Elephant in the Room: Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

Elephant in the Room: Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) 

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/elephant-in-the-room-c...

By Daniel W Nebert, Professor Emeritus

danielwnebert@gmail.com

For the past 35 years, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned us, emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, predominantly carbon dioxide (CO₂), are causing dangerous global warming.

This myth is blindly accepted — even by many of my science colleagues who know virtually nothing about climate. As a scientist, my purpose here is to help expose this fairy tale.

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The global warming story is not a benign fantasy. It is seriously damaging Western economies. In January 2021, the White House declared, “climate change is the most serious existential threat to humanity.”

From there, America went from energy independence back to energy dependence.

Another consequence has been the appearance of numerous companies whose goal is to “sequester CO₂” as well as “sequester carbon” from our atmosphere.

However, this so-called “solution” is scientifically impossible.

Life on Earth is based on carbon! CO₂ is plant food! CO₂ is a colorless, odorless gas! CO₂ is not a pollutant!

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Generations have been brainwashed for decades into believing this imaginary “climate crisis” from kindergarten through college, and by mainstream media and social media.

Indoctrinated young teachers feel comfortable teaching this misinformation to students.

Dishonest climate scientists feel justified in spreading disinformation, because they need governmental support for salaries and research.

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The evidence contradicting the climate apocalypse is vast.

Some comes from analysis of Greenland and Antarctica ice in which air trapped at various depths reveals CO₂ levels of past climate.

Proxy records from marine sediment, dust (from erosion, wind-blown deposition of sediments) and ice cores provide a record of past sea levels, ice volume, seawater temperature and global atmospheric temperatures.

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From his seminal work while prisoner of war during WWI, Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch explained how climate is influenced by variations in the Earth’s asymmetric orbit, axial tilt, and rotational wobble — each going through cycles lasting as long as 120,000 years.

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It is widely recognized, Glacial Periods of about 95,000 years, interspersed with Interglacial Periods of about 25,000 years correspond with Milankovitch Cycles.

Multiple incursions of glaciers occurred during the Pleistocene, an epoch lasting from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, when Earth’s last Glacial Period ended.

Around 24,000 years ago, present-day Lake Erie was covered with ice a mile thick.  

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Within each Interglacial Period, there’ve been warming periods, or “Mini-Summers.”

For example, within the current Holocene Interglacial, there have been warmer periods known as the Minoan (1500 - 1200 BC), Roman (250 BC - 400 AD) and Medieval (900 – 1300 AD).

Our Modern Warming Period began with the waning of the Little Ice Age (1300-1850).

Today's Mini-Summer is colder so far than all previous Mini-Summers of the last 8,500 years.

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How did CO₂ get blamed for global warming? French physicist Joseph Fourier (1820s) proposed that energy from sunlight must be balanced by energy radiated back into space.

Irish physicist John Tyndall (1850s) performed laboratory experiments on “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), including water vapor; he proposed, CO₂ elicited an important effect on temperature.

However, it’s impossible to do appropriate experiments — unless the roof of your laboratory is at least six miles high.

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Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1896) proposed, “warming is proportional to the logarithm of CO₂ concentration.” 

Columbia University geochemist Wallace Broecker (1975) and Columbia University Adjunct Professor James Hansen (1981) wrote oft-cited articles in Science magazine, both overstating the perils of CO₂ would be causing dangerous global warming — without providing any scientific proof.

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Almost all of Earth’s energy comes from the sun.

Absorption of sunlight causes molecules of objects or surfaces to vibrate faster, increasing their temperature; this energy is then re-radiated by land and oceans as long wave, infrared radiation (heat).

Princeton University physicist Will Happer defines a GHG as that which absorbs negligible incoming sunlight, but captures a substantial fraction of long wave, infrared radiation as it is re-radiated from Earth’s surface and atmospheric GHGs back into space.

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The gases of nitrogen, oxygen and argon — comprising 78%, 21%, and 0.93%, respectively, of the atmosphere — show negligible absorption of long wave, infrared radiation and therefore are not GHGs.

Important GHGs include water (average of 2%, with a range of 1% to 5%), CO₂ (0.042%, or 420 parts per million (ppm) by volume), methane (0.00017%) and nitrous oxide (0.0000334%, or 334 parts per billion).

