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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Myrrh says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:53 am
I missed whatever point you were trying to make ire; CO2 mixing in the atmosphere. In general it is well mixed. You get the essentially the same PPM reading high atop Mauna Loa, in the Antarctic, and in your backyard. They all track together. Antarctica lags a little behind. The northern and southern hemispheres oscillate out of phase with the seasons as the CO2 sinks and sources change their rate of uptake and release with the seasons. But the longer trend remains the same everywhere.
That said, CO2 can pool. There are documented instances of people dying from CO2 poisoning because some underground source released a hellacious amount too fast for turbulence in the atmosphere to mix it. Once mixed it stays mixed.
I meant to comment on Ernst Beck’s 2007 finding upon analysis of a 150 years of CO2 measurements of great variance from place to place and time to time. This is essentially caused by the same reason that makes Antarctica lag behind Mauna Loa. There are no sources or sinks of CO2 in the Antarctic interior and it takes a while for a rising concentration elsewhere on the planet to make its way to Antarctic interior. Close to ground level where the sources and sinks are active there can be rather wide variance from place to place and time to time. Biological sources and sinks bloom and fade for numerous reasons. Green plants are CO2 sinks but fungi, bacteria, and animals that decompose dead plants are sources. The ratio between sinks and sources varies. Chemical sinks and sources also vary by location. Anthropogenic sinks and sources vary as well. But that’s all close to the ground and the greenhouse effect comes from a column of gas reaching several kilometers above the surface.
Anecdotally I have taken CO2 measurements in my backyard occasionally over the years with both chemical and electronic sensors and never observed any variance. The measurements I obtained matched those reported at Mauna Loa to within the margin of error of whatever I was using to obtain the measurement. My electronic CO2 sensor died a few years ago. They’re rather expensive instruments and I happened to get one designed to control ventilation fans in commercial buildings really cheap at an auction and don’t feel like spending $500 to replace it.
philincalifornia says:
May 23, 2011 at 5:19 am
I believe Happer is more than just technically correct that most animals will do fine without any CO2 in the air up to the point where they starve because the primary producers in the food chain (green plants) will not do fine in the absence of CO2.
Animals produce CO2 they don’t consume it. Breathing rate is controlled by blood level of CO2. More or less CO2 in the air does no more than change the rate of gas exchange in the lungs. If there’s more CO2 in the air removing it from the blood becomes increasingly difficult but at concentrations below several thousand parts per million the atmospheric concentration is of little consequence. Prolonged exposure to 10,000 ppm (1%) causes drowsiness. Anthropogenic emission from fossil fuel combustion can’t possibly get anywhere near that high as there isn’t enough recoverable fossil fuel. At the current rate of consumption it rises by about 2ppm per year. A thousand years at that rate would make it ideal for plants and have no direct effect on air-breathing animals other than a great abundance of food from the primary producers in the food chain. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) at current rate of consumption there isn’t enough recoverable fossil fuel to last 1000 years and since rate of consumption is increasing there isn’t enough to last more than a couple of centuries. The fact that fossil fuels are not in infinite supply is the only good reason (and a very good reason) to be concerned about CO2 emission as CO2 emission is a proxy for fossil fuel consumption rate. CO2 in and of itself is a good thing.
As a layman, I am constantly surprised that much of the scientific community and through them the politicians, the general public are referring to the supposed pollutant as Carbon. If the suspect was to be water they would presumably name it hydrogen pollution.
I suspect that this is no accident for carbon is understood by many to be rather a dirty black substance and by coining such phrases as ‘Carbon Footprint’ etc., they are implanting in the minds of many a very different picture than if they used the correct term, Carbon Dioxide Footprint. Admittedly it does not have the same ring to it but this should not matter to a scientific mind.
It is gratifying to note than in this excellent article and most of the resulting comments, this has not been the practice.
re; acids, bases, and buffered solutions
ph 7.0 is called “neutral”
A solution less than or greater than pH 7.0 moving towards pH 7.0 is being “neutralized”. The ocean is a base solution (greater than pH 7.0) where increasing CO2 is moving it closer to neutral. This is called “neutralization” not “acidification”. Acidification is a solution of pH 7.0 or less that is being lowered i.e. become more acid. Alkalinization is a solution of pH 7.0 or greater that is being made more basic (or alkaline if you prefer).
Distilled water is an unbuffered solution with pH 7.0. A tiny amount of an acid or base will dramatically raise or lower its pH. Adding sodium chloride to distilled water does not change its pH but it turns it into a buffered solution where it takes a large amount of acid or base to change its pH.
