I wonder how many of the approximately 30,000 ‘special’ people who are on their way to Glasgow for COP26 know that 78 percent of the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen?
I asked this question of a group of retired professionals just yesterday and there was silence. My second question was about oxygen and a retired airline pilot answered correctly: she said that 21 percent of the atmosphere is oxygen.
My late father was an agronomist who once worked for CSIRO and for a period led aid programs in different parts of Southeast Asia – he always used to say that his big issue was working out how to get more nitrogen into the soil because it was so important for plant growth.
I just asked my husband – a chemist who once worked in pulp and paper – what the cardboard box on the floor beside my desk would be composed of.
He ventured about 40 percent carbon, 40 percent oxygen, 10 percent hydrogen, and 10 percent other elements. The box is empty so inside it would be about 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen with trace amounts of carbon dioxide.
While few people seem to know that carbon dioxide makes up only 0.04 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, I’m often told that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: FACT!
They do shout the bit about it being a ‘fact’, as though that makes it special because it proves that carbon dioxide is warming the Earth. But it doesn’t.
The fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas is meaningless if we don’t place this in some context given the complexity of real-world physics and chemistry when it comes to climate change.
There are other greenhouse gases, including water vapor, which spectroscopy has shown to be 12 times more active than carbon dioxide in long-wave radiation absorption and reradiation.
This is because water vapor is both more abundant and absorbs the long-wave radiation over a larger band of wavelengths.
An important research paper published 20 years ago by Richard Lindzen, Ming-Dah Chou and Arthur Hou (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 81) contradicts the popular IPCC-endorsed theory that water vapor concentrations increase with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, causing positive feedback and thus more global warming as the consensus theory goes.
Specifically, Lindzen et al. showed that the area of upper-level cirrus cloud decreased as temperatures increased in the tropics, providing negative feedback that cancels any positive water-vapor feedback.
I know this is more information than most people who want to be an expert on carbon dioxide care to think about.
In fact, even those who are experts on carbon dioxide and climate change would prefer not to know about the Lindzen et al. 2001 paper.
The response to that paper was for the editor of that publication, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, to be immediately replaced.
The next issue of the Bulletin contained an attack, not in the form of a letter (to which Richard Lindzen would have immediately replied had he been given an opportunity) but as a separate article (Hartmann & Michelsen 2002).
The title of the article was ‘No Evidence for Iris’, with the new editor appending a subtitle ‘Careful analysis of data reveals no shrinkage of tropical cloud anvil area with increasing sea surface temperature (SST)’. This rebuttal muddled Lindzen et al.’s method but did have a compelling title.
Facts often need context, but in the case of worldwide polar bear numbers, it is straightforward: since bans on hunting were introduced in the 1970s, numbers have increased from about 10,000 in the late 1960s to an official estimate of 26,000 in 2015.
Surveys conducted since then, by those reluctant to report a further increase, suggest a modest 28,500 bears. When estimates for subpopulations are added to this, the more realistic number becomes 39,000 – that could be rounded to 40,000.
The bottom line is that despite a reduction in sea ice at the North Pole over this same period, there has been an increase in polar bear numbers. Which is good news that runs contrary to the zeitgeist.
Successful Australian businesswoman Gina Rinehart reