By Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--February 29, 2024
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Carbon dioxide is a gas that is of fundamental importance to life as we know it. If its concentration in the atmosphere becomes too low, the bulk of the living things on the surface of the earth will die, and the surface will become as barren as the other planets in the solar system. (1)
The carbon dioxide component of the earth's atmosphere is 0.04%, 4/100th of one percent. As an atmospheric gas, CO2 is an insignificant component except for plant life. The really absurd part is that this only 3.2% of that 4/100th of one percent of the atmosphere is man-caused CO2, 96.8% of the CO2 is naturally occurring. This means that human caused CO2 represents 1/28/1000th of one percent of the earth's atmosphere. That's a pretty small number, isn't it? For that reason alone, it is utterly stupid to continue worrying about human caused CO2. (2)
Since atmospheric carbon dioxide is present in extremely low quantities and has a narrow band of wave lengths that it absorbs, it cannot possibly compete in effect with the much larger total solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. (1)
Past and modern climate change is driven by solar cycle variations and their effect on ocean circulation and heat transport. Climate changes are natural and not driven by atmospheric CO2. (3)
The globe's cities are warming primarily due to declining albedo (a measure of the reflectivity of a surface), not CO2 radiative forcing. (4)
Carbon dioxide fertilization has led to an enhanced greening trend in 72.6 percent of cities across the world since 1985, accelerating to 89.2 percent since 2001. This greening trend is the key factor towering the albedo-reflecting incoming solar radiation in urban areas, amounting to a +2.75 W/m2 increase in solar radiation reaching the surface from 1986 to 2020.
In contrast, the clear sky only trend from CO2 surface forcing only amounts to 0.2W/m2 per decade, or 0.02 W/m2 per year in the 21st century. (This trend only represents the forcing from CO2 in an imaginary world where no clouds exist). Thus, the positive radiative imbalance from the declining trend in albedo explains urban warming far better than an enhanced greenhouse effect from a clear sky only CO2 radiative forcing. (5)
Throughout the last hundred of thousands of years, temperature changes have preceded the lagging changes in CO2. It is now known that solar radiation supplies more than 99.95 percent of the total energy driving the world's climate
The effects of the greenhouse gases are only one-fifth of the IPCC assumption. The rate of temperature rise by the greenhouse gases between 1975 and 2000 is a little more than 0.2 C/100 ppm, instead of 1.0 C/ppm. (6)
The temperature rise caused by the greenhouse gases is much smaller compared with the combined rise caused by the two natural changes between 1975 and 2000, about 0.1 C, instead of 0.5 C. (7) This is from one of the 160 papers that find extremely low CO2 climate sensitivity. (6)
Water vapor dominates. Researchers conclude that the observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not altered, in a discernible manner, the greenhouse effect, which remains dominated by the quantity of water vapor. They report there is no need for adaptation due to increased CO2 concentration. (8)
There are several aspects in which elevated CO2 levels have beneficial effects on society, which the IPCC commonly ignores as they do not fit the narrative of a climate emergency.
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Matthew Wielicki explores these benefits, focusing on agricultural productivity, plant growth, and potentially mitigating certain environmental challenges to show that elevated CO2 has had a net benefit on society to the present day. (9)
CO2 is in fact a prerequisite of life, and global food production will expand by trillions of dollars in the coming decades as CO2 levels continue to rise. (10)
The effect of increased atmospheric CO2 on plant growth and agricultural productivity had been identified by NASA long ago. NASA's original findings have recently been confirmed: 'Greening acceleration occurred in 55.15 percent of the globe, while browning acceleration occurred in only 7.28 percent.' Importantly, the study highlighted the fact that drought trend did not necessarily trigger vegetation browning, but slowed down the rate of greening. (11)
Studies have also shown that crops such as wheat, rice and soybeans can exhibit increased growth rates and yields in environments with higher CO2 concentrations.
Remote sensing data from satellites has shown that the expansion of the plant kingdom from 1982 to 2015 was equivalent to adding over 20 million square kilometers of leaf surface area or twice the size of the United States. Thus, it should not be surprising that global agricultural productivity has likewise been steadily rising as a function of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. (10)
The acceleration in global agricultural productivity between 2012 and 2050 due to projected growth in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is estimated to be worth an additional $10 trillion (in 2006 dollars) in increasing yields for 45 different cereals, fruits, and vegetables. Craig Idso's results indicate that the annual total monetary value of this benefit grew from $18.5 billion in 1961 to over $140 billion by 2011, amounting to a total sum of $3.2 trillion over the 50 year period 1961-2011. Projecting the monetary value of this positive externality forward in time reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050. (12)
The CO2 fertilization effect has been the dominant driver of the global scale increase in 'leaf area index' (LAI) or greening since the 1990s. Scientists have estimated that photosynthesis enhancing capacity is 70% responsible for the greening trend. (13)
Satellite data indicate 55.15% of global areas are greening at an accelerated rate whereas just 7.28% have undergone a browning trend since 2001. (14)
Carbon dioxide has been used successfully for over a century in refrigeration and air conditioning because it emits received energy within 3 nanoseconds--a characteristic that defies all heat trapping pseudoscience claims.
Drought resistance of the plant kingdom naturally improves as CO2 concentrations increase and most plants will produce more foliage per mm of precipitation. This is why commercial greenhouses artificially raise ambient CO2 by 3x to 4X above atmospheric concentrations.
In the last decade more scientists have come forward to admit that climate computer models are fatally flawed because university academics have overlooked to check their wild alarmist predictions with independent industry experts who have the hands on knowledge of the real world properties of CO2. The real scientists are saying that the academics have been bamboozled by 'garbage in garbage out.' (15)
Richard Lindzen, professor at MIT, has this to say, "What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is the deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda which actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convey to nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world, that CO2 in plants was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over an averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and this was the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projects combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age." (16)
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Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.