The dubious science of the climate crusaders.
by William Happer (from First Things)
William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.
I am a strong supporter of a clean environment. We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than 1 percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.
Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it? Efforts are underway to remedy the old-fashioned, restrictive definition of pollution. The current Wikipedia entry on air pollution, for example, now asserts that pollution includes: “carbon dioxide (CO2)—a colorless, odorless, non-toxic greenhouse gas associated with ocean acidification, emitted from sources such as combustion, cement production, and respiration.”
As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.
Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom King Edward VIII renounced the British throne, supposedly said, “A woman can’t be too rich or too thin.” But in reality, you can get too much or too little of a good thing. Whether we should be glad or worried about increasing levels of CO2 depends on quantitative numbers, not just qualitative considerations.
How close is the current atmosphere to the upper or lower limit for CO2? Did we have just the right concentration at the preindustrial level of 270 ppm? Reading breathless media reports about CO2 “pollution” and about minimizing our carbon footprints, one might think that the earth cannot have too little CO2, as Simpson thought one couldn’t be too thin—a view which was also overstated, as we have seen from the sad effects of anorexia in so many young women. Various geo-engineering schemes are being discussed for scrubbing CO2 from the air and cleansing the atmosphere of the “pollutant.” There is no lower limit for human beings, but there is for human life. We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.
The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.
Although human beings and many other animals would do well with no CO2 at all in the air, there is an upper limit that we can tolerate. Inhaling air with a concentration of a few percent, similar to the concentration of the air we exhale, hinders the diffusional exchange of CO2 between the blood and gas in the lung. Both the United States Navy (for submariners) and nasa (for astronauts) have performed extensive studies of human tolerance to CO2. As a result of these studies, the Navy recommends an upper limit of about 8000 ppm for cruises of ninety days, and nasa recommends an upper limit of 5000 ppm for missions of one thousand days, both assuming a total pressure of one atmosphere. Higher levels are acceptable for missions of only a few days.
We conclude that atmospheric CO2 levels should be above 150 ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5000 ppm to avoid harming people. That is a very wide range, and our atmosphere is much closer to the lower end than to the upper end. The current rate of burning fossil fuels adds about 2 ppm per year to the atmosphere, so that getting from the current level to 1000 ppm would take about 300 years—and 1000 ppm is still less than what most plants would prefer, and much less than either the nasa or the Navy limit for human beings.
Yet there are strident calls for immediately stopping further increases in CO2 levels and reducing the current level. As we have discussed, animals would not even notice a doubling of CO2 and plants would love it. The supposed reason for limiting it is to stop global warming—or, since the predicted warming has failed to be nearly as large as computer models forecast, to stop climate change. Climate change itself has been embarrassingly uneventful, so another rationale for reducing CO2 is now promoted: to stop the hypothetical increase of extreme climate events like hurricanes or tornados. But this does not necessarily follow. The frequency of extreme events has either not changed or has decreased in the 150 years that CO2 levels have increased from 270 to 390 ppm.
Let me turn to some of the problems the non-pollutant CO2 is supposed to cause. More CO2 is supposed to cause flooded cities, parched agriculture, tropical diseases in Alaska, etc., and even an epidemic of kidney stones. It does indeed cause some warming of our planet, and we should thank Providence for that, because without the greenhouse warming of CO2 and its more potent partners, water vapor and clouds, the earth would be too cold to sustain its current abundance of life.
Other things being equal, more CO2 will cause more warming. The question is how much warming, and whether the increased CO2 and the warming it causes will be good or bad for the planet.
The argument starts something like this. CO2 levels have increased from about 280 ppm to 390 ppm over the past 150 years or so, and the earth has warmed by about 0.8 degree Celsius during that time. Therefore the warming is due to CO2. But correlation is not causation. Roosters crow every morning at sunrise, but that does not mean the rooster caused the sun to rise. The sun will still rise on Monday if you decide to have the rooster for Sunday dinner.
