GLOBAL WARMING ,IS CO2 THE VILLIAN; UPDATE

 

In 1975 a PhD. in atmospheric science and climate specialist for NASA gave a guest lecture at the university where I was an undergraduate. His discussion on the subject, one analogy in particular has stayed with me all these years. He painted a mental image for us of a 10,000 seat football stadium where the seats represented the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. He said before you get too concerned about CO2, realize that only three of those seats would be CO2 by volume. If instead we consider the greenhouse gases by their effective contribution and not volume then he said the CO2 would only occupy one seat. Virtually all of the seats in that stadium would represent water vapor.

The scientific and pseudo scientific community publish articles citing empirical data from one study or another to add gravity to the argument they are making. A careful reading of the way that the data is presented in each paper is usually instructive. Take for instance the papers that state 99.4% of the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is CO2. This statement is true if you ignore the contribution of water vapor. No less authority than the U.S. Department of Energy published a chart in October of 2000 showing that 99.438% of the greenhouse gas is CO2. Of the 368,400 parts per billion (PPB) CO2 in the atmosphere they could only credit 11.880 PPB to be manmade additions. The rest of the CO2 existed before mankind started burning fossil fuels or got there through natural activity such as volcanic eruptions. 3.2% of the total atmospheric CO2 is all they could blame on mankind through our entire history but more importantly the chart states that the figures do not include water vapor. You see this exception over and over in the literature because it helps to color the narrative showing CO2 as a bad actor. If you include water vapor in the study CO2 only contributes 3.62% to the greenhouse effect. So 3.2% (mans contribution) of 3.62% of the total greenhouse effect can fairly be blamed on mankind burning fossil fuels. One tenth of one percent (0.001) is the fault of man. Another piece of empirical data used over and over states quite accurately that throughout history the periods of highest average climate temperatures are also the times when the CO2 levels were the highest. The question of cause or effect is pertinent here. Is the climate average temperature high because of the elevated CO2 level or is the CO2 level elevated because of the high temperatures? Look up a graph for yourself that plots the earth’s temperature over time including a plot of CO2 levels. I can save you some time, the temperature rise pre-dates the increase in CO2 levels consistently by about 1000 years. It does seem that increased temperature causes the elevated CO2 levels and not the opposite, at the very least we can deduce that the CO2 could not have caused any temperature rise which proceeded it by many years.

I have been asked over and over to support my original post since I first included it in my blog. The graph below shows the 100,000 year warming cycle coinciding with orbital cycles that keep us closer to the sun. The second major point of my first post was that all of the hype about CO2 comes from studies that intentionally omit the dominant effect of water vapor as a green house gas. The charts and graphs that follow show the effects of CO2 relative to water vapor and mans portion of the CO2.

 

TABLE 1.

The Important Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
U.S. Department of Energy, (October, 2000) (1)

(all concentrations expressed in parts per billion)	Pre-industrial baseline	Natural additions	Man-made additions	Total (ppb) Concentration	Percent of Total
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	288,000	68,520	11,880 (2)	368,400	99.438%
Methane (CH4)	848	577	320	1,745	0.471%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	285	12	15	312	0.084%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	25	0	2	27	0.007%
Total	289,158	69,109	12,217	370,484	100.00%

 

TABLE 2.

Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
adjusted for heat retention characteristics, relative to CO2

This table adjusts values in Table 1 to compare greenhouse gases equally with respect to CO2. ( #'s are unit-less)	Multiplier (GWP)	Pre-industrial baseline(new)	Natural additions (new)	Man-made additions (new)	Tot. Relative Contribution	Percent of Total (new)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	1	288,000	68,520	11,880	368,400	72.369%
Methane (CH4)	21 (3)	17,808	12,117	6,720	36,645	7.199%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	310 (3)	88,350	3,599	4,771	96,720	19.000%
CFC's (and other misc. gases)	see data (4)	2,500	0	4,791	7,291	1.432%
Total		396,658	84,236	28,162	509,056	100.000%

NOTE: GWP (Global Warming Potential) is used to contrast different greenhouse gases relative to CO2.

 

3. Table 3, shows what happens when the effect of water vapor is factored in, and together with all other greenhouse gases expressed as a relative % of the total greenhouse effect.

TABLE 3.

Role of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases
(man-made and natural) as a % of Relative
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect"

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	Percent of Total	Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor
Water vapor	-----	95.000%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	72.369%	3.618%
Methane (CH4)	7.100%	0.360%
Nitrous oxide (N2O)	19.000%	0.950%
CFC's (and other misc. gases)	1.432%	0.072%
Total	100.000%	100.000%

As illustrated in this chart of the data in Table 3, the combined greenhouse contributions of CO2, methane, N2O and misc. gases are small compared to water vapor!

Total atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) -- both man-made and natural-- is only about 3.62% of the overall greenhouse effect-- a big difference from the 72.37% figure in Table 2, which ignored water!

Water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas, comes from natural sources and is responsible for roughly 95% of the greenhouse effect (5). Among climatologists this is common knowledge but among special interests, certain governmental groups, and news reporters this fact is under-emphasized or just ignored altogether.

Conceding that it might be "a little misleading" to leave water vapor out, they nonetheless defend the practice by stating that it is "customary" to do so!

TABLE 4a.

Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	% of Greenhouse Effect	% Natural	% Man-made
Water vapor	95.000%	94.999%	0.001%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	3.618%	3.502%	0.117%
Methane (CH4)	0.360%	0.294%	0.066%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	0.950%	0.903%	0.047%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	0.072%	0.025%	0.047%
Total	100.00%	99.72	0.28%

 

 

 In April of 2012 forty nine former scientists, engineers and astronauts from NASA sent a joint letter to the current NASA administrator. The letter objected to NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies extreme advocacy of the theory that CO2 is causing global warming. The scientists included these points.

1)      “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”

2)      “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”

3)      “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and web sites on this subject.”

So if the CO2 isn’t a major contributor to the heating up the planet what is? Sampling of the ice cores shows that the earth has undergone cycles of warming every 100,000 years. A study of the earth’s orbital dynamics (spending more time closer to the sun) explains the variation including the 100,000 year frequency of ice ages. The time line of 100,000 year cycles shows that we are due for a warming trend. Random variations tend to coincide with volcanic eruptions that put ash in the atmosphere or the level of solar activity.

It seems imprudent to take drastic measures aimed at reducing CO2 emissions when their impact is virtually negligible on the environment. Remember that if mankind had never burned any fossil fuel the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would only be lower by 0.1%. The financial impact on industry and the economy on the other hand is anything but negligible. It is left to us to investigate what motivates the “climate change” alarmists who slant the scientific data in their effort to foment a crisis. Could it be that the lure of nearly unlimited research grants and speaking fees are having a corrupting influence on some who are so inclined?

The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.

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" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

 

The majority of the graphic information presented here comes from an article titled “Water vapor rules the greenhouse system” by Monte Heib March 2, 2007 http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

The fact that man made CO2 in the environment has little to nothing to do with global warming does not fit the progressives preferred narrative so they skew the data by leaving out the contribution of water vapor. The practice is blatant fraud and it is aimed at gaining control over the industrial production and not about saving the environment.