Twenty Facts

“Twenty Facts about Carbon Diodide”, by Dr Darko Butina, at Principia Scientific International:

1. We know everything about physico-chemical properties of CO₂ there is to know since its discovery 200 years ago, and categorical statement can be made that the physico-chemical properties of CO₂ in its pure state, including IR properties, have nothing to do with its properties as part of the mixture called air.
2. We know that no gas molecule of the open system, as our atmosphere is, can possibly control temperature.
3. We know that there are two very different mechanisms that drive dynamics of CO₂ exchange between air-waterand air-biomass and therefore there is no such thing as global levels of CO₂.  Levels of CO₂ above the water mass, covering 70% of the Earth surface is controlled by solubility of CO₂ in water which is solely driven by temperature; while levels of CO₂ above the biomass that covers most of the land surfaces is solely driven and controlled by photosynthesis.
4. We know that the only way to know exact numbers about CO₂ concentrations above the water and biomass surfaces is to measure them at the surface levels, which we do not do, and therefore use of CO₂ levels measured at a single point on the globe and at 4,000 meters altitude (Mauna Loa Observatory, MLO, at Hawaii) represents one of the most miss-used high accuracy dataset in the history of modern science.
5. We know that the total emissions/reabsorption of CO₂ by nature makes emissions of CO₂ by burning fossil fuels totally insignificant and lost in the instrumental accuracy levels.
6. We know that the levels of CO₂ that we live amidst in our everyday lives have nothing in common with the observed CO₂ levels at MLO based at an altitude of 4000 meters above sea level.
7. We know that there is no difference between CO₂ levels accurately measured 200 years ago and last year—they all go up and down depending when and where you measure them.
8. We know that there is no possible correlation between CO₂ levels dissolved in water in its liquid state and CO₂ levels found in ice, i.e., water in its solid state.
9. We know that it is CO₂ that makes major contribution to the width of tree rings.  So, no CO₂ means no tree rings and no life.
10. We know that the human body ignores CO₂ levels in air when breathing in and the only function of breathing out is to get rid of CO₂ that is created in every cell of the human body by the complex bio-chemical process that maintains life.
11. We know that CO₂ levels would need to reach concentration in air of 60,000 ppm (from current levels of 390 ppm) to become toxic for humans.
12. We know that every single molecule of CO₂ is surrounded by 2,500 molecules that are not CO₂ and therefore any theoretical blanket built from CO₂ fibers that supposedly is surrounding the Earth is practically made of nothing.
13. We know that every single molecule of CO₂ is surrounded by 2,500 molecules that are not CO₂ and therefore one has to offer some explanation as to what those 2,500 ‘other or NOT-CO₂’ molecules are doing while one molecule among them is receiving and ‘back radiating’ all that heat energy.
14. We know that every molecule of CO₂, irrespective of which source it comes from, can go up-and-down (in Z-axis) due to its molecular weight, its heat capacity and its solubility in water (rain or snow) and along (X-Y space) carried by wind.  Therefore, someone has to be able to explain: how does a molecule of CO₂ generated by an SUV in Los Angeles gets transported across 2,500 miles of water mass to Hawaii and then go up another 4,000 meters, while avoiding all the biomass available within few miles of land surface in California and all the water mass along its journey to the CO₂ detector at MLO, Hawaii?
15. We know for certain that at 200 ppm of CO₂ plants stops growing and that the optimum levels for plants grow is between 1,300 and 1,500 ppm, and yet the advice to all governments around the globe is to commit mass suicide of all species by reducing CO₂ concentrations to 200 ppm levels.
16. We know that there is no difference whether we grow or dig fuel in terms of CO₂ emissions, we know that CO₂ emissions from burning fuel are irrelevant to the CO₂ dynamics of emissions/absorption and yet we use our precious food-growing surfaces to grow fuel and thus create famine and kill life.
17. We know that there is no such a thing as self-heating greenhouse and yet new theories have been invented to argue something that cannot be argued.
18. We know that there is nothing in common in IR spectra between CO₂, methane and water and yet they have been classified together as ‘greenhouse gasses’ because they absorb infrared radiation, together with millions of other molecules.
19. We know that CO₂ in the atmosphere could not be detected by a standard IR-spectrometer and yet that property of CO₂ has been used to argue for the existence of a greenhouse effect.
20. We know that all the knowledge about the physical world comes from experiments that can be validated and not from calculations that cannot be validated.  And yet, everything about man-made global warming is about calculations and nothing about measurements.