There have been many warmings and coolings in the past when the CO2 levels did not change. A well-known example is the medieval warming, about the year 1000, when the Vikings settled Greenland (when it was green) and wine was exported from England. This warm period was followed by the “little ice age” when the Thames would frequently freeze over during the winter. There is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age. Documented famines with millions of deaths occurred during the little ice age because the cold weather killed the crops. Since the end of the little ice age, the earth has been warming in fits and starts, and humanity’s quality of life has improved accordingly.
A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.
The most recent continental ice sheets began to melt some twenty thousand years ago. During the “Younger Dryas” some 12,000 years ago, the earth very dramatically cooled and warmed by as much as 10 degrees Celsius in fifty years.
The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. The other factors are not well understood. Plausible candidates are spontaneous variations of the complicated fluid flow patterns in the oceans and atmosphere of the earth—perhaps influenced by continental drift, volcanoes, variations of the earth’s orbital parameters (ellipticity, spin-axis orientation, etc.), asteroid and comet impacts, variations in the sun’s output (not only the visible radiation but the amount of ultraviolet light, and the solar wind with its magnetic field), variations in cosmic rays leading to variations in cloud cover, and other causes.
The existence of the little ice age and the medieval warm period were an embarrassment to the global-warming establishment, because they showed that the current warming is almost indistinguishable from previous warmings and coolings that had nothing to do with burning fossil fuel. The organization charged with producing scientific support for the climate change crusade, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finally found a solution. They rewrote the climate history of the past 1000 years with the celebrated “hockey stick” temperature record.
The first IPCC report, issued in 1990, showed both the medieval warm period and the little ice age very clearly. In the IPCC’s 2001 report was a graph that purported to show the earth’s mean temperature since the year 1000. A yet more extreme version of the hockey stick graph made the cover of the Fiftieth Anniversary Report of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization. To the surprise of everyone who knew about the strong evidence for the little ice age and the medieval climate optimum, the graph showed a nearly constant temperature from the year 1000 until about 150 years ago, when the temperature began to rise abruptly like the blade of a hockey stick. The inference was that this was due to the anthropogenic “pollutant” CO2.
This damnatia memoriae of inconvenient facts was simply expunged from the 2001 IPCC report, much as Trotsky and Yezhov were removed from Stalin’s photographs by dark-room specialists in the later years of the dictator’s reign. There was no explanation of why both the medieval warm period and the little ice age, very clearly shown in the 1990 report, had simply disappeared eleven years later.
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[my emphasis]
And the speculation, marked by the common Alarmist scare words “may” and “could be,” of consequences to weather patterns and crop production from increased atmospheric CO2 is equally unsupported by the historical record, or anything else for that matter.
Even if such “changes to the hydrological cycle” could be demonstrated, we could as easily, and with more justification, speculate that mankind would switch from food crops that are doing poorly in one area to crops that do better, e.g. from wheat to rice. And remember, we now have the ability to modify plants genetically, so can create hardy new varieties in a few years instead of generations, as it took our ancestors.
/Mr Lynn
Dan says:
“This ‘Professor of Physics’ dosn’t seem to have much of a grasp of what he is talking about.”
No Dan, you are the clown here. Had you bothered to investigate this site, you would have discovered countless articles on the non-disappearing (or more accurately, continuously increasing-then-diminishing-then-increasing) polar ice caps and the non-existent ocean acidification. The fact that you evoke as evidence of doom such laughable threats on a site where they are dealt with routinely indicates that you are not a regular visitor, or personally familiar with with either ice caps or oceans. Most of the posters here are actual scientists, not activists. I’m not one of them, but I enjoy seeing them skewer doomsayers.
By the way, I live on a bay of the Gulf of Mexico, and can assure you the water level has not increased at all in thirty years. Unlike doomsayers glued to computers running programs they themselves have concocted in between save-the-world computer games, I did something that doesn’t seem to have ever occurred to a single one of them: I walked to the edge of the water and actually looked.
The period 50mya to which Prof. Happer refers is called the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO). Weathering rate of strata found in the Rocky Mountains infer a CO2 level of ~1125ppm. Fossils from the era reveal deciduous forests extending all the way to the poles, sub-tropical forests to 45 degrees latitude, and tropical flora unchanged. There’s some controversy over whether the tropics were the same as some reptilian giantism in that region has been uncovered.
