Climate Change: What Drives It And What Changes Are In Store (Part 2)
Abstract
The problems with the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis are considered. Of particular concern is that the models are under-parameterized, too linear (under-fitted), and are based on erroneous physics. As a consequence, they produce wildly inaccurate predictions, which have caused undue alarm among the general public.
They ignore the effect of water on global temperatures, especially as to its climate driving power compared to CO2. I present a new model of average global temperature, which is based on insulation or “blanket” principles rather than being based solely on radiation by greenhouse gases. This model fits the measurement data far better than the 103 “official” models, but it predicts that the rate of rise of global average temperatures is slowing down and that a maximum temperature rise will be about 0.15oC higher than at present will be reached in about 2040 to 2060. This prediction is supported by re-analysing official data of a number of different indicators of climate change: temperature, sea levels, tree rings, and crop yields. Using different approaches to those in my first paper I show once again, that CO2 is a minor or even an insignificant factor in climate change. In the third paper in this series these conclusions will be supported by further evidence drawn from official climate records.
Introduction
In my first paper in this series I proposed a method of analysis using official climate data to differentiate between the two major hypotheses of climate change: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) where human released CO2 is held to be the main driver or natural causes. Evidence was presented that natural causes were the most important drivers of climate change, not CO2 as they have been for every one of the very many previous episodes of climate variations in the past.
I also made the point that plants often make better indicators of climate than do
thermometers as the latter only measure temperatures on very few times of the 24 hours of a day. They do not measure total heat content, whereas plants do provide a measure of the amount of heat received since they increase in mass and so indicate the amount of energy they have accumulated. They are heat integrators as it is the photons they collect during photosynthesis which drives their growth, metabolic activity and reproduction; not temperature.
Close inspection of plant yield and growth data from the United States and the United Kingdom indicates that a cooling trend, or at least a slowing down of the rate of increase, may already be happening with respect to the average temperatures and heat loadings in those countries, and hence, presumably, the world. This aspect will be further explored in my third paper.
In this paper I examine the AGW hypothesis in more detail.
Problems with the AGW hypothesis
It is an accepted fact that the Earth’s atmosphere causes the Earth to be habitable, equitable and warm. The warming mechanism is held to be due to the greenhouse gases, which act both as a thermal blanket and as an infra-red absorption source that can re-radiate heat back down to the surface, thus raising the temperature of the zone in which organisms live. According to the AGW hypothesis, carbon dioxide is accumulating largely due to human activities and it is by far the most important greenhouse gas since it has the property of being able to re-radiate the energy it has absorbed.
But if this is the case why do deserts have such cold temperatures at night? Carbon dioxide is evenly distributed in the lower atmosphere, the homosphere, so deserts should have the same thermal characteristics as temperate climes at the same latitude if CO2 is the dominant thermal component. But they don’t; far from it. They are hot in the daytime and freezing cold at night. Indeed, many deserts are getting colder, not warmer at night in spite of increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere.
The effect of water
CO2 cannot be responsible for the difference in climate between deserts and non-deserts, but a clue as to what might be responsible is that desert air (and soil) is dry whereas regions with more humid climes have a lot of water present, both on the surface and in the local atmosphere. Water can form clouds which shade the surface. In addition, it has unique thermal properties, and it is a strong radiator of both visible and infra-red (IR) energy.
Water is not evenly distributed throughout the homosphere as CO2 is. On land the amount of clouds, mist, fog and gaseous water in the homosphere generally depends on the availability of surface evaporative water sources. As these sources vary from region to region the distribution of water is very variable. In addition, the energy exchanges as water undergoes phase changes to and from ice, water and vapour are also important. Deserts have insufficient sources of surface water to provide for the passage of water into the local homosphere, which has profound effects on their climate.
Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas that has a number of additional thermal properties as well, including reflection of radiation, conduction and convection of heat, and heat absorption or release during phase changes to and from solid, liquid or gas. It has much more powerful optical properties than does CO2 as it absorbs over a much broader range of wavelengths and with much greater absorption power. It also has a great thermal capacity, the ability to store heat, whereas CO2 does not.
There is evidence that the amount of water in the atmosphere is undergoing redistribution and a change in amount. There is evidence that the water content of the atmosphere above the land is decreasing and that above the sea is increasing. However, some coastal recording stations are becoming cloudier while inland regions are becoming drier and less cloudy.
As we saw in the first paper of this series decreased cloud increases TMAX but causes either no increase or a slight decrease in TMIN. This can cause an apparent increase in the average temperature. Conversely, increased cloud decreases TMAX and increases TMIN. So, the global average temperature of the surface of the Earth depends on the relative number of less cloudy stations to cloudy stations.
