Let’s get one or two things straight for a start. There is talk of Carbon emissions, Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme, Carbon tax, and so on. The word “Carbon” is a complete misnomer. Carbon, in general, is a black solid like soot or lampblack. Graphite another form, is dark grey and is fairly soft. It is used in pencils for the so called “lead”. Yet another form is diamond – generally clear but can have colours. These different forms are called allotropes. So the correct term for the gas is Carbon Dioxide. So it is a Carbon Dioxide tax NOT a Carbon tax.
Then there is the question of the so called “greenhouse gases.” This is another misnomer. There is a great deal of difference between a greenhouse and the atmosphere. A greenhouse has a roof. No such roof exists in the atmosphere. Heat trapped in a greenhouse cannot get out by convection. Convection is where the gas/air particles rise up because they have been warmed, and are less dense than the surrounding air, or air above. When gases are heated the particles spread further apart and this makes them less dense. In the atmosphere on the other hand, there is no such constraint as a roof, so gases can rise from the Earth’s surface. If you open the roof in a greenhouse the temperature would fall, as the hot air escaped into the atmosphere. I shall continue to call these gases greenhouse gases, only because most people know what is understood by them.
Below are two diagrams which include
greenhouse gases. The atmospheric content.
The IPCC and climate alarmists present you with the pie graph on the left so that you get the impression there is a large amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. You get the impression that the greenhouse gas, Carbon Dioxide makes up 63% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, the true picture is given by the graph on the right. It can be seen that the largest greenhouse gas by far is water vapour. So if anything is causing global warming it is water vapour. There’s one big problem with that for the alarmists. You cannot tax water vapour!
It is clear then that Carbon Dioxide makes up just 6% of the greenhouse gases and Methane just 2%.
Now we should look at just what percentages these gases are in the whole atmosphere. Nitrogen makes up most of the atmosphere at about 78% and then Oxygen at about 21%. The other 1% is made up of all the other gases of which Argon makes up about 0.9%. So Carbon Dioxide and Methane are included in the final 0.1% of all the gases in the atmosphere.
Let’s start with Carbon Dioxide. Now in 2022, Carbon Dioxide has a concentration of about 410 parts per million (ppm). This means that for every million molecules of gas in the air (most of which are Nitrogen and Oxygen), just 410 of them are Carbon Dioxide.
Now 410 in a million, means 0.041 in a 100 which means Carbon Dioxide makes up just 0.041% of the atmosphere.
That’s a very small amount, but that’s not the end of it. You see it’s what humans are putting into the atmosphere that is causing “global warming.” That is the brief for the IPCC - just human caused or anthropogenic global warming. Make sure you realise that. The IPCC is only concerned with the Carbon Dioxide that humans put into the atmosphere.
Most of the CO2 that enters the atmosphere comes from natural sources. These sources are: The ocean, decomposing vegetation and other biomass, wildfires and respiration. Human sources of Carbon Dioxide include, fossil fuels, cement making, land usage change, and industrial processes in general.
Now the IPPC brief was to study ONLY Carbon Dioxide produced by humans, and according to them, this was causing global warming, and lately, all kinds of adverse weather events. This is called anthropogenic global warming.
Below is a simplified diagram of the contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere. It was prepared by the IPCC but there is no date on it.
IPCC Diagram
Fossil fuel Vegetation Oceans
Burning and Land
and Land Use
29 439 332
The figures have no units but it is
only the relative proportions that matter.
Adding together the two natural figures we get 771 units. Human use is 29 units. We add together all the units and get 800.
The percentage human use is given by 29/800 x 100 = 3.6%
So of all the carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere just 3.6% is contributed by humans.
I have seen figures ranging from 3% to 5%. So let’s take an average at 4%.
Now we know from above that total Carbon Dioxide is just 0.041% of all gases in the atmosphere. So 4% of this is 4/100 x 0.041 = 0.0016%
Of all the gases in the atmosphere human contribution of Carbon Dioxide is
just 0.0016%.
What does this mean? It means that for every 1million gas molecules in the atmosphere just 16 molecules are human produced Carbon Dioxide. How can 16 molecules in such a huge number of other molecules warm the earth? It’s a load of rubbish.
Let’s now look at Methane.
Methane makes up just 1.7ppm in the atmosphere. So 1.7 parts per million means Methane is just 0.00017% of the atmosphere. Lets round 1.7 up to 2.