Sounds pretty awful… the earth green from pole-to-pole.
No, wait. That sounds good actually unless you’re an ice hugger. Are there those among us who prefer barren ice and rocks to green plants and animals? Anyone? Ferris Bueller? Anyone?
These CAGW folks are nutcases down to the last man.
What a terrible time the EEOC must have been what with the grain belt extending up to the north pole and the citrus belt extending up into Pennsylvania.
Yeah boy, that’ll ruin the agricultural industry for sure.
NOT.
To those of you dissing Happer, why isn’t global warming being reflected in sea levels?
Good stuff…….a breath of fresh air……………..as it were!
R. Gates,
I read the the four references you cited and failed to find even mention of CO2 being a controlling factor in the hydrological cycle. They do indicated that the processes of evaporation/condensation and freeze/thaw tend to be self-controlling with respect to the hydrological cycles relation to temperature. You need to do your lit research objectively rather than subjectively.
@R. Gates who said “Thus, one inescapable fact of higher CO2 levels is an acceleration of the hydrological cycle.”
What a pile of nonsense! Where on earth did you come up with that? Sounds like more CAGW garbage. Got a reference?
The Happer article seems to have struck a chord with the true believers in CAGW. I can’t recall seeing so much panic in comments on any other article posted here. As usual, their arguments are not supported by facts. Unfortunately, a few of Happer’s supporters here seem to have succumbed to fantasies of their own.
An increasingly difficult aspect of being one who studies past climates:
(1) Many people spin the data and interpretations all sorts of ways, usually depending on how one wants to support pre-conceived notions;
(2) Very few people take the time to actually read the literature;
(3) Remarkably fewer people fully appreciate the complexities of the science, especially including the holes in the data and the modeling, and the key unknowns.
Take the following from the article and subsequent comments:
“The Earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period).”
“Happer stated about fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.”
“Sorry run that by me again, as I recall 50 million years ago coincides with the peak of the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum) (55-45 million years ago) when Co2 levels did indeed spike to ~2000ppm, with the very affects being talked about linked to the current AGW problem a global temp 6°C (11°F) warmer than today and ocean acidification event that is thought to have caused 35-50% rates of extinction in the deep ocean life, corals and plankton, and in spite of the fact there were no icecaps to melt sea level rise due to thermal expansion. The difference today is we have polar cap that can and are melting causing a more pronounced sea level rise, and rising ocean acidification is already being measured in oceans around the world. This “Professor of Physics” dosn’t seem to have much of a grasp of what he is talking about.
“What data are you looking at dude ?? There have ben a couple or more posts on here on here in recent days on this topic. Very data intensive. There’s no excuse for spouting that crap.
“…so net effect over long periods of geologic time is to keep CO2 in a range.”
As to what we are almost certain:
(A) Absolutely, Earth’s climate has changed significantly over time.
(B) The early Paleogene (from about 57 to 45 million years ago, Ma) is rightfully interesting in this regard, because it was much warmer than today. One only has to look at fossils from this time, such as palms from Wyoming or crocodilians from the Canadian Arctic to appreciate this concept. One can also delve into the records of oxygen isotopes or crenarchea lipids or numerous other independent and more sophisticated approaches.
(C) The absolute temperature difference relative to present-day remains somewhat unconstrained. Nonetheless, multiple independent estimates for the time of peak warmth, the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO), between about 52 and 50 Ma, suggest about 10°C warmer on average than present-day. (Though see note below).
(D) Multiple lines of evidence suggest the enhanced warming during the early Paleogene was related to much higher greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, especially including CO2 (Zachos et al., Nature, 2008).
(E) There is very little (if any) evidence for significant amounts of polar ice during this time. This is certainly true for sea-ice, because we can go drill the North Pole, and cores show that sediment deposited during this time occurred during ice-free conditions (see Moran et al., Nature, 2006).
(F) During this long multi-million year interval, there were a series of geological brief events, which we now call hyperthermals. The classic example is the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM, which was noted in a comment, but did not occurred between 45 and 55 Ma, but very over a very short interval beginning about 55.5 Ma).
