Climate skeptics are arguing with a straw man

The problem that global warming skeptics have had for years is they are arguing a point where their opponents – that is the proponents of AGW or human-caused global warming – are using estimates of human CO2 emissions. But skeptics in rebuttal have no measurements of global human CO2 emission, obviously because it is buried in the noise of CO2 fluxes which are at least 10 times larger.  Skeptics are arguing with a straw man on a yellow brick road.

AGW proponents, as they tend to do, proposed a hypothesis which they believe cannot be validated by measured data, then get grant funding to gather and analyze expensive data (instruments, super computers, ocean going ships, etc.) to attempt to prove and justify their hypotheses.

But that is not science; that is advocacy.

In science, you design hypotheses which can be falsified by experiment and observations.  AGW proponents are doing the opposite. They produce hypotheses (aka computer models) to justify spending billions on bigger computer models, research expeditions and conferences.  Meanwhile, AGW proponents and “luke-warmers” and fence sitters as well as most skeptics and so-called “deniers” ignore the answers in nature staring them in the face.

With regard to oil, gas and coal companies, remember these companies make much higher profit if their supply and demand are constrained by government policy. Never lose sight of that fact. They are not to blame for the CO2 concentration, but don’t expect those shareholders to harm themselves based on politics. The global warming / climate change agenda means per dollar of revenue these companies need less exploration and R&D, achieved at lower risk, less production, and lower distribution expenses to produce higher profits.

So, most of these companies support the green initiatives rather than fight the politicians. They prefer to sell gasoline for $5 per gallon than $0.5 per gallon, and return higher profits to their shareholders. Politicians win with $5 gasoline because taxes on the higher profits result in higher tax revenue for government, and politicians have a target for their indoctrinated “green” constituency, which enables division of voter constituencies and political contributions.

Shareholders, boards, executives and employees have no obligation to spend their money to protect voters and citizens from bad political decisions.

The concentrations of CO2 in both atmosphere and in ocean are independent of the source of the CO2. Don’t blame yourself or fossil fuel energy or those suppliers for the increasing CO2 or temperature. You and they are scapegoats. The carbon footprint of an individual, of a country, or the entire population does not change the CO2 concentration in the air.

Since ocean is an infinite sink for CO2 and since CO2 is highly soluble in ocean water and also reacts with ocean water and many ions in ocean water, and since the concentration of CO2 gas in ocean and in air are determined ONLY by temperature, pH, salinity and pressure, then no amount of CO2 subtracted from or added to the atmosphere by humans will change the CO2 concentration trend.

Burning all of the fossil fuel on earth and putting all of that CO2 in the air would not change the net global CO2 concentration trend, but by the way, it would be impossible to burn all of the fossil fuel on earth unless we destroyed the ocean, because fossil fuels are still being created in enormous quantity. Perhaps you thought it came from dinosaurs.

Notice that AGW proponents including IPCC report that earth’s atmosphere contains ~800 gigatonnes of CO2 gas, while ocean surface CO2 gas reservoir is ~1000 gigatonnes, and deep ocean contains ~ 40,000 gigatonnes of carbon. (One gigatonne is equal to 10^9 metric tonnes or 10^12 kilograms, that is 1,000,000,000,000 kilograms.) And they also report that fossil fuel CO2 emission flux by humans is ~8 gigatonnes per year and that there are annual CO2 fluxes between air and ocean in opposite directions of ~90 gigatonnes in each direction (into air from ocean, and into ocean from air).

Using their estimates, there are two annual CO2 fluxes which are each 10 times larger than human CO2 flux. These two ~90 gigatonne fluxes are continuously circulating between an ~800 gigatonne atmospheric CO2 reservoir and a ~1000 gigatonne ocean surface CO2 reservoir.

Incredibly, they claim to be concerned about an annual CO2 concentration slope of about 2.5 parts per million per year and persist that this tiny slope is due to humans. But try to find an explanation in their literature for the cause of these two giant natural fluxes and their size and continuous giant dilution relative to human emission.

It is obvious that the relatively tiny human CO2 flux cannot be causing or disrupting a CO2 balance between these two giant fluxes in opposite directions (each of which are 10 times larger than human CO2 emissions) which are continuously flowing between two CO2 gas sinks/sources which are both 100 times larger than human CO2 emissions. The climate crisis is a fabrication. They are attempting to lay a guilt trip on humanity. I will leave the reasons for that for another discussion.