Water vapor (including clouds) has at least five times greater warming effect on Earth’s temperature than all other GHGs combined.

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As atmospheric CO₂ increases, its GHG effect decreases: CO₂’s warming effect is 1.5^oC between zero and 20 ppm, 0.3^oC between 20 and 40 ppm, and 0.15^oC between 40 and 60 ppm.

Every doubling of atmospheric CO₂ from today's levels decreases radiation back into space by a mere 1%.

For most of the past 800,000 years, Earth’s atmospheric CO₂ has ranged between about 180 ppm and 320 ppm; below 150 ppm, Earth’s plants could not exist and all life would be extinguished.

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Today’s global atmospheric CO₂ levels are ~420 ppm; even at these levels, plants are “partially CO₂-starved.” In fact, standard procedures for commercial greenhouse growers include elevating CO₂ to 800­-1200 ppm; this enhances growth and crop yield ~20-50%. 

As shown by satellite since 1978, increased atmospheric CO₂ has helped “green” the Earth by more than 15 percent, substantially enhancing crop production.

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If global atmospheric CO₂ was ~280 ppm in 1750, and it’s ~420 ppm today, what’s the source of this 140-ppm increase?

Scientists estimate, human-associated industrial emissions might have contributed 135 ppm — with “natural causes” accounting for the remaining 5 ppm.

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In Earth’s history, the highest levels of atmospheric CO₂ (6,000-9,000 ppm) occurred about 550-450 million years ago, which caused plant life to flourish.

CO₂ levels in older nuclear submarines is typically about 7,000 ppm, whereas newer subs keep CO₂ in the 2,000-5,000 ppm range.

Meanwhile, ice-core data over the last 800,000 years show no correlation between global-warming or -cooling cycles and atmospheric CO₂ levels.

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CO₂ in our lungs reaches 40,000-50,000 ppm, which induces us to take our next breath.

Each human exhales about 2.3 pounds of CO₂ per day, which means Earth's 8 billion people produce about 18.4 billion pounds CO2 per day

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A recent publication   https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2725/2020   estimates the human contribution is 176 times less than all CO₂-excreting life on Earth.

18.4 billion pounds x 176 = 3,238 billion pounds of CO₂ per day.

This approximates the overall CO₂ excreted by the total animal and fungal life cycles on the planet.

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Worldwide industrial CO₂ emissions in 2022 [table in Wikipedia] were estimated at 38.5 billion metric tons per year.

If one metric ton is 2,200 pounds, then “total industrial emissions” amount to 84.7 trillion pounds per year, or 232 billion pounds of CO₂ per day.

This means, the global animal-and-fungal life cycles (3,238 billion pounds/day) provide almost 14 times more CO₂ than all industrial emissions.

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Could any rational person comprehending the above facts, still be planning to create a company to “sequester CO₂” or “sequester carbon” 

Scientifically, “net-zero” and “carbon footprint” are meaningless terms. There is no “climate crisis.”

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If you try to find these facts on the web, good luck!

Out of every 10 “hits” on any climate topic, you’ll be lucky to find one or two sites with truthful scientific data.

The door of a nearby classroom displays a poster of Abraham Lincoln with the caption: “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

It is advice that Abe Lincoln surely would have offered — had he lived to see the rise of this global-warming quasi-religion.

COMMENT ON IMAGE

This image shows the huge increase of Chinese CO2 compared to other countries.

Much of it is due to building of infrastructures that require concrete, steel and glass, and due to energy intensive production of goods, such as solar panels, and goods that require rare earths mined/processed in China.

China will use about 4.3 billion metric ton of coal in 2024 for electricity production and process heat.

The UK economy is in a near-permanent slump, due to a lack of investments in modern, profitable enterprises, which has led to low economic growth.

With an increasing population, the near-stagnant economic pie has been divided among more people, leading to lower standards of living and increased poverty and a general malaise.

The US is heading in the same direction

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Daniel W Nebert is Professor Emeritus in Gene-Environment Interactions at the University of Cincinnati. He thanks Professor Will Happer (one of the CO₂ Coalition directors) and Chuck Wiese (fellow CO₂ Coalition member) for valuable discussions.