter intuitive.  However, by doing so, one diverts attention from the narrative’s larger framework.  People immediately attack these dubious features while leaving the larger narrative untouched. He offers us this sage advice: “Stop treating AGW…human-caused global warming/climate change…as a worthy opponent.  Do not ascribe reasonableness to the other side.  It is not reasonable, not true, and not even plausible.”

This message and these facts must be brought to the people. Only then can the political establishment be jarred into reality. Perhaps we should start with religious leaders in the Christian and Jewish community. Thought provoking articles about this subject and our study such as those published this week by the Times of Israel by Israeli-American Rabbi Avraham Schwartz pave the way.

Please go to pinatubostudy.com for a complete glossary of all technical terms used herein, and links to all the references as well as bios on our team. The complete scientific paper concerning our study along with a video lecture by Bud Bromley introduced by me with my concluding remarks may also be found there. Additional addendums and works at: climatecite.com.