This is all covered in high school chemistry class if not earlier and I must once again thank Ferd Berple for reminding me that neutralization is the correct term for what higher CO2 level does to the ocean (which is a highly buffered solution).
That’s NOT to say that neutralization has no effect on living things. Different organisms have adapted differently and have optimum pH levels for reproduction and growth and varying tolerances for pH variation outside the optimum. That said the ocean is so highly buffered and anthropogenic driven pH change so small, so slow, and moving towards a net optimal level that while there will be some losers and some winners the net effect is more winners.
The reason there will be more winners than losers is that the earth for most of the past 500 million years has had far greater atmospheric CO2 than present. Thus most of the adaptation (or evolution if you prefer) of oceanic life took place in a less alkaline ocean. Ocean neutralization is occuring so slowly that natural selection has plenty of time to select for individuals within species that prefer less alkalinity. Adaptation is all about allele frequency in a population. In a higher alkaline environment alleles that function better at higher pH become more frequent in the population and alleles that function better at lower pH become less frequent. Natural selection over the course of one or just a few generations changes allele frequencies. Life will adjust just fine to the minor neutralization occuring in the ocean just as it adapted to the minor alkalinization that has occured over the past few million years in which the modern ice age lowered atmospheric CO2 to a level far below the 500 million year norm.
Climate boffins seem to have very little knowledge of what’s the normal (or predominant if you prefer) state of the earth’s atmosphere and climate over the past 500 million years since the Cambrian explosion when virtually all the modern phyla appeared, Ediacaran phyla disappeared, and air-breathing living things crawled out of the marshes and tidal zones to cover land surfaces. The present earth biosphere is a pale shadow of itself struggling against the cold and dangerously low atmospheric CO2 level. The optimal climate, and it’s labeled as such in the nomenclature of geologic epics such as the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (50 million years ago, the period to which Happer mentions) was characterized by CO2 level around 1000ppm and deciduous (temperate if you prefer) forest reaching all the way to the poles with sub-tropical forest stretching all the way to 45 degrees north and south latitude.
Green plants having at least some warm growing season all the way to the poles and year round growing seasons halfway to the poles is a recipe for great abundance in the world of living things. Ice and snow are anathema to living things where they at best manage to survive freezing cold winter months and at worst perish where the freeze never lifts.
Roger Carr says:
May 23, 2011 at 3:14 am
To DCC:
Thank you for taking the time to add explanation (your post May 23, 2011 at 12:43 am). I have read what you wrote, and the link you gave.
Both had added to my knowledge, but do not go to the heart of my concern, which is that William Happer states in this essay: “Although human beings and many other animals would do well with no CO2 at all in the air…” and this is wrong.
========================
Despite 3 attempts to clarify the point being made, you continue to assert ‘this is wrong’. Now I’m confused. In what way is it wrong? In what way is it harmful to animals if the level of co2 in the air was zero?
DCC says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:43 am
“Example: if you were to hyperventilate breathing helium, the blood’s CO2 level would drop rapidly and so would your respiration rate, despite the fact that your are in desperate need of oxygen. You would pass out and, hopefully, start breathing oxygen again.”
That’s not what happens. Your body cells will keep on producing CO2 as long as metabolism has not stopped and it won’t exchange with helium any faster than normal atmosphere. In fact when body cells are starved for oxygen they produce even more CO2 as they switch from an efficient aerobic metabolism called the Krebs Cycle which requires the organelle called mitochondria to a much less efficient anaerobic metabolism called glycolysis. Glycolysis produces excessive amounts of lactic acid. The pain you feel when you exercise in intense bursts, such as runnning away from a hungry tiger, is caused by the buildup of lactic acid. You’ll hurt like a mofo breathing helium for long.
I don’t want to get too dark here but this is why Dr. Kevorkian doesn’t use a tank of helium, or CO2 for that matter, because that’s painful before you lose consciousness. Instead the gas of choice is carbon monoxide. CO chemistry in the blood has some other effects aside from direct metabolic effect. Helium is inert and will only effect metabolism by oxygen deprivation while CO is very active chemically. One of those chemical effects of CO is neurological and causes you to lose consciousness before you feel any major discomfort.
It is NOT harmful for animals to breathe air with no CO2. Oxygen is the ONLY essential gas for animals. It is toxic only at partial pressures high enough to cause involuntary hyperventilation. That pressure is above 1 bar. Oxygen toxicity becomes a concern, for instance, for divers breathing from a tank of pure O2 as each 33 feet of depth underwater adds 1 bar. Oxygen toxicity is also a concern in hyperbaric chambers.