Figure 1. Global cloud cover and temperature. The data suggest a there is a water-based thermostat that will prevent thermal runaway.
The usual explanations hold that any decrease in water in land areas is due to an increase in global temperatures. But increased global temperature should cause a greater amount of water to be present in the atmosphere, not less, as the warmer temperatures cause more water to evaporate from oceans and other bodies of water. The decrease in atmospheric water in those areas heavily affected by human occupation or utilization terrestrial regions could also be a major cause of climate change.
Water can act as a controller and moderator of climate. Figure 1 shows that global temperature increase has slowed down or stopped increasing after the year 2000, as has global cloud cover. Since CO2 has continued to increase in concentration over the period shown in Figure 1, it cannot be having much of an effect on either temperature or cloud cover. These data also suggest that water in the atmosphere is acting as a thermostat which will prevent thermal runaway.
Components of the energy flux into and out of the Earth
The Sun’s energy coming to the Earth is in the form of UV and visible light, all made up of high energy photons. In addition, some cosmic rays from no-one-knows-where hit the Earth. These energy inputs warm the Earth up from 30o K, the death heat of the solar system, to a life-sustaining level. It also provides the heat, light and colours we take for granted. But not all light is useful. Green cannot be used by green plants for photosynthesis, so it is useless for photosynthesis. Even worse, green light can be harmful to plants, particularly to young plants. That’s why green plants are green – they can’t use green light so they do not absorb it so it can do little harm. If they could use green light, they would be black in colour.
But not all photons contain the same amount of energy. The shorter the wavelength of light the greater the energy content. A person gets a suntan very much quicker from visible light in the daytime than at night when the only source of energy is the low energy infra-red light being radiated back from the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Cosmic rays are much less important in the energy balance of the Earth’s surface. They consist of very high energy protons and atomic fragments that come from unknown sources and hit the Earth’s atmosphere where, thankfully, they are absorbed by oxygen and other gases so that they do not reach they surface. If they did, we would fry and die.
The energy system of the Earth is an open system with high energy inputs and low energy outputs. As energy passes through the Earth’s thermal engine it does work. Some of the incident energy is used by green plants in photosynthesis, some is used in other chemical processes, some in heating and some is radiated as longer wavelength radiation up into the atmosphere. However, all the energy entering the Earth’s thermal system is eventually lost to outer space since energy cannot be either created or destroyed – at least it can’t be by the normal physics operating on Earth.
Besides the downwards re-radiation of infra-red by water (mainly) and CO2 (less so) causing warming, insulation and other effects are even more important. The Earth’s atmosphere acts as a blanket slowing down the escape of energy back into space. Blankets keep you warm at night by slowing down the escape of body heat from your warm body to the cold room. Radiation of infra-red energy has nothing to do with keeping a person warm in bed at night, though you can use infra-red detectors outside the bed to see if the bed is warm since a lot of the energy lost from the bed is in the form of infra-red radiation. The rest is lost by conduction and convection.
I believe that the AGW proponents have become too fixated with infra-red effects because they believe that black body radiation from the Earth’s surface and the half that is re-radiated by CO2 is totally responsible for atmospheric warming. They use the equations relating to radiation even though this approach has dubious validity at the low temperatures on Earth compared to the Sun, and because the Earth is not a black body since its albedo is low. They dismiss the very real non-radiative processes that are so important in determining surface temperature. Conduction, convection, and phase change energy exchanges are extremely important on the surface. It is for this reason that models using insulation equations, including Newton’s Law of Cooling, as well as radiation equations give far more accurate results as shown in Figure 5.
But there are other drivers involved in the Earth’s heat engine. It has been proposed that enormous amounts of energy travel up from the Earth’s core. In addition, there are sources of energy from the decay of radioactive materials in theEarth’s substance.. Many workers, especially geologists, consider that changes in the amount of heat from the Earth’s core result in the development of hot spots, causing changes in average temperatures. We do know that these ground heating mechanisms are great as they move continents, raise mountains, and cause huge earthquakes and volcanoes. In only one of the 13,000 earthquakes felt in the recent Christchurch series of earthquakes the energy released in two minutes during the M7. 8 quake was around 32 quadrillion Joules – the equivalent of 8 million tonnes of TNT, or detonating 400 Nagasaki atomic bombs.
Electromagnetic radiation plays no part in these non-infrared drivers of climate. Solar and geothermal/radioactive drivers, can act very quickly, so the speed of the present changes in climate cannot be used as evidence for the AGW hypothesis. As an illustration, volcanic eruptions act fast and are not caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2. In addition, recent work has shown the great importance between the Sun’s magnetic activity, the Earth’s magnetosphere and cosmic rays in driving climate. Climate science is certainly not settled.