What does this mean? It means that for every 1 million gas molecules in the atmosphere just 2 are methane. However, that’s not the full story: There are natural occurrences, just like Carbon Dioxide. Methane comes from wetlands, the oceans, fresh water, and termites. Now we know that the IPCC, Greenpeace, and the Greenies would love to get rid of our cows. So the argument against Methane was always that ruminants were belching methane and that was making a contribution towards global warming. Ruminants are considered to be those animals that have four stomachs. So those that we farm include Cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, elk and deer. Ruminant Methane is only 13% of the world’s Methane emissions.
So if we look at only ruminant emissions those will be 13% of 2ppm, which gives us 0.26 ppm or 2.6 parts per ten million. That means that for every 10 million gas molecules in the atmosphere, there are only just under 3 Methane molecules.
This is even more ridiculous. How can just 3 molecules in every ten million possibly cause global warming?
We saw from the pie graph that in fact, water vapour is the largest “greenhouse” gas by far. The amount of water vapour in the atmosphere varies from about 0.2% to 4%. We shall take an average value, say 2%. That’s 2 parts in every 100 or 20,000 parts per million (ppm). So for every million molecules of gas in the atmosphere about 20,000 of them are water vapour molecules. Now water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Isn’t it logical that any heat leaving the Earth and entering the atmosphere will strike a water vapour molecule long before it hits either a Carbon Dioxide molecule or a Methane molecule? So if any warming is going to take place, it takes place with water vapour not the other two.
HERE IS SOME MORE LOGICAL EVIDENCE THAT CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING
Both temperature and CO2 levels are found by using what are called proxies.
CLIMATE PROXIES
Climate Proxies are preserved physical characteristics from the past that give a good indication of conditions at that time.
Ice cores are cylindrical samples of ice from ice sheets in Greenland, Antarctica, and North American regions. Ice cores in Antarctica can reveal climate records back as far as 650,000 years. The ratio between the Oxygen 16 isotope and the Oxygen 18 isotope in an ice core helps determine past temperatures and snow accumulations. The heavier isotope O 18 condenses more readily as temperatures decrease and falls more easily as precipitation, while the lighter isotope O 16 needs colder conditions to precipitate. The further north one needs to go to find elevated levels of O 18, the warmer the period. Further, air bubbles in the ice contain trapped gases from that period including Carbon Dioxide, and Methane. The proportion of each can be calculated.
Tree Rings are also used to determine past climates using the properties of the annual tree rings. Tree rings are wider when conditions favour growth and narrower when conditions are such that growth is difficult.
Fossil Leaves in particular leaf teeth, are used to reconstruct mean annual temperatures in past climates. Leaf size is used as a proxy for mean annual precipitation. New approaches retrieve data such as CO2 content of past atmospheres from fossil leaf stomata and isotope composition. Isotope study can go back at least 400 million years.
Boreholes are used as temperature proxies. They rely on the fact that heat transfer through the ground is slow, so temperature measurements at various depths down the borehole can be used to calculate past temperatures as far back at 1000 years. These readings need to be corrected for rising heat from inside the Earth. A depth of 500m gives the temperature from 1000 years ago.
Corals have skeletal rings or bands similar to tree rings. Cooler temperatures tend to cause corals to use heavier isotopes in its structure, while normal temperatures result in more normal oxygen isotopes being built in to the coral structure. More dense water also produces corals which contain the heavier isotope. That means the water has more salt.
Pollen Grains can be found in sediments. It is possible to identify a plant species from its pollen grain. What was growing at the particular time gives an indication of the climate at that time.
Small creatures like diatoms found in ocean sediments can also be useful as proxies.
Below is a graph of Temperature against Carbon Dioxide levels using proxies. It goes back 600 million years.
Atmospheric CO2 is shown with the black line and temperature with the blue line. Notice the highest level of CO2 shown at the far left in the Cambrian period. This was 7000 ppm, about 17 times the present level. Notice also how Carbon Dioxide has been steadily falling since about 140 million years ago. You can see that the temperature of the Earth has been up to 22 deg C several times in the past. The most striking feature here is about 450 million years ago. Carbon dioxide levels have risen to about 4500 ppm but the temperature of the Earth has dropped to just 12 deg C., even lower than it is at present. (Estimated to be between 14 and 15 deg C.) And look at the right hand side of the graph. The average global temp, stayed at 22 deg C for quite a period of time, and all that time the amount of CO2 was dropping!
You would have to conclude that there is NO correlation between CO2 levels and the temperature.
This is what honest scientists have been saying for a long time.
I’ll leave the final word here to scientist Dick Reaney: “The eruption of the Tongan volcano in the Pacific on Friday 14th January 2022 was likely the biggest recorded anywhere on the planet in more than 30 years,” according to expert volcanologist Shane Cronin.
“The emissions are of the order of 32 Million tonnes of CO2 in the 10 days since the eruption began. This equates to over 116 million tonnes per annum if emissions continue at the same level.