Myrrh says:
May 22, 2011 at 5:12 pm
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.
All gases are subject to gravity that is why they stay as atmosphere and not wonder off into space. Further, all atmospheric gases, except water vapor, and air itself can be considered ideal gases as they are far from their critical temperatures with an error of less than 1%. PV=nRT describes the temperature (0 C) of near surface atmosphere given no increase in atmospheric volume and as far as I know the volume hasn’t changed much in many years.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryglossary/a/stpdefinition.htm
STP corresponds to 273 K (0° Celsius) and 1 atm pressure.
Re: Spector May 23 @ur momisugly 1:23 a.m,
You miss the essential point. If water vapor alone was the only greenhouse gas, then once cooling began it would become a positive feedback situation until we once more saw the snowball earth return. This is simply the way it is since water vapor would condense more and more as the atmosphere cooled and dried out. CO2 acts as a regulator or thermostat to keep the snowball event from happening when a glacial period begins. The notion that the minor trace gas, CO2, is not absolutely essential for maintaining the greenhouse conditions of our planet is just simply, unequivocally, wrong.
@Dave Springer:
Great theory, but if you are not breathing in oxygen, and at the same time are hyperventilating, you deplete your blood of CO2 and don’t replace it with oxygen. That, in turn, reduces your body’s ability to create CO2, but more importantly, your brain no longer gets enough oxygen. You will pass out.
Furthermore, at issue here is the CO2 level of the blood. Glycolysis, as you said, is anaerobic. It produces no CO2.
Helium also speeds up the process of removing oxygen from your blood stream by creating a diffusion gradient that washes out the oxygen. Each breath of helium takes more oxygen out of your system.
On the other hand, carbon monoxide is poisonous because it combines with hemoglobin, preventing oxygen from doing so. You will definitely feel ill and, in amounts over 1,000 ppm, throw up if you are poisoned by CO. Trust me, I had a college classmate dumb enough to climb up inside the “bell tower” which had no bell but was actually a flue for the campus boiler. His leg caught on the rung of the ladder and he died a horrible death.
Do not try to disprove this experimentally.
Roger Carr said:
Just how is it wrong? I see no lack of exactitude. What needs to be added to make it “exact?”
R. Gates – what is your recommendation for solving the over-population of the globe?
Anthony – please comment on Harry Dale Huffman’s post.
It seems to be an Essential idea and is receiving no attention.
R. Gates
“You miss the essential point. If water vapor alone was the only greenhouse gas, then once cooling began it would become a positive feedback situation until we once more saw the snowball earth return. This is simply the way it is since water vapor would condense more and more as the atmosphere cooled and dried out. ”
It is you who are missing the point. If water vapour disappeared from the air, clouds would also disappear, and lower the Earth’s albedo, thus increasing insolation and raising temperatures.
Why do warmists only ever consider one side of the equation?
Jerry Dickens says:
“(1) Many people spin the data and interpretations all sorts of ways, usually depending on how one wants to support pre-conceived notions;…”
I enjoyed reading your thoughtful post. I am quoting your comment above because it is the reason many of us no longer trust scientists unquestioningly, like we once did. The major blame must be laid at the feet of those paid-off scientists flogging catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [CAGW]. We see over and over in peer reviewed papers references to “global warming” and such, even in papers that have little bearing on the climate.They are trolling for a piece of the $7 – $* billion per year handed out by the federal government in grants to “study
global warmingclimate change.” That leads to corruption, which we now observe throughout mainstream climate science [which is tightly controlled by a relatively small clique].In scavenging the lion’s share of science funding based on climate alarmism, they not only deny funding for more deserving areas of science, but they poison the well of professional ethics.
Regarding those peer reviewed papers in your later post, you write:
“I will admit that some of the press releases have somewhat loaded terminology (e.g. one begins with “imminent danger”, another by abc news begins with “threatens ecosystems” and “a monster of a problem”). This is an unfortunate sign of the times where spin is ubiquitous. It should be emphasized, though, that it is often not the scientists who lay the spin.”
But often it is the scientists, and they should certainly know better. One egregious example is Michael Mann, whose now debunked Hockey Stick chart – which did much to support the false claim that there was no climate change prior to the industrial revolution, and which mendaciously erased the MWP and the LIA – has been shown to be based on completely cherry-picked trees, whilehiding the larger tree ring sample that would have shown that temperatures had declined, in a file labeled “censored.” Mann is not the only scientific charlatan writing peer reviewed papers, and his mendacious cherry-picking of proxies has not gone unnoticed.