CO2 does play a part in determining climate, but because it is only a trace gas making up only 0.00044 parts of the atmosphere and is weak optically (see Figures 6 and 7) it can have only a weak effect on climate. In the past 150 years the increase in CO2 was slow until about 1940, but the increase in temperature was greatest during that time span as the Earth recovered from the Little Ice Age. Since 1940 temperature increases have slowed down, especially in the last 35 years, but the amount of atmospheric CO2 has increased steadily. In other words, the correlation between CO2 and global temperature has been weak.
Theory or evidence?
Theoretical models should be used to test empirical measurements, and not be used as a substitute for such measurements. The highly inexact AGW models are based on suppositions, and not on empirical evidence as they should. When their predictions fail the parameters in the models are modified in an attempt to make the results fit the measured results (Figure 4). This is exactly the wrong way models should be used so it should be no surprise that all 103 of these models have been spectacular failures as well as being an enormous waste of money.
The standard models are extremely complex. They approach the problem as though it were a weather forecasting problem in using all the information available in all the suitable recording stations. To make this manageable and solvable they have to ignore all other drivers of the Earth’s thermal system and consider only the radiation by CO2. This an “atomized” approach since the elements making up the models are the individual recording stations – or “atoms”. It is as though Michelangelo tried to paint the Sistine Chapel using shades of only one colour and one molecule of paint at a time. The standard models are very incomplete and heterogeneous which makes their value close to zero. No proper scientist (nor artist) would ever work this way.
A possibly better model based on measurements
A good place to start in developing a better climate model would be by tracking the amount of energy derived from the Sun coming into the Earth’s thermal system. The amount of solar energy received by a body in the solar system is described by the inverse square law, which states that the flux emitted by a point source diminishes with distance according to the inverse of the square of the distance from the source. So, a planet twice as far from the Sun as another planet will receive only one quarter of the amount of energy per unit area of surface that the first planet received. If the temperatures of the planets in the Solar System follow this inverse square law, we can use this relationship to make some insightful conclusions about the average temperature of the Earth. And we can also calculate the temperature change that would result when the amount of individual components are varied, so enabling us to test the assumption that CO2 is the main driver.
But it is not quite as simple as this since the inverse square law applies to a point source. The Sun is not a point source but a massive great body that dwarfs the planetary members of the solar system. However, we can apply a correction that allows for this based on the angle subtended by the sun’s diameter and the distance of the specific planet from the sun. I call the corrected inverse law value the Received Radiation Factor (RRF).
The RRF is calculated for each planet by the inverse square of the distance of the planet from the Sun multiplied by the tan of the angle the Sun subtends at the distance of each planet. I also multiply this value by 10000 so as to make it easier to graph.
Figure 2. The relation between the distance from the Sun and received radiation for the planets. Venus is not included as it has special factors that affect its temperature.
Then I take the natural log of the result as suggested by the integral calculus. Taking the natural log corrects for energy differences received from all the points on the Sun facing the planet. The Sun is so massive that emissions from the point on its surface nearest to the planet are much greater than the emissions from the area further from the planet but still contributing radiation that will impact the planet.
The plot of the average temperature for each of the inner planets in the solar system against the RRF is shown in Figure 2.
The fit of model equation is extremely good with a Coefficient of Determination (R2) of 0.9839 which is highly significant at a probability of <0.001. Venus has been excluded for reasons that will be discussed later. The Earth’s average temperature according to the fitted equation should be -7.3o C, whereas its actual average temperature is about 15o C. Thus, the atmosphere raises the “normal” temperature by about 23o C. Mars also shows an elevated temperature – a consequence of it having an atmosphere.
What does it take to raise Earth’s temperature by one degree C?
Many scientists propose that the increase in average global temperature since the end of the Little Ice Age is about one degree Celsius, although a significant number think that the increase is less than this or even an artefact. Assuming it has risen by one degree Celsius what increase in either the natural causes or CO2 would be sufficient to raise the global temperature by the one degree C increase?
To answer this question, I use a method involving proportionality. If the Sun didn’t shine the Earth’s temperature would be about 30oK (-243oC), the death heat of the solar system. From the model in Figure 2, we can calculate that the Earth’s temperature with the Sun shining but without the Earth having an atmosphere as being 265.7oK or -7.3oC.
So to raise the temperature by one degree would take an increase in solar radiation of 1/(265.7 – 30) = 0.0042 (equivalent to 0.42%). This is a very small increase that would not have been measurable with most instruments until quite recently. We know that the Sun’s radiation has varied by more than this in the past. So, the Sun must be a prime contender for the cause of climate change as was the accepted position by science post about 1860 until quite recently.