This by way of comparison is more than New Zealand has ever put up. This level totally makes farcical any measures by NZ to attempt to control or reduce emissions.
It highlights that it is nature and natural processes that control climate - NOT humans.”
This has been an attempt to appeal to
common sense rather than a physics or chemistry explanation of why Carbon
Dioxide and Methane cannot cause any warming.
Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.
19 comments:
Thank you for a great article Ian, clearly and rationally articulated so even science dummies should find it cognizable. It boggles the mind that spinners like James & Chloe can terrify impressionable young urbanites into voting 'Green' by promulgating utter crap.
Excellent article Ian,
You have summarised the situation extremely well. You illustrate very accurately the ludicrous low levels of these gases, and also that the IPCC ignores the effect of water vapor.
I can recall about 10 years ago I decided that it was about time for me to pay attention to the "global warming topic" and do some research into it to find out what was the truth behind all the headlines and doom merchant panic.
Being a senior pharmacist, with twenty years working for Medsafe, I was accustomed to scientifically assessing all sorts of claims re medicines and fringe medical treatments etc. I used a similar analytical process to look at "global warming" and the apocalyptic claims being made. It is the scientific approach, based upon facts.
What I rapidly found, and somewhat to my surprise, was that almost ALL of the IPCC computer model predictions did not occur.
1/ No 50 million climate refugees by 2010, as they forecast in 2005. Zero, in fact.
2/ No increase in rate of sea level rising.
3/ Artic Ice is still there, and not melting away
3/ Antarctic Ice is actually growing.
4/ Extreme weather events, world-wide are NOT increasing.
5/ Forest fires, world-wide, are not increasing.
6/ Yes - the planet is slowly warming, in fits and starts, as it emerges from the Little Ice Age of 300 years ago, when the river Thames and the English Channel froze over.
COSTING IT OUT FOR NZ
The Climate Control Commission’s recommendations for New Zealand to meet “net zero” by 2050 have been costed out by NZIER.
The cost to NZ’s economy will be $86b per year.
That is 86 BILLION DOLLARS per year – EVERY year. $86,000,000,000 per year.
That works out to $17,000 per year per head of population.
This is fast track economic suicide.
Translated – a typical four person family will be paying 4 x $17,000 = $68,000 per year, EVERY year just to meet the dreamland CCC’s recommendations. This is a THOUSAND DOLLARS A WEEK !! This is economic train wreck suicide.
Bear in mind that this is only to stop NZ’s CO2 emissions, which are only 0.17% (= 1/600th) of total global emissions. i.e. NZ emissions are basically zero. So – goodbye Kiwi’s and the world is laughing.
100% agree, Ian.
The useful idiots that make up most of our political class swallow the climate alarmist theory and then enact policy which is ruinous to our economy....all the while being completely ineffective and pointless.
The science is there for those who wish to see. Our politicians are either too ideologically driven, too stupid to understand....or clever enough to use this trojan horse (man-made climate change) to transform the world into the socialist, elite woke image that they desire.
Most fall into the first 2 categories. There are a few that reside in the last category. These are the truly dangerous individuals.
Now look Ian WE know better. WE know that children can be born in the wrong bodies - no really, that free speech is terribly dangerous and must be kept severely in check, that this country should be governed equally between citizens with any amount of Maori DNA and all of those without - (well- because), that the press may only print what is in keeping with respect for the Treaty of Waitangi (which is not a treaty) - and goodness knows what WE know about Covid - I've lost track.
WE are 'easily led' as we used to term kids who constantly got into trouble instigated by smarter naughtier kids who slunk away unpunished.
Keep trying.
i recall this all started with some basic premises
- let's reduce waste
- let's reduce smoke
- let's reduce garbage
- let's reduce toxic discharge into water bodies
all of this made perfect sense. of course, adopting them made economic sense as well as kept us human. somewhere, something totally hijacked this from a community/individual endeavour to a global mandate. i would blame the romanticisation of UN, EU & any collective of countries without a clear cultural/economic/military agenda that has led to this. of course, WEF just looked at the opportunity and went berserk :(
Questioning the wisdom of government action is one thing but asserting that the scientists who have given us the modern computer, the ability to find meth and Covic in sewer waters, land a mechanism on Mars, predict wave conditions in the weather, enable GPS location within cm, trace from DNA if I am related to Vikings or Taiwanese, plot world temp and gas conditions back umpteen million years, have all got the CO2 warming completely wrong is hard to swallow. Cons have been perpetrated in the past but who benefits if this is one? It is conditions in just the last few tens of thousands of years when modern man existed which are most applicable. A mighty lot of coal and oil has been burned in the last 200 years. And a mighty lot of vegetation eliminated. Hopefully your observations will attract a helpful response from senior scientists.