When scientific charlatans lie, and are rewarded with great fame and fortune, others notice. Most scientists are honest. But not all are, and many are completely lacking in professional integrity. Thus, we now have bogus alarmism over non-problems such as “ocean acidification.”
Along with reading those papers paid for with grants of public funds, I refer you to this article by Willis Eschenbach, an uncompromised peer reviewed citizen scientist – a vanishing breed that values knowledge and truth over easy money and fame. He decisively deconstructs the false notion that human emitted CO2 is causing any measurable “acidification” of the oceans. David Middleton is another unpaid researcher who debunks the acidification scare.
After reading the articles, if you still believe the immense buffering capacity of salt water oceans can be affected by a minor trace gas, I would challenge you to post verifiable evidence measuring the pH changes caused by human emissions. If you can show any empirical evidence of ocean pH changes following human CO2 emissions, you will be the first to be able to do so.
Without evidence and observation, the scientific method stalls at Conjecture. It can go no farther without evidence based on raw data, and accurate, verifiable predictions that proceed from that data. At this point, “ocean acidification” is no more than an evidence-free conjecture – against verifiable evidence that salt water efficiently buffers the effect of CO2.
Kate says:
May 23, 2011 at 9:39 am
R. Gates – what is your recommendation for solving the over-population of the globe?
———-
Since you use the term “solve”, I take it you mean that world being over-populated represents a prolem to be solved. That’s the common thinking, and it certianly appears to be correct, as many millions of are going hungry. I also think that the issues of hunger are also related to distribution and resource allocation. I look at all the overweight people in the developed world and wonder how we could have transferred those calories to those who are starving. But more to the point, the huge population increase was a direct result of the agricultural revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels in farming as fuel and in fertilizers. If somehow the system of mega-agriculture as practiced today breaks down, either through climate change or through reductions in the supply of fossil fuel, millions, and perhaps billions more will be on the edge of starvation.
Vince Causey says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:05 am
R. Gates
“You miss the essential point. If water vapor alone was the only greenhouse gas, then once cooling began it would become a positive feedback situation until we once more saw the snowball earth return. This is simply the way it is since water vapor would condense more and more as the atmosphere cooled and dried out. ”
It is you who are missing the point. If water vapour disappeared from the air, clouds would also disappear, and lower the Earth’s albedo, thus increasing insolation and raising temperatures.
Why do warmists only ever consider one side of the equation?
————–
Um, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Take a look at the albedo of Antarctica where there is very little moisture left in the air (it is technically a desert). During the snow ball earth episodes, ice sheets reached nearly to the equator. The atmosphere was much more dry than today and the albedo was also quite high due to the extensive ice. It is thought that massive volcanic activity, releasing massive amounts of non-condensing CO2 is what finally broke the earth out of this period.
R. Gates
CO2, and black dirt from the volcanoes
DCC says: May 23, 2011 at 12:58 am
I suggest that you read with a more questioning attitude.
Hi DCC. I read Jared Diamond, Mark Lynas and WUWT with a questioning attitude. I am specifically attacking the facile suggestion that because life flourished at 1000ppm CO2 that it would somehow be no problem for modern humanity. Diamond’s “Collapse” has many references worth following even if you think he is an “idiot”. Lynas also has many worthwhile references and has a lot to say about possible effects of rising global temperature. If, as multiple lines of inquiry suggest, climate sensitivity is around +3C it would do everyone well to find out what that might entail. I recommend “Six Degrees” as an aid to considering well founded risks should temperature continue to rise (feel free to ignore chapters beyond +4C).
R. Gates you wrote: “the huge population increase was a direct result of the agricultural revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels in farming as fuel and in fertilizers. If somehow the system of mega-agriculture as practiced today breaks down, either through climate change or through reductions in the supply of fossil fuel, millions, and perhaps billions more will be on the edge of starvation.”
How magnanimous of you to care so much about all the starving people. Spoken like a true socialist.
And you are the guys who will help us all out of this. Like in North Korea and Cuba, right?
R. Gates says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:48 pm
If by that you mean the CO2 is “kindling” for the water cycle then we have some common ground. After we have a liquid ocean covering 70% of the planet I believe CO2’s role as greenhouse diminishes to the point where it’s insignificant.
Water in the ocean itself is a greenhouse agent. It is transparent to visible light and opaque in the infrared which are exactly the properties that distinguish greenhouse gases from non-greenhouse gases.
As water surface gets covered in ice and water vapor gets frozen out of the atmosphere then CO2 is the only thing preventing a spiral down into a snowball earth episode and even then it might not be enough to stop the decline but has to accumulate from volcanic activity until there’s enough.