In Defence of Carbon Dioxide

See “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide”, by Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer, in The Wall Street Journal:

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide.  Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant.  That’s simply not the case.  Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.
The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.
The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history.  Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago).  For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a “pollutant” in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.  […]
We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times.  The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.

A Query

A Question for Supporters of the Supposedly Scientific but Self-Serving, Partisan Propagandists of the Failed Conjecture of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

It’s “ipcc
this” and “ipcc that”
all across the land;

the argument from
authority is getting
wholly out of hand.

Do tell us: what part
of “intergovernmental”
don’t you understand?

Even the very silly Prof. Tim Flannery—in The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (Melbourne, 2008)—notes that:

the pronouncements of the IPCC do not represent mainstream science, nor even good science, but lowest-common-denominator-science—and of course even that is delivered at glacial speed.  [p. 246]

Immediately, however, the professor, in assuete denial of consecutive thinking, observes:

If the IPCC says something, you had better believe it—and then allow for the likelihood that things are far worse than is says they are.  [loc. cit.]

UPDATE I (7 May):  see “Two Views on Science, Pollution & Pristine Lakes” by Donna Laframboise (of Delinquent Teenager fame):

Today’s moral lesson: scientists aren’t holy men, pronouncing the gospel truth.  They may, in fact, be closer to circus performers. 

UPDATE II (9 May):  see “Secret UN ‘ZOD’ climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details” by Andrew Orlowski:

It’s a common misconception—a sign of the media’s deference to scientists, perhaps—that the IPCC consists of a properly appointed actual panel somewhere.  As [Peter] Stott [of the UK Met Office] cheerfully confirmed, beyond a small technical administrative support team called the TSU, there isn’t really “an IPCC” at all.  Self-selecting scientists kick off the assessment process, often gatekeeping material by their friends and colleagues, hard-green campaign groups etc.  From the Second Draft stage of the review process the room is full of government officials—the international bureaucracy effectively takes over.  The rules are set by the participants, making it up as they go along, Lord of the Flies-style.  The Osborne-Stocker exchange illustrates a normal example of one scientist colluding with another in an attempt to prevent the public finding out how the process works.  Stott described in court the process which allows any member of the public to “self-certify” as an Expert Reviewer and join the process at the First Order Draft (i.e., the second) stage.

Carbon Dioxide Blamed Again

Speak of noxious fumes and a modern researcher’s first thoughts fly to carbon dioxide.  In The Daily Telegraph, we may read that “Archaeologists have uncovered ‘Pluto’s Gate’, an ancient gateway to Hell, in Turkey”:

A group of Italian archaeologists have announced they have found the legendary “Pluto’s Gate”, a portal filled with foul-smelling noxious fumes which inflicted a quick death on any person or beast that was driven into its embrace.
The temple complex in Hierapolis, now the volcanic-spring restort town of Pamukkale, featured in many ancient legends and historical texts.
“This space is full of a vapour so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death,” the Greek historian Strabo wrote in 24AD*.
“I threw in sparrows† and they immediately breathed their last and fell.” [quoting Strabo’s Geographica, XIII, iv, 14]

Now, “foul-smelling noxious fumes” can’t be carbon dioxide because carbon dioxide is odourless. What were unspecified noxious vapours, however, are swiftly identified:

Francesco D’Andria of the University of Salento said the “visions” were probably hallucinations caused by breathing diluted fumes wafting up from the Gate to Hell.
And the portal is still a killer, he said.
“We could see the cave’s lethal properties during the excavation,” D’Andria told Discovery News.
“Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes.”

*  Strabo died, at the latest, around the year 24 when he was 87 or so; I doubt that he wrote the thirteenth of his seventeen books of Geographica in the last months of his long life.

†  Strabo’s word, στρουθία, appears to refer to unspecified small birds rather than to sparrows in particular.

Roy Spencer with John Stossel

“To shut down CO₂ is to shut down civilisation.”

See also “Global Warming Agenda, Bad Policy” and Dr. Spencer’s own site.

Piers Corbyn: the Sun Warms the Earth, and How

To say that CO₂ drives global warming, “is utter madness, and fraud”.
“We are heading for a Dalton-type minimum of cold temperatures which will affect Europe considerably: there will be more very cold winters and more lousy summers.”

Richard Feynman on Pseudo-Science