Dr Martin Spencer: The Futility of Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Setting aside concerns about hurricanes, tornados, forest fires and changes in sea level, (which happen for a variety of different reasons), there is only one climate change factor that matters to humanity and that is Carbon Dioxide, CO2.

At present 83% of the world’s energy sources emit CO₂, so today’s modern economy depends critically on energy sources that produce this gas.

According to NASA¹:

“The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is currently at nearly 412 parts per million (ppm) and rising. This represents a 47 percent increase since the beginning of the Industrial Age, when the concentration was near 280 ppm, and an 11 percent increase since 2000, when it was near 370 ppm.”

If we study the greenhouse effect of this gas we realise that CO₂ obeys a Law of Physics called the Beer-Lambert Law² which describes how all gases absorb electromagnetic radiation (i.e. heat). This law states that, as the concentration of a gas increases, the ability of the extra molecules to absorb heat decreases rapidly according to a logarithmic curve. In other words its effect as a greenhouse gas decreases really really rapidly. (A logarithm is the inverse of an exponential, so if we think of an exponential increase as being a really really big increase, then a logarithmic decrease is a really really big decrease.)