Our Ever Changing Climate

Adequate CO2 levels are absolutely essential to life on earth

Our current warming began about 400 years ago at the end of the Little Ice Age, around 1640. Humans didn't start using fossil fuels until about 1850, over two hundred years after the start of warming, with the first widespread use of coal. Up to that point, CO2 levels were dangerously low, almost at the extinction point after the last ice age.

Adequate CO2 levels are absolutely essential to life on earth. Look around and see. Every tree, every bush, every blade of grass, down to the lowliest plankton in the sea is made from the CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants take in CO2, and using the energy in sunlight through photosynthesis, convert that CO2 into simple sugar molecules. Some of those molecules are combined to form cellulose which is most of what wood is made from. No CO2, no plants. No plants, no animals that depend on them. Soil provides a few minerals and water, but the bulk of the plant is made from air.

Most of us have seen mountain tops where no plants live. The reason there are no plants is because there is too little CO2 at that altitude to support plant growth. It isn't because it is too cold, or because there is no soil or water. Just as there isn't enough oxygen in the air at high altitudes to support human life, there isn't enough CO2 at altitude to support plant life.

The entire planet is dangerously close to the point where there is not enough CO2 to sustain plant life at any altitude. Until very recently, only the last 200 years or so, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been falling. If it falls by just over half of its current levels, everything dies.

Bill Gates, of MicroSoft fame, has said that he wants to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere as a way of stopping climate change. If he and his minions were actually able to accomplish that it would be a case of global climate suicide—a mass event that would make the greatest ambitions of Jim Jones, of the Jonestown Massacre, seem like a piker's dreams by comparison.

Bill Gates, of MicroSoft fame, has said that he wants to eliminate CO2

We have to ask, though, if CO2 is so essential, why do some people think it is so important to be carbon neutral, or even eliminate carbon dioxide emissions altogether?

Humans have always been more attentive to and concerned about catastrophic events than about positive trends. Our current environment concerns began in the late '50s through the mid '60s with the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" that pictured a world where all the birds had been killed by the pesticide DDT, hence the title. It was of no consequence that her speculations were not supported by science, and birds were in no danger.

Those who saw humanity as a blight on the Earth, and technology as a tool of evil had a champion and a cause. Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb", and the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" just added more fuel to the fire.

Scientific observations that global temperatures were declining led to mass concern of a new ice age just around the corner. By the early '70's, environmental crises claims were rampant. Science careers were built on research showing how close we were to doomsday. Journalists and popular writers published, articles, books, plays, and other works lamenting our destructive ways and how we were abusing nature.

It all proved to be a durable concern, even when ice age fears turned instead to global warming, sea level rise, massive storms, dead polar bears, and all the other apparatus of catastrophic global warming, foretold by the Man Who Would Be President, Al Gore.

Sensing a lucrative gold mine of public concern, the UN got in the act in 1988 when they formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, aka IPCC, and introduced the idea that CO2 was the culprit responsible for the warming of the planet, thus it was necessary to control it and regulate it or we would all die.

Whoever controls CO2 controls the world

Of course, it was only coincidental that CO2 was a product of combustion of fossil fuels--you know, those fuels that powered our entire transportation system, that generated almost all our electricity, that heated our homes and cooked our food, and enabled our modern farms that fed the world, and generally made our lives far better than those of anyone at any prior time in history. It was only a coincidence that control of CO2 would control the energy production on which our economy and even our society depended and still depends.

The IPCC backed up their claims with scientific studies showing how increases in CO2 would lead to dangerous increases in global temperatures--perhaps even to the point where increases would continue unchecked--a tipping point. Many, if not most, of these studies were based on computer models of the complex climate system, and most included an IPCC recommended relationship between CO2 and temperature, where more CO2 led to more absorption of heat energy which led in turn to higher temperatures.

Amazingly, these models showed that increased levels of CO2 resulted in higher global temperatures, proving once again that math works. Also "proving" that CO2 was dangerous and governments needed to take action to control the climate by controlling CO2 production--the lesson of King Canute being lost on modern politicians.

But what if there is something to the idea that increasing CO2 levels lead to increasing global temperatures? Don't scientific studies show both CO2 levels and temperatures are increasing? The EPA has even declared CO2 to be a toxic gas!

If CO2 were truly toxic, we would all be dead

In addition to being a product of fossil fuel combustion, it is also a product of our own metabolism. Every time we exhale, we are releasing the CO2 our bodies produced in keeping us alive. If it really were toxic, we would die from our own breath. Just for comparison, the oxygen we need is also lethal at high concentration and pressure. Should oxygen be classed as a toxic gas? Thousands of people drown each year when the concentration of water in their lungs gets too high. Is water to be classed as a toxic substance?

Still, though, there is a relationship of sorts between temperature and CO2. Numerous ice core studies in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres have consistently found that changes in temperature precede changes in CO2 levels. If temperatures increase, then after a lag of up to a few hundred years, CO2 levels increase. Similarly, falling temperatures lead to falling CO2 levels.

The oceans are the key to the relationship. The vast bulk of CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. The amount of CO2 that can be dissolved is inversely related to temperature--the warmer the ocean, the less CO2 it can hold. As the oceans warm, they release CO2, causing the atmospheric CO2 to increase. This is the same reason that carbonated beverages go flat as they warm up.

What, then, is causing the oceans to warm? The big answer is the sun. This star we call our sun is actually a variable star with a complex number of cycles that cause its output to grow or decrease over periods ranging from decades to centuries. The millennial cycles of warm and cold periods we wrote of earlier coincide nicely with changes in solar output.

Temperature changes, then CO2 concentration, not the other way around

The IPCC dismisses the sun as the cause of these changes. They claim that the amount of change is too small to account for the changes in atmospheric temperatures we see. If the oceans are neglected, then their claim might be true, but unlike air, the water of the oceans is an excellent absorber of the energy of sunlight, and can accumulate it over periods of many years. Without this ability of our oceans to store solar energy, many parts of the world would be uninhabitable.

The oceans store the increased energy when solar output is high, and release it when output declines. As the oceans store energy, their temperatures increase, leading to release of CO2. This process can happen over a period of years. A large body of research shows that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration follow changes in temperature. Temperature changes, then CO2 concentration, not the other way around.

As a result, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is a signal that ocean temperatures have changed--more CO2 means ocean temperatures increased a few years before. A change in CO2 is a signal, not a cause. Believing that CO2 controls climate change is like believing the turn signal controls the direction of the car, or turning on your lights causes it to get dark outside.

This is, of course, a simplified explanation, but captures the major points. Other "greenhouse gasses" such as methane follow similar relationships as CO2. The reality is that climate change is far outside of our ability to control.

We are far better served by working on ways to adapt, and even to take advantage of the change. Indeed, the increases in CO2 are responsible for many good things, including increases in global vegetation and crop yields, increased coral growth in the oceans, and reductions in desert areas worldwide.

If the global CO2 levels increase far enough, we may be able to restore the Sahara Forest. Imagine what positive effect that might have on global politics to have a huge new green area suitable for migration and settlement. Maybe it is time to start looking at opportunities instead of problems. What a radical thought!