The net global average CO2 concentration and its slope are dominantly controlled by ocean surface temperature, and ocean is 98% of the water on earth and over 70% earth’s surface area. Ocean is the sink for ~ 5000 times more dissolved CO2 than humans emit per year, and then there is much carbonate which has reacted with calcium ions and solidified into carbon rocks such as limestone.

There is no causal connection between CO2 emission sources and earth’s temperature nor with earth’s climate, nor with net global CO2 concentration nor with any other climate variable that is a co-variable with net global average CO2 concentration.

CO2 concentration in air and ocean is defined by Henry’s Law. Henry’s Law is independent of the source of the CO2 and dominantly dependent on the temperature of ocean surface and the net surface area of ocean at that temperature, while being less dependent on pH, salinity and pressure because the average net global variability of these other factors is low.

The trend or slope of average ocean surface temperature has been slowly increasing, therefore the Henry’s Law coefficient that defines the partition ratio of CO2 between ocean surface and air has been adjusting to the slowly warming ocean temperature surface. The result is a net global average CO2 concentration trend or slope observed at Mauna Loa which is slowly increasing in lock-step with slowly increasing ocean surface temperature.

The late geologist Lance Endersbee graphed this relationship (above) at 99 percent correlation using CO2 data from the NOAA Scripps Keeling lab on Mauna Loa with respect to ocean surface temperature (SST) after removal of time. This graph is the derivative of atmospheric CO2 concentration with respect to sea surface temperature. You are typically shown these two data sets as derivatives with respect to time.

See more here: budbromley.blog

Header image: The Indian Express

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Comments (10)

  • Avatar

    sir_isO

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    “There is no causal connection between CO2 emission sources and earth’s temperature nor with earth’s climate, nor with net global CO2 concentration nor with any other climate variable that is a co-variable with net global average CO2 concentration.”

    Indeed.

    And yet, the sun, for instance, is generally conveniently ignored, or treated as a “well understood” inconsequential constant. That is, the absolute overriding factor, trivialized. The irony.

    Why even consider the effects of electromagnetism associated with it, or the constant “bombardment” of the Earth with its lifegiving terrors with enormous amounts of varied energies and materials (yes, the sun makes the earth grow, not only because energy is matter, but for instance protons hurled at the earth)?

    The laughable suggestions that you can “observe” and “understand” the sun properly, that you have no biases or errors, that you have perfect equipment to measure all things related to sol and resulting interactions being required to waive away the influence of the sun with respect to climate sort of arguments.

    But no, go believe instead that the slight increase of 300/1000000 somethings TOTALLY dictates the system dynamics. And do please remember that the 999700 other somethings are completely separate from those 300 somethings in thermodynamics. And guess what, that’s only a fraction of the material capacity, as there’s the actual earth…too, which is FAR more significant. So the influence of those ~300 somethings, thermally, happens to be faaaar less than you could even imagine.

    Of course, associated with that is the rhetoric of demonizing the sun. From telling people to avoid the sun, to the fraudulence of sunscreen and the associated cancer issues (with sunlight exposure associated with less cancers, including skin cancer…and skin cancer being kinda prevalent without sun exposure)…to the attempts to block the sun with atmospheric pollutants.

    Well hey, if you demonize the sun, don’t be surprised to find a demon sun, evil old Satan Sol.

    Reply

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    MaxP

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    Nice essay, thanks Bud. According to Edberry.com human emissions do somewhat affect co2 concentration on a small timescale although to a minor extent. That does not change your conclusions anyways.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Bud Bromley

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      Thanks Max. CO2 flux is affected by human emissions, but not net CO2 concentration in air or ocean surface. Flux is the amount of material flowing through a surface per unit of time. All other variables held constant, then increases in human CO2 emission (or any other source) will increase the CO2 flux into ocean surface, but will not change the partition ratio between air and ocean surface. The CO2 concentration in air re-equilibrates to the Henry’s Law ratio determined by the sea surface temperature. The source of the CO2 is not a function in Henry’s Law.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi James,

      Been waiting for you. For I wanted to describe the general experiment by which I studied the simultaneous diffuse of divalent cadmium and lead ions into highly purified sodium chloride and potassium chloride single crystals..