Kate says:
May 23, 2011 at 2:45 pm
R. Gates you wrote: “the huge population increase was a direct result of the agricultural revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels in farming as fuel and in fertilizers. If somehow the system of mega-agriculture as practiced today breaks down, either through climate change or through reductions in the supply of fossil fuel, millions, and perhaps billions more will be on the edge of starvation.”
How magnanimous of you to care so much about all the starving people. Spoken like a true socialist.
And you are the guys who will help us all out of this. Like in North Korea and Cuba, right?
_____
Odd that you’d think I was a socialist as I am quite other…more closely aligned with Ayn Rand or even Ron Paul. Only economic systems that allow individuals the opportunity to achieve their maximum potential as human beings are worthy as far as I am concerned. Socialism tends to make people quite unmotivated so an economic socialist I am not. Of course, many people wrongly asume that the economic and political system we have in the U.S. is truly a democratic or capitalistic. We have more of a more of an odd mixture of corporate plutocracy, militarism, and even quasi-socialism…and of course, we’re broke because of it all. The masses are kept happy with the distractions of sports, TV, emotional platitudes from Polticians, petty fighting over issues of no consequence, and of course, Walmart’s full of products. This is no different than what the Romans did with their masses and the distraction and eventual brutality diplayed at the Colosseum, while the real power was with those who would forever expand the empire if allowed. It is quite telling that the majority of our “Senators” (a term appropriately borrowed from the Romans) are millionares. Do they really represent “we the people”, or their corporate donors?
And by the way, I care very much about the plight of those less fortunate than me, and do what I can to assist them to become productive independent human beings but it is hard to learn a new skill or take a class when your basic needs are not being met and your belly aches from hunger.
Dave Springer says:
May 23, 2011 at 4:16 pm
R. Gates says:
May 23, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Vince Causey says:
May 23, 2011 at 10:05 am
R. Gates
“You miss the essential point. If water vapor alone was the only greenhouse gas, then once cooling began it would become a positive feedback situation until we once more saw the snowball earth return. This is simply the way it is since water vapor would condense more and more as the atmosphere cooled and dried out. ”
It is you who are missing the point. If water vapour disappeared from the air, clouds would also disappear, and lower the Earth’s albedo, thus increasing insolation and raising temperatures.
Why do warmists only ever consider one side of the equation?
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Um, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Take a look at the albedo of Antarctica where there is very little moisture left in the air (it is technically a desert). During the snow ball earth episodes, ice sheets reached nearly to the equator. The atmosphere was much more dry than today and the albedo was also quite high due to the extensive ice. It is thought that massive volcanic activity, releasing massive amounts of non-condensing CO2 is what finally broke the earth out of this period.
If by that you mean the CO2 is “kindling” for the water cycle then we have some common ground. After we have a liquid ocean covering 70% of the planet I believe CO2′s role as greenhouse diminishes to the point where it’s insignificant.
Water in the ocean itself is a greenhouse agent. It is transparent to visible light and opaque in the infrared which are exactly the properties that distinguish greenhouse gases from non-greenhouse gases.
As water surface gets covered in ice and water vapor gets frozen out of the atmosphere then CO2 is the only thing preventing a spiral down into a snowball earth episode and even then it might not be enough to stop the decline but has to accumulate from volcanic activity until there’s enough.
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I would say the we agree on the essential nature of CO2 to maintaining the greenhouse conditions of earth. If it weren’t present, we have snowball earth rather rapidly, and the noncondensing nature of the gas makes this possible. It is, as you say the “kindling”, but it is more than that, for through the hydrological cycle and rock weathering process, truly provides a negative feedback process to keep the earth in a range. Water vapor, due to the condensing nature of this more potent GH gas, cannot act as the longer term thermostat and was of no help to prevent the snowball earth.
philincalifornia says: (May 23, 2011 at 5:19 am) [to me]
I’m guessing that if Professor Happer is reading this thread, he might change the wording in that paragraph in future essays to be more clear, but I still maintain that he is technically correct.
And I fully agree with your point one, accept your point two, and retire, satisfied. Thanks, Phil and all who have pursued my concern for me.
Vince Causey (May 23, 2011 at 7:19 am). I hope my response to philincalifornia above explains why I have pursued this, Vince. What is stated in this essay just needs to be “more clear” for the sake of the message, and the “message” is very, very important in this new age of raptures.
You’re most welcome Roger. Happy to oblige.
This, as with many/most threads on WUWT, was just excellent, from the top down.
I’d feel sorry for those cretins on the warmist rapture sites except for the fact that deserve each other.