Robert Arthur
You seem determined to believe the man-made global warming theory, as evidenced by your regular posts.
The UN who have driven this theory are a POLITICAL organisation, NOT a scientific one. Politicians always seek and FUND "expert" advice from selected scientists who already support their political agenda.
But if you still can't let it go, find the actual scientific evidence (which hasn't already been debunked by SENIOR scientists). Good luck with that, because as many scientists and interested laypeople have already discovered - IT ISN'T THERE!!
Hi DeeM
Iam not determined to believe. but I am certainly also not determined to dis believe.
Paris accord preamble,
Recognizing the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending
hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts
of climate change,
Article 2b
Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and
foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that
does not threaten food production.
Or do we just pick the bits of this agreement that suit our agenda.
Could Robert Arthur direct me to someone that can provide the empirical evidence that manmade CO2 causes dangerous climate change?
Many reason that the correlation of recent rapid temperature rise with CO2 levels is empirical evidence.
Robert
NO. That's not empirical evidence. You're confusing correlation (and as I demonstrate beloe, not even that) with causation.
If you look at the rise in global temperature since the start of our current warming (~1850) versus CO2 level you will see a more rapid period of warming during the 1920-30s which did NOT coincide with an acceleration in the rate CO2 was increasing.
Then from 1940-1976 the global temperature DECREASED but increase in CO2 levels accelerated.
Then from 1998-2016 the temperature plateaued but CO2 increase was at its maximum rate.
Also, you say the rate of temperature increase has been rapid - just over 1C in 170 years. The same, and more, has happened in previous recent warmings (in the past 2000years) which were not associated with ANY CO2 increase.
Sorry. but there is NO empirical evidence which establishes causation.
Robert Arthur,
Correlation is not proof of causation.
For example - in coastal California, high consumption of Ice Cream cones is correlated to shark attacks on swimmers. Not "causation"
You need to go back and read Ian's article and have a good look at the graphs and data that he has provided.
BTW - the recent rise in temperature is not "rapid". It is part of a cycle that the Earth goes through every 300 - 500 years or so. Currently the planet is gradually warming as we emerge from the Little Ice Age (about 1650 A.D.), where global temperature was 2 degrees colder than now.
This was preceded by the medieval warm period (about 1200 A.D.) where global temperature was 2 degrees hotter than now.
So - a cycle of 4 degrees every thousand years or so. Quite natural. Not human induced "climate change"
(The above figures are from the IPCC)
Thanks - been following this for 20 plus years; it took me a couple of years to realize that Al Gore and others were just lying !
Ian, an excellent article. It is a pity Shaw doesn't have the intelligence to read and understand it, and then relate the contents to his ideas that will completely ruin the economy, and accelerate the death of humanity as we know it.
Rod K
As I tell my grandchildren, remember in 20 or 40 years time when, nothing much would have changed climate wise, that grandad used to say " the so called climate change that cost all of us so much is the biggest con job ever perpetrated upon mankind ever"
Of bigger concern is over population and the pollution of our seas, rivers our food and the air that we breath. Man made climate change is a hysterical attempt by the left and socialist governments to exert fear and control in an attempt to create a new world order. maybe they will but at what cost? and in the end it will have no effect on climate that nature is and has always changed.
What evidence is there that reducing carbon dioxide or other 'greenhouse gases' will reduce global temperatures? None. Speculation.
I continue to wonder about the role of human-made chemicals that depleted the ozone layer which remains very depleted compared to what it was before those human-made chemicals existed. The depleted ozone layer lets a lot more solar energy into our atmosphere (and at wavelengths damaging to life including sea algae, one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet). Higher temperatures around the poles where the ozone layer is most depleted tend to fit with this theory.
As a Chemist I also think scientifically and researched, as did Doug Longmire, as many books and articles as I could until I became totally convinced the whole thing is a big scam for the reasons Ian points out. However, I do sympathise with Robert Arthur as it IS diificult for a rational person to think that a belief on such huge scale cannot be correct. The nonsense pervades everything from a a media obsession with e-vehicles and wind turbines to publishing the weekly amount of CO2 in car sales advertising..........However, mass delusion is not new from alchemy ,witchcraft , the South Sea Bubble, selling indulgences etc. ...........it appears humans need to believe something even if it leads to their own destruction !!!
This fraud was dreamt up by a bunch of New York based International Investment Bankers. They needed a new chip to trade...so they came up with Carbon "credits". The thing was successful beyond their wildest dreams ,and now the genie is way out of the bottle.
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