      These experiments and their results are described in some detail in my 1970 Thesis from Oregon State University. Which is the only academic scientific report I have ever written. My major professor wrote the two peer reviewed articles, based upon my thesis research results.

      The solutions of CdCl2 and PbCl2 were evaporated to dryness at the bottom of the diffusion ampoule, the single crystals of the NaCl or KCl were supported by a tube 3cm from the bottom. An atmosphere of chlorine (Cl2) was used but I cannot claim that its pressure at the diffusion temperature was 1atm to give any meaning to the boiling temperature of CdCl2 (487C) and PbCl2 (950C). All diffusion runs were done at temperatures at 347C and above. Two crystals were always used to check for reproducibility. In few lower temperature cases the two Cadmium profiles were significantly different. However, at temperatures above 460F the two profiles were identical within experimental error.

      The propose of my experimentation was not to merely create diffusion profiles (concentrations versa penetration depths); it was analyze the profiles to these ions diffusion coefficient and the possible relationship between these two ions influence upon the other’s rate of diffusion.

      However, the purpose of this comment is to ask James: How can these positively changed divalent cation ions, which we consider are strongly attracted to the negatively charged chloride ions, because these compound’s melting points [298C (CdCl2) and 501C (PbCl2) each significant greater than water (0C), can be transferred 3cm from the bottom of the ampoule to the surfaces of the salt (NaCl and KCl) single crystals???

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

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    Doug Harrison

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    What a wonderfully well written and argued article this is! Well done Bud Bromley; if only you could get it printed in the Guardian or the New York Post but we all know that will never happen. The greenies are not interested in facts. I have a relative who is a high school science Teacher who knows full well that what she teaches is nonsense but supports the teaching of it because it is part of the agenda 21/30 programme.

    Reply

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    David A

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    The cause of Atmospheric CO2 PPM increase has been part of CAGW skeptics debate for a long time. ( Skeptics are heavily variable by definition, as they compost any and all who disagree with CAGW) After two decades of following this debate I do not argue this particular point, as I find well reasoned arguments on both sides.

    However I find the C in CAGW unsupported, while the benefits of additional CO2 are very well supported; increased bio growth – more food with no additional water or land required! This very major benefit will continue to increase in a linear fashion up to well above any realistic possible CO2 increase. And the predicted but failing to manifest harms do, according to even the alarmist, decrease, or have less warming potential with each additional CO2 PPM.

    So the MIA purported harms are less effective with each increase in CO2, and the known proven benefits continue to grow in a linear fashion.

    Additionally the proposed and practiced solutions are both very expensive, and entirely ineffective, as China, India, other parts of Asia, are building coal electricity production plants by the hundreds.

    So the costly solutions are completely ineffective.
    The benefits of additional CO2 are massive and will continue to grow. ( See website CO2 Science)
    The purported harms are failing to manifest and each additional increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has reduced warming potential, and that warming is mostly at night reducing global frost damage.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      sir_isO

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      Agreed, in all of their narratives when the peddle shit, the typically demonize a beneficial thing.

      Co2 levels could increase by say, 25% and I’d be happy.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      Herb Rose

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      Hi David,
      Here’s an argument against AGW. All matter (including O2 and N2) absorb radiated energy. The premise that since these gases are not absorbing visible light and IR, they are heated by the Earth’s surface is garbage. They absorb over 90% of the UV coming from the sun and convert it into kinetic energy. The greater the altitude, the greater the UV energy, the fewer molecules. At equilibrium with the incoming radiation the fewer the molecules equalizing, the greater their kinetic energy. (Look at the molecules/atoms at different altitudes. It shows the greater energy at higher altitudes.)
      People. believe the thermometer gives an accurate reading of the kinetic energy of the molecules in a gas. It doesn’t. A thermometer absorbs energy from the collision of gas molecules with it. These collisions obey the conservation of momentum so the energy being transferred is a function of both the energy of the molecules and their mass (number). The kinetic energy increases with altitude but the mass (number of molecules) decreases. A look at the graph of temperature with altitude shows how ridiculous the reading is. (What is the source of energy at the top of the stratosphere the is increasing the energy of the molecules?) A graph of the inverse of density (the volume of a constant number of molecules) gives a representation of the kinetic energy of the molecules.
      Herb

      Reply

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