Considering now the case that the atmosphere is responsible for the increase of 1o C rather than the increase in incoming solar radiation, what percent change would it take assuming the Sun’s radiation stays constant? The atmosphere raises the Earth’s temperature by 288oK – 265.7oK = 22.3oC. So, it takes an increase of 1/22.3 = 0.043 (equivalent to 4.4%), which would result in a change of barometric pressure from the present average of 960 mm Hg to 1001.3 mm Hg, a change that is very measurable. This is about eleven times the percentage change that solar radiation would necessitate. As this change has not been detected we can dismiss any ideas that changes in the mass of the atmosphere are the driver of the temperature increase.
But the AGW hypothesis believes that CO2 is the driver in spite of its very low mass in the atmosphere. So how much would the concentration (mass) of CO 2 in the atmosphere have to increase by to cause a one degree rise in global temperature if it were solely responsible for the rise as the standard models assume? We can solve this to a first order approximation given the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 200 ppm at the end of the Little Ice Age and if we assume that the atmosphere raises the temperature by 22.3oC. The contribution CO2 makes to the one degree warming under these assumptions is proportional to its concentration in the atmosphere, so using proportionality it would take a minimum of 1/0.0002 = 5000 ppm to raise the temperature of the atmosphere by one degree (CO2 concentrations in 1850 based on ice core data). This 32.6 times the rise in CO2 that has actually occurred since 1850. This hasn’t happened so the blanket effect of CO2 cannot be responsible for the rise.
The AGW models presume the change in temperature was entirely due to infra-red radiation by the greenhouse gases, namely water and CO2, but mainly CO2. Integrating the area of the absorption bands in the absorption spectra in Figure 7 for water and CO2 enables an estimate to be made of the relative absorption power of water and CO2. The ratio of absorption in the simulated atmosphere used for Figure 7 is that water is 7.36 times more important than CO2. So, of the 23.3oC increase due to the atmosphere, CO2 would have contributed 1/7.3 = 0.136 part of the increase of one degree C. The 200 ppm of CO2, which was the level in the atmosphere in 1850 would have contributed the equivalent of 3.1oC to the 23oC increase. So, doubling the CO2 content of the atmosphere would result in a 6.8oC increase. This hasn’t happened, the increase is less than 1oC, so the infra-red re-radiation theory must be wrong. Making the re-radiation even more improbable is the fact that IR energy is much less than the energy of visible light. The energy content of the infra-red radiation is more than an order of magnitude less than solar radiation.
Interestingly, this is the same magnitude of error as made by Arrhenius when he estimated that a doubling in atmospheric CO2 would result in an increase in global temperature of 5oC to 6oC. He later corrected this error after reading the work of Tyndall.
Let’s now consider the possibility that water is responsible for the increased temperature since 1850. Water contributes 19.88oC (86.4%) to the 23oC warming blanket and makes up 40,000 ppm of the make-up of the atmosphere. So how much more water would have to be in the atmosphere to cause a 1oC rise? The amount is given by the equation: (ppm of water)/(temperature rise) = 40000/19.88 = 2012 ppm. This is an increase of 5% – a fraction of the required increase under the CO2 model. This is much more likely than the very large increase in CO2 that would be necessary. Because the distribution of water is so variable, both in time and space, it would be very difficult to detect this amount of change directly, instead we would have to use derivatives, such as cloud cover and temperature!
We can conclude that carbon dioxide plays a minor role, if any, in global warming. It is just too weak optically and too rare an atmospheric gas. These facts have been known since the 1860’s. The likely candidates for the increase are an increase in solar radiation, coupled perhaps by an increase in cosmic rays/magnetosphere effect, or a small increase in water content. This is especially likely if these drivers are coupled in some way.
Greenhouse or thermal blanket?
Atmospheric CO2 absorbs radiant energy from the ground by means of the stretching and bending of its molecular bonds. It then releases this energy, radiating half of it back down to the ground (the rest goes to outer space, the ultimate destination of all the Sun’s energy that entered the Earth’s thermal system). The standard models hold that CO2 is the main gas exhibiting this behaviour. It is sometimes admitted that water is also a greenhouse gas, as is methane and some other rarer components. But water is not included in the models because it is very difficult to model with the atomistic approach taken by climatologists.
Yet you cannot ignore water. A small (5%) increase in atmospheric water content causes a one degree increase in global temperature. It can also explain much of the variation in temperature from place to place that occurs in regions at the same latitude. Deserts frequently reach maximum temperatures in the range of 40o C to 50o C or more. But if there is a substantial amount of water in the local atmosphere then the temperature reached is much lower than this. The heterogeneity in the amount and distribution of water in the lower atmosphere makes the concept of a “homosphere” a misleading one. The lower atmosphere may be homogeneous for oxygen, nitrogen and CO2, but water, the most important component climatically, varies greatly with altitude, and from place to place, and from season to season. It also varies in phase, from solid to liquid to gas. So, an “atomised” modelling approach where you try to include every temperature recorded at every place, is an impossible task, especially since main driver at every station is the amount of water in the atmosphere above the station which is ignored in the standard models.