(G) These hyperthermals were characterized by additional rises in temperature (~6°C during the PETM) and pronounced environmental change. For example, during the PETM, there were major changes in mammalian assemblages (hence why there is a geological boundary) and extinction of several deep-sea organisms. More notably, almost all sediment/rock records across these events are marked by a change in sediment deposition and the chemistry of various compounds. Earth’s surface clearly changed.
(H) The hyperthermal events are almost assuredly linked to massive inputs of carbon dioxide to the ocean and atmosphere (either as CO2 or oxidized organic carbon, such as methane). This is very clear, because, across the events, the 12C/13C ration of carbon bearing phases decreases, and carbonate dissolution occurred in deep-sea sediment. The latter is the predicted effect of adding CO2 (via formation of carbonic acid).
All this is well documented; all this is agreed by almost everyone who has spent time looking at the data and records. Indeed, I do not think anyone has suggested anything different.
Now, here is where all the spin begins from multiple perspectives.
(I) The notion that “there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 milloin years” is correct in a general sense but incorrect in the details. For most of the Phanerozoic, there are poor records for both parameters (e.g., pCO2 and temperature). (Note that the pCO2 record shown in the comment is largely based on modeling of carbon isotopes). Even across the Cenozoic – the last 65 million years – there is only modest correlation, although the records of temperature and more importantly pCO2 can be debated. However, across time intervals with good constraints (e.g., the early Paleogene), there appears to be very good correlation between changes in temperature and changes in carbon inventories (and likely CO2). As a very important point, one has to consider changing boundary conditions (ice, solar inputs, land-ocean distribution, etc.).
(J) That life flourished abundantly during the early Paleogene, and especially during the hyperthermals, is difficult to assess. We know that entire ecosystems changed dramatically. Certainly, some organisms benefitted (thankfully including primates); some did not.
(K) The concept of rate is missing from such presentation. We are adding about 8 GT C/yr to the atmosphere circa 2011. This is probably at least 10 times as fast as carbon entered the ocean/atmosphere system during the onset of the PETM.
(L) While the evidence for major change across the hyperthermals is obvious, putting some these into a modeling context is really difficult (does a pulse in river sediment on an ancient margin reflect increased discharge from rivers draining land with less vegetation and an amplified hydrological cycle?).
(M) Out of the 1000+ pages of the IPCC 2007 document, about one page of text is devoted to the early Paleogene, despite the fact that this interval has the most obvious and best-constrained examples of geologically rapid warming and massive carbon input (e.g., the PETM).
(N) Much of the IPCC 2007 section on the early Paleogene and PETM is incorrect. The most egregious examples are (a) that the section is prefaced with the idea that we know past pCO2 but there are large uncertainties in temperature, and (b) that changes in pCO2 during the PETM drove the large temperature rise and environmental changes. We have much better constraints on past temperature than past pCO2, and there is zero evidence to support the second notion.
On the second concept, all information suggests that warming drove (in part) the carbon massive input. This has also led to spin: do we consider the PETM a good example as to where CO2 does not cause a temperature rise, or a worrisome example of where a huge carbon cycle feedback lies in our future?
(O) Nobody has developed even simple climate or carbon cycles model that can explain basic data for the early Paleogene in general or the hyperthermals in particular. There are two main problems.
First, all evidence suggests the pole-to-equator temperature gradients were much lower. Even after removing ice from polar regions (and any ice-albedo effect), small increases in greenhouse gases can explain Equatorial temperatures but then the poles are too cold; large increases in greenhouse gases can explain polar temperatures, but then the Equator is too hot.
Second, there is no mechanism in conventional models of the global carbon cycle (an opening Figure and premise to the IPCC documents by the way) to explain the changes in carbon inventories. Humans are very good at adding massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere and ocean; it is much harder to conceptualize how this occurs naturally.
(P) The scientific community is, in my opinion, at a bit of loss as to what to do about this information. There are obvious past examples, notably the PETM, where a major temperature rise, a massive input of carbon, and profound environmental change occurred rapidly and very close in time. This is almost indisputable – just look at the records. Some of the basic relationships are qualitatively similar to those predicted by climate models. However, the causal relationships, the quantitative details and the significance to the present-day remain very murky.
