GLOBAL WARMING ,IS CO2 THE VILLAIN

 

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.

 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?