Thermal blanket
We have already seen that radiation is not the only thing that can cause a warming effect; blankets do very well. The warming effect of a blanket depends on the thickness of the blanket and the thermal properties of the materials that make it up.
All the components of the atmosphere can contribute to the Earth’s atmospheric blanket, not just CO2 since all matter is capable of being warmed. If CO2 and methane are the cause of increased temperature then blankets would not work since they do not contain either gas, so how could they possibly keep a person warm in bed at night? Blankets do work so there must be something wrong with the AGW hypothesis since it ignores the warming effect of the atmospheric blanket slowing down the escape of energy from the Earth.
When a mono-atomic molecule is heated up, either by radiation or by contact with a hotter molecule, its electron sheath expands and becomes agitated or even disrupted, a process which is shortly followed by increased agitation of the nucleus and the whole molecule moves faster. It has become hotter. All molecules do this. Certain bi-or multi-atomic molecules do more: their bonds change and so store energy. These molecules can re-radiate the stored energy at a subsequent time. But they also show normal conduction and convection energy exchanges as all matter can. The nitrogen and oxygen components of the atmosphere can do this.
Molecules on the surface of the Earth and in the lower atmosphere are densely packed together so collisions occur all the time. Thus conduction transfers of energy occur all the time, but always from a hotter molecule to a cooler one. Yet these dominant forms of energy transfer are ignored by AGW climatologists.
The most dramatic illustration of the power of conduction and convection are the hot and dry foehn winds that blow down from mountains. These winds can raise temperatures by 15 or more degrees, and radiation plays no part at all.
Another misleading term is “greenhouse gases.” Greenhouses should be considered to be houses or sheds wrapped in a thermal blanket that lets in light. The panels in the greenhouse have strong insulation properties so that heat from the warmed air in the greenhouse cannot escape quickly. It is the blanket effect of the glass that warms the interior, not so much the stopping of infra-red radiation.
The lower atmosphere is the layer of the atmosphere that is most important for life. In this part of the atmosphere, conduction and convection are very important in thermal activity. Air acts as an effective blanket keeping the planet warm. And of the components of the blanket water is by far the most important.
Although heat energy is eventually lost to outer space by radiation, to ignore the other forms of heat transfer within the atmosphere and with the ground is a grave mistake which makes the standard models incorrect and incomplete.
For life on Earth only two temperatures matter: the temperature at our level (the temperature we live in), and the temperature of the soil (the temperature that the roots of the plants we depend on live in).
Errors in climate sampling
If you wish to measure an “average” global temperature then the heterogeneity of climates from place to place requires that the recording stations be distributed at random and be representative. It would make for a better analysis if the stations were “stratified” or grouped with others of like characteristics rather than selecting a few “representative” stations as is the standard practice at present. Thus, desert stations – if there are any – should be grouped together so an average is less affected by the size of each grouping. Because there are so few desert stations they would be under-represented in any global average calculated from pooling all available stations if no attempt is made to stratify or weight the individual stations. Non-urban stations in non-desert regions should also be grouped separately from urban sites.
Figure 3. Distribution of recording stations showing how highly clumped they are – a statistician’s nightmare. Global temperature averages will be highly biased. Source: Dr J Floor Anthoni (2010)
Figure 3 shows the extreme clumping of recording stations globally. Deserts and non-urban sites occupy a much larger portion of the globe than do urban sites, but the vast numerical preponderance of urban sites causes the averages to be biased strongly in their favor. The usual method of compensating for this problem in Economics and Science is to weight the individual records by the size of the area they represent; regions with few recording stations would have their records given more prominence (weight) compared to, say, urban recording stations. I see no evidence that this is being done in climatology.
Each station should also be free from distorting influences, such as the urban heat island effect.
Unfortunately, at the present time recording stations are highly clustered from having been placed especially close to areas of direct human interest, and so are not free from distorting influences. This means the current measures of average global temperature are likely to be subject to considerable systematic and random errors. The extent of these errors is not known, so the reported values must be treated with caution.
Another difficulty is that the absorption of infra-red energy by CO2 has been overemphasized by many climatologists because they seem to not be aware that spectrophotometers measure the log of the energy absorbed. This is built into spectrophotometers deliberately since in Physics, Chemistry and Biology, experimenters are often interested in small changes in optical absorption in order to measure the all-important small changes that occur in many reactions. The use of a log scale makes the detection and measurement of such small changes much easier and more accurate, even if it can be misleading to those who do not work directly with spectrophotometers, leading them to overestimate the relative importance of weak CO2 absorption compared to that of the strong absorption of H2O.