This brings up a really interesting problem. From conversations, my understanding is that the next IPCC document will remove much of the paleo data because it is too qualitative and difficult to model. In other words, the best past analogs in which to frame many of the issues regarding the current situation should not be discussed because we do not understand them and various people will spin things accordingly. And whatever happened to curiosity-based science and trying to understand how the world works?
Dave Springer says:
May 22, 2011 at 3:33 am
A few comments:
“If everything else remains equal more CO2 will slow surface cooling with the same surety that putting an extra blanket on your bed will help retain body heat.”
“If everything remains equal” is the rub. The IPCC does not assume everything will remain equal. It assumes warming will beget more warming (positive feedback). Without that, there is no catastrophic rise in temperatures. In fact, if there is negative feedback, as several lines of evidence indicate is the case, there may be little rise at all.
“This is exactly what water and CO2 does. It lets energy in at the speed of light when the sun is shining but doesn’t let it escape at the speed of light when the sun isn’t shining. The inescapable result is that surface temperature will rise until equilibrium is reestablished.”
This description makes me uncomfortable. It’s not just the speed of egress. It has to be integrated over the surface area of a closed boundary.
“The reason the atmosphere gets cooler with increasing altitude (which isn’t the rule in the upper atmosphere by the way) is because the lower atmosphere is warmed by the ocean and the farther you get from the source of the heat the cooler it will be.”
It’s not so much distance from the source, as surface area over which the heat is dissipating, which increases as radius squared (i.e., very quickly).
Jerry Dickens says:
May 22, 2011 at 11:59 am
I think you are elucidating something which is very much on my mind when reading the literature – it is the absolute assurance in which data with very large error bars are treated as though they established incontrovertible fact.
… and the games which are played in which to disguise the manifold uncertainty, e.g., an average of biased measurements is still biased. It does not matter if multiple lines of evidence give the same answer – that is merely a necessary condition that they indicate Truth, but it is not sufficient. The theoretical backing must be sound and derivable from first principles.
ferd berple says:
As Dave Springer points out, the empirical evidence is far from clear. Furthermore, the existence or absence of the hot spot has nothing to do with the mechanism of the warming being due to greenhouse gases. It is a general consequence of the lapse rate in the tropics. Even Richard Lindzen agrees on this (and on the data likely being the problem) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/ :
ferd berple says:
Is that reasonable? Why then does the atmosphere cool with altitude? Gravity controls the temperature difference of the air (lapse rate), and the air is in contact with the surface, how is it that gravity is not affecting the temperature of the surface? Why is gravity not accounted for in the greehouse gas theory?
You should know the answer to this because you were present in one of the threads where it was discussed: The only physical mechanism by which gravity could cause the surface temperature to be warmer than that required by detailed balance if the earth’s atmosphere were transparent to terrestrial infrared radiation would be continual gravitational collapse converting gravitational potential energy into thermal energy. We know that is not happening.
A clear typo in my previous post courtesy of MSWord! Across the hyperthermal events, there are decreases in the 13C/12C ratio. Interestingly, this is very much analogous to what is happening at present-day.
As for recent comments on ocean acidification (neutralization), I am not sure how to respond (also as a chemist). The chemistry is not difficult to understand. You add CO2 to headspace/atmosphere; CO2 enters water; the pH decreases. The relationship between CO2 and pH (at equilibrium and with water with known concentrations of dissolved species is straightforward). There is a very good reason that the pH of many popular beverages is less than 7.
It is correct that, even with a massive input of CO2 to the ocean or atmosphere, ocean pH (average for surface waters, about 8.1) will not drop below 7.0 and become truly acidic. Nonetheless, pH should drop, and the solubility of carbonate is sensitive to changes in pH between 8.0 and 7.0. Both are testable predictions.
