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.

UPDATE III (24 May):  download a PDF of What is Wrong with the IPCC? Proposals for a Radical Reform, by Ross McKitrick.

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

Greenhouse Theory Melts Away

See “Water Vapor Feedback – Is it positive or negative?” at Carl Brehmer’s “Greenhouse Effect” Research.

(Thanks to The Hockey Shtick.)

UPDATE I:  see “The Experiment that Failed which can save the World Trillions: Proving the ‘greenhouse gas effect’ does not exist! by Berthold Klein” at Climate Realists.

UPDATE II (17 March): see “What The ‘Skeptics’ Of Climate Catastrophe Are Skeptical Of:  Nordhaus Reconsidered”, by Eric Dennis:

The most frustrating thing about being a scientist skeptical of catastrophic global warming is that the other side is continually distorting what I am skeptical of.  [...]
The object of our skepticism, catastrophic global warming, means warming caused by greenhouse gasses that would so dramatically heat up the earth that despite the proven climate adaptability of hydrocarbon-powered civilization [...], populations the world over would experience impoverishment, mass suffering, and death.
Why are we skeptical of this claim?  Because there is radically insufficient evidence for it.
This may seem implausible, because the news media bombard us with stories of new studies, new findings, new models, new international summits allegedly confirming catastrophic global warming.  But what these stories leave out is the evidential status of these developments—what any given study or model actually proves.  And the answer is, little to nothing, because the present ability of scientists to understand, model, and predict the climate is far, far lower than we are led to believe.