Another major error made by climatologists is the fitting of simple linear relationships to their curvilinear data. This will always give exaggerated predictions. I will say more on this in my next paper as it is a very serious error, which is likely to greatly mislead through erroneous predictions. In statistics this error is called under-fitting.
Control and feedback factors
It is natural to consider whether or not there are feedback mechanisms that would cause any warming to slow down or even cease increasing. This must have happened in previous warming periods when the average temperature was much hotter than at present since the Earth did not go into thermal runaway. Another important fact is that CO2 was not a driver in earlier climate change episodes. Increases in CO2 followed increases in temperature by decades or centuries, they did not lead it as they should have if it were driver of climate change.
Three possible control mechanisms spring to mind that might limit the rise in temperatures.
- A rising sea level due to thermal expansion would expose a greater amount of evaporative surface as the sea invaded the land and thus increase the water content of the atmosphere. The clouds thus formed would shade the ground and reflect light back away from the Earth’s surface so reducing the solar radiation received by the surface of the Earth.11.
- The considerable amount of energy required to make a phase change from ice or snow to liquid or even gas as glaciers and ice caps melt would also act as a brake on further temperature increases (334 kJ of energy is required to melt a kilogram of ice – there is no temperature change during this process – and 2256 kJis required to convert a kilogram of liquid water at boiling point to a gas, again with no change in temperature).
- Any increase in global temperature would increase the rate of evaporation from wet land surfaces and water bodies so increasing the amount of water in the atmosphere. This would increase precipitation which would both cool the surface and wash some CO2 in solution in the droplets of rain out of the atmosphere to be deposited in the oceans. Most CO2 in the ocean is in solution at about 1/3rd saturation and is not disassociated into ions, so the oceans probably have a far greater capacity to accept dissolved carbon dioxide than the amount they contain at present. The lack of solution saturation is probably due to lag phenomena. Once in the oceans, carbon dioxide can become fixed and deposited as calcium rocks. That this has happened extensively in the past is shown by the vast deposits of calcareous rocks, such as limestone, which were of biotic origin. Another, though more minor sink, is the formation of hydrocarbons: peat, coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
Fixing the problem
Various solutions to global warming have been suggested. Planting more forests is one. But forests are only a temporary store. They come to equilibrium when they release as much CO2 as they absorb when they come to maturity. Equilibrium can be expected to occur in decades from planting, after which no further net storage of CO2 will occur. As a means of reducing CO2 it is largely useless in the medium to long term. Extensive planting of forests is robbing valuable agricultural land and replacing crops and people’s livelihoods with far less valuable forestry products and jobs.
The most popular proposed solution is to limit emissions of CO2 by diminishing or even eliminating the use of fossil fuels. The moderate correlation of CO2 emissions and global temperatures is the motivation for this. It relies on the belief that the only thing that has changed in the atmosphere since 1850 has been the CO2concentration. It isn’t of course.
The logic seems to be that correlation equals causation (which it often does not) thus if we eliminating emissions of the pollutant CO2 we will stop global warming. Except CO2 is not a pollutant – it is a vital plant nutrient. The Earth has been suffering a CO2 deficiency for the last 10 million years and during that time the CO2 level has fallen perilously close at times to levels that would cause plant extinction. If plants struggled to photosynthesise or, even more disastrous they couldn’t due to the CO2 content of the atmosphere falling below 150 ppm then the outlook for humans would be extremely grim. The ideal CO2 level is 2,000 ppm or more, which was the amount present when green plants evolved. Obviously then, more CO2 is good, less is bad. Plant production shows this since it has increased greatly over the last hundred years or so. Many factors are responsible for this increase, but the increase in CO2 levels is definitively one.
The cost of reducing CO2 emissions is horrendous, and even possibly dangerous. The cost is great and will have savage effects on people and their national economies. So, we had better make sure our science is right. Yet there are no scientifically valid proofs that CO2 is the main driver of climate change.
Other explanations
It is likely that the current increase in global temperature is due to natural processes, such as radiation from the Sun increasing by the small amount it would take. However, some human activities may interfere with the natural phenomena that control climate. Some changes result in the desertification of our utilized environment in the “humanosystem”, in contrast to the natural ecosystem. The loss of forests and grasslands to urbanization together with the covering the much of the Earth with hard surfaces, such as roads, buildings and houses, diverts water that otherwise would evaporate and return to the atmosphere, into rivers, lakes and oceans, which have a much smaller evaporative surface. This would cause warming even in the absence of carbon dioxide. Other land uses contribute to this. Careless or ignorant farming tends to cause loss of soil and soil organic content, thus reducing water retention and evaporation, and increasing run-off.