We can (and have) measured a small drop in the pH in surface seawater over the last ~20 years; we can clearly see carbonate dissolution during past times of massive carbon input. Interestingly, in ocean chemistry models, things do get a bit complicated, because the total effect, especially over long (>1000 yr time scales), depends on multiple parameters, such as the flow of deep water and the amount of seafloor carbonate dissolved (what I think of as neutralization and why we separate the terminology … it’s not because of any agenda, at least among my colleagues … but because we need to model both CO2 addition and CO2 neutralization over time). Indeed, it gets even more complicated, when one considers the past, because of differences in Ca concentrations, initial seafloor carbonate distributions, bioturbation, and other parameters.
However, that ocean pH will decrease with massive carbon addition is, in my opinion, pretty much obvious and demonstrable, at present-day and in the past. Indeed, this is far clearer than most predictions regarding climate change. I don’t think a fixation on the terminology (acidification versus neutralization), and subsequent dismissal of a clearly defensible idea is a good approach.
Now, what the magnitude of the pH change will be, and more importantly how this will affect organisms and whether it is significant is another matter entirely. This is where the questioning should lie.
Good summary page of the history of CO2 measurements – really a must read to understand the Callendar/Keeling choice of ppm. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
It should also be borne in mind that Keeling had his own agenda, no scientist has credibility when he announces after less than two years of ‘gathering’ data that he had found a definite rise of CO2 due to man-made emissions. On top of the world’s largest active volcano and surrounded in constant volcanic activity producing CO2 to boot. There is no way that anything supposedly ‘background’ can be accurately monitored there. And they don’t, they just wait until they get levels within the boundaries they have pre-set of what is or is not volcanic, and adjust to fit the Keeling curve. All they are measuring is local production.
For a different look at pre-historic level until now: http://www.american.thinker.com/2009/01/co2_fairytales_in_global_warmi.html
The CO2 after R.A.Berner, 2001 is this Berner: http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182 pdf
Ferdinand Engelbeen’s look at Beck’s measurements has some interesting comparisons of levels if not taking Keeling et al as ‘gospel’. Bearing in mind that CO2 being heavier than Air will sink in windless conditions and readily joins with water to come down in the rain so tends to be produced and distributed locally, so not reading from the slant that these are not therefore accurate, but rather the natural variations of CO2 where it’s required – where it’s first required, where plants can use it.. (Plants by the way take in Carbon Dioxide through stomata on the the underside of their leaves – seems they’re not looking for this ‘well-mixed background’ level high in the sky.)
And finally a short summary of various studies from Beck: http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
Actually not finally, I can’t find it for the moment, but someone posted a link to CO2 danger levels and was quite worried about rising amounts in the atmosphere because of this. The examples were from places like auditoriums where a lot of people gathered in not too well ventilated rooms – if you convert the figures into parts per million you’ll be able to compare it with levels in our atmosphere.
CO2 is a trace gas, it doesn’t even make a stitch in this ‘insulating blanket’ of AGW fame. Which means the blanket is practically all holes, practically 100% not CO2, so doubling the level of CO2 isn’t going to make any difference at all – there is no blanket, there’s no danger of us getting even a headache from it. However, if you’re going for a p-up in a brewery, don’t fall asleep on the floor..
ferd berple asks: “Why is not gravity accounted for in the greenhouse gas theory?”
Because an ideal gas isn’t subject to it? That’s how CO2 stays well-mixed in the atmosphere.
Smokey — That’s not “EPA’s definition.” It is the definition provided in the Clean Air Act, passed by Congress not EPA.
And while many things do indeed qualify as ‘pollutants’ under that definition, EPA is only required to regulate such pollutants when they “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare,” with welfare defined broadly to include impacts on weather and climate. (Hence, the endangerment finding).
Thanks, Buzz, I got that. It’s the definition EPA operates under. And as you point out, it is so vague as to be meaningless when they use words like “anticipated.”
Gates says:
“I would ask the honest skeptic out there: What is the chance that the highest CO2 levels in 800,000 years (40% higher than we had as an average over that 800,000 year period) is not having some effect on the polar regions– specifically, for now, the N. pole?”
The honest skeptic answers: I’ve repeatedly asked you to produce evidence, if you can. After a 40% increase in CO2 – enough to scare the pants off any true believer alarmist – there certainly must be reams of testable, verifiable raw data and observations showing conclusively that CO2 is causing Arctic ice decline.