As the atmosphere above these areas becomes drier and drier daytime temperatures increase while night-time temperatures either decrease or stay more-or-less the same. This pattern is common in deserts, but also in those areas, such as cities and in regions with intensive farms where the natural water cycle has been distorted. In Australia the densely occupied and utilized south-eastern region of that large island continent is where the great majority of Australians live. This region has had a lowering in average rainfall, whereas the sparsely occupied regions of Australia in the tropics have experienced increasing rainfall. This could be an illustration of the idea that human activities have changed the climate by activities other than the emitting of CO2. In addition, urban areas have radiative forcings that lead to the Urban Heat Island effect which causes increases in the maximum temperature in the daytime. However, the total surface heat loading does not change.
Tipping points
Will such changes to the water cycle result in runaway temperatures or “tipping points”? This is most unlikely as the whole thermal system of the Earth is driven by the solar flux which is variable within limits. If global warming does occur then the oceans will warm and more water will evaporate. As the atmosphere becomes saturated with water there will be increased cloud, humidity and rain, which will cool the planet and thus prevent thermal runaway. The water cycle creates a climate thermostat which has been effective the past in preventing “tipping points.” Another benefit is that some atmospheric CO2 will be washed out of the atmosphere by the increased rainfall. Mercury and Venus are hotter than the Earth because they receive far more solar radiation than the Earth does. Both are further affected by their lack of water so they do not have a hydro-thermostat. Venus has vastly more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than the Earth does. The Earth would need at least 20,343,293 times more CO2 than it has at present to get about half of the high temperature experienced by Venus. At this level the weight of the atmosphere would crush any animal or plant.
The combination of water thermostat and the limits imposed by the solar flux is probably what limited all previous warm periods, some of which were very much hotter than the rise we have experienced since 1850. However, it should be noted that some geophysicists believe that massive changes in the heat rising from the Earth’s core and from nuclear radiation can cause great and rapid changes in global climate.
Modeling the effects of CO2 on climate have not been successful. Figure 4 shows that 102 of the “official” models greatly overestimate future temperatures (source: JR Christy, University of Alabama).
Figure 4. J R Christie’s graph of the average of 102 temperature models against measured surface and satellite temperatures. Obviously, the models do not fit the data well, so any predictions made from them are highly suspect. (Source: J R Christie, University of Alabama)
A better approach and model?
In an attempt to provide a better model that could be used for predictions I created a simple energy input-output model of the energy flows into and out of the Earth, with a thermal blanket impeding the outflows. The predictions given by my model are shown by the purple line in Figure 5.
The model predicts a decline in the rate of temperature increase until a stable temperature is reached that is only a few parts of a degree higher than at present. The average global temperature will peak in March 2038 with a maximum temperature of about 0.15 degrees Celsius warmer than in 2019.
Figure 5. My thermal model using insulation equations fitted to the average surface temperatures. The coefficient of
determination (R2) shows the fit of the line to the data is very good. Note that the model suggests the increase in temperature
will cease relatively soon, a result that is in agreement with data.
Treating the problem as a thermodynamic system is obviously a much better and more accurate approach than the atomistic CO2 radiation models used by climatologists. Of considerable importance is that both the model and the measurement data show a slowing down in the rate of temperature increase in spite of accelerated rates of CO2 emissions. Surely this is further evidence that CO2 is only a minor player in climate change.
The temperature rise is slowing
There is evidence from the satellite measurements in Figure 4 and in other measurements to be considered in my next paper that a slowing down of the rate of temperature increase is indeed occurring. Further supporting evidence for a slowing in the heating of the Earth comes from the slowing down of the rate of sea-level rise and various kinds of biological data. These will be further considered in my next paper.
The four possible explanations for global warming
In summary, there are four possible explanations for the possible 0.95o C (plus or minus an unknown error) increase in global average temperatures since the end of the Little Ice Age in about 18501These are: increases in CO2 content in the atmosphere; changes in the immense amount of energy that rises to the surface from the interior of the Earth due to nuclear decay plus thermal emissions from the hot core; changes in atmospheric and surface water content, distribution and state; and increases in solar and cosmic radiation. Of these the least likely to have much effect on climate is CO2 since it is an optically weak gas that radiates only low energy infra-red radiation that cannot heat much, and is a trace gas in too low a concentration to have much effect. Previous climate changes did not involve CO2 thus making the other three explanations much more likely, especially if they act in concert. That the climate is greatly affected both by changes in the water cycle and incoming radiation cannot be disputed. Water is a very powerful optical substance and has strong thermal properties that CO2 lacks. Probably, the interaction between solar input and water comes about because changes in energy inputs causes changes in atmospheric water content so the second two possible causes may act in concert.
Judging by the many previous climate change episodes the Earth’s thermal system has all the hallmarks of being homoeostatic with natural thermal controls. If this is so then future increases in global temperatures may occur but the rate of warming will slow down. There is evidence that this is happening now as compensatory mechanisms kick in to prevent thermal runaway, or tipping points, as they always have in the past.
Figure 6. Absorption spectra for the atmospheric gases (long wavelength to the left of the X-axis). Note that carbon dioxide (brown) absorbs much less than does water (green), and it absorbs in the weak energy of the long wavelength range of the EM spectrum, whereas water absorbs strongly in a wider range of wavelengths. The absorption values are logs which overemphasize
The spectra as normally presented overemphasize the weaker optical gases and de-emphasize the stronger. To compensate for this effect caused by the log scale I have linearised (approximately) the absorption of carbon dioxide and water in the infra-red with the linear plot shown in Figure 7.
Carbon dioxide’s optical properties
Figure 7. Infra-red absorption spectrum on water and carbon dioxide plotted on a linear scale. The weak optical properties of carbon dioxide are very obvious on this scale.
Figure 6 shows a typical absorption spectrum for the main atmospheric gases. Water, shown in green, is by far the most important in absorption of both infra-red and the visible parts of the spectrum.
Conclusion
We can also conclude from Figures 6 and 7 that CO2 plays, at best, a very minor role in global warming, and that fluctuations in climate, such as are occurring at the present time as we recover from the cold of the Little Ice Age, must be due to variations in the amount of energy being received by the surface of the Earth and consequent changes in the water content of the atmosphere due to these changes. Such mechanisms explain the variation in climate regionally over the Earth – changes in CO2 do not.
Nor does the CO2 hypothesis explain the ongoing decline in very many places of the minimum temperatures at night while the day time temperatures are increasing. The water hypothesis does. If atmospheric water is declining then the days will become hotter and the nights colder, just as in a desert.
However, increases in precipitation, such as have been recorded in a number of recording stations, may indicate that the warming episode we have experienced in the last 150 years or so is coming to an end.
Changes in the energy received by Earth are not constant as is often claimed by AGW proponents. Ilya Usoskin of the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory at the University of Oulu, Finland, examined meteorites that had fallen to Earth over the past 240 years. By analyzing the amount of titanium 44, a radioactive isotope, the team found a significant increase in the Sun’s radioactive output during the 20th century. Over the past few decades, however, they found the solar activity has stabilized at this higher-than-historic level. (Source: Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, October 2006).
Changes in the amount of incoming solar radiation can be due to many causes, such as sunspots, massive regional surges in the plasma that take hundreds of years to complete, changes in the Earth’s orbit or inclination, or tidal surges and rapid upwellings in the Sun (https://www.space.com/2942-sun-activity-increased-century-study-confirms.html)
If my analysis is correct the current international attempts to control global temperatures by reducing carbon dioxide emissions may be largely ineffective, and are very likely to be disastrous. People’s health and economic well-being, and even survival may be at serious risk, not from global warming, since the Earth and the life it sustains has been through many previous far greater warming episodes with no ill effects, but from misguided attempts to control climate. Even worse, the damage to the world economy will compound and add to the possibly unavoidable damage being done by the reaction to the Covid-19 epidemic.
More evidence for the conclusions in this paper will be presented in my next paper.
For it is too bad that there are so few who seek the truth and so few who do not follow a mistaken method ~ Galileo Galilei
1 This is close to the date when Admiral Robert Fitzroy established the Met Office in England and virtually founded modern meteorology, a development for which he did not receive due recognition.
About the author:
Dr Kelvin Duncan: Kelvin is a New Zealander with a PhD in biology, and post graduate qualifications in Organic Chemistry, and diplomas in Statistics and Spanish. Active in preserving and enhancing natural systems, Kelvin directed a programme for middle and upper management of companies on ecology and, sustainability, indigenous people’s concerns, and how to solve disputes between conflicting interest groups. He also lead three technology-transfer aid missions to certain Pacific Islands and was a Mercosur Scholar.
Dr Duncan taught ecology, physiology and the philosophy and history of science at various universities and was Dean of Science at the University of Canterbury (Sir Karl Popper’s refuge during WW2 where he had an immense effect) until 2002 when he left academia to pursue some of applied science topics including successful commercial developments resulted. His latest project is to replace glucose-based polymers in foodstuffs with fructose based polymers thus alleviating diabetes and obesity.
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