Go ahead and post it. I’ll wait here.
“We conclude that atmospheric CO2 levels should be above 150 ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5000 ppm to avoid harming people”
What if, in the absence of human intervention, CO2 concentration can be shown to be taking a random walk, and the catastrophic part of CAGW is actually trivial , and any harm from whatever temperature increases the combustion of fossil fuels causes can be ignored (TAGW replaces CAGW) ?
If these conditions are met then any application of the precautionary principle would involve a negative Pigovian tax (subsidy for CO2 emissions) as the current concentration is now much closer to the level where it would be too low for the amount of agricultural productivity necessary for human prosperity than it is to the point where it seriously interferes with the physiology of animals.
Of course the answer might be different, or the optimum subsidy smaller, if it is the log of the concentration that is taking the walk.
Katherine says: (May 21, 2011 at 9:41 am)
Actually, humans require carbon dioxide for proper respiration.
Myrrh says: (May 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm)
Re CO2 necessary to kick-start breathing, yes, if the level too low in the lungs they begin to shut down breathing…
Which would confirm my concern that near the head of this story, William Harper said both: “There is no lower limit for human beings, but there is for human life. We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2…” and “Although human beings and many other animals would do well with no CO2 at all in the air, there is an upper limit that we can tolerate.”
This error or slip tarnished the full article for me, and weakens it.
Jerry Dickens says:
May 22, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I don’t think a fixation on the terminology (acidification versus neutralization), and subsequent dismissal of a clearly defensible idea is a good approach.
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First, thanks Jerry for your excellent and highly educational posts.
Let me also clarify a few things about your comments regarding my posts as it appears at first glance that we are are talking at cross-purposes when, in actual fact, we are not really talking about the same thing.
When I responded to this – “The difference today is we have polar cap that can and are melting causing a more pronounced sea level rise”, from Dan, I believe, I was correcting his view that there is a more pronounced sea level rise – as in recent history. As the CU data shows, his statement is simply not true. This was not related in any way to the early Paleogene and PETM, and I’m not sure why you thought it was.
More importantly, my post regarding the phrase “ocean acidification” was not related to the simple science you describe. It was related to how a simple slight “mistake” in historical chemistry terminology is being exploited, by the usual suspects who can’t get real jobs, to scare people into thinking that the oceans are turning into something that resembles a hydrochloric acid solution or some such garbage, so that their self-righteous indignation to this can foster more theft of taxpayer money to pay for their fraudulently manufactured jobs. If you don’t believe me, Google “ocean acidification corrosive”, and tell me that these pages are not meant to give the impression that the oceans are at pH 2, 3 , 4, 5, as opposed to being slightly alkaline ??? I’m sorry Jerry, but this is deliberate and fraudulent abuse of the term “acidification”.
When I posted that, it was with my Organic Chemist Ph.D. hat firmly off. I’m definitely interested in your opinion on this when you take your equivalent hat off too. You see, the public will catch on to the fact that this is another semantic scam (as in “the climate crisis”), but by then, the fake environmentalists will have spent the money that real environmentalists could have used to actually preserve and better the environment.
@roger Carr said:
You need to read more carefully. The statement was that there is no lower limit of CO2 in the atmosphere. The CO2 that is necessary for human life is in the lungs, NOT in the atmosphere.
Roger Carr says:
May 22, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Katherine says: (May 21, 2011 at 9:41 am)
Actually, humans require carbon dioxide for proper respiration.
Myrrh says: (May 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm)
Re CO2 necessary to kick-start breathing, yes, if the level too low in the lungs they begin to shut down breathing…
This error or slip tarnished the full article for me, and weakens it.
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Let me remove that tarnish for you.
Katherine and Myrrh mean well, but they’re confusing atmospheric levels of CO2 and physiological levels of CO2 in the blood (primarily). The latter levels are a function of oxygen metabolism, and their perturbation downwards are associated primarily with hyperventilation, and are not related to atmospheric CO2 levels.
Now, human survival without food would be another matter entirely, but I don’t think that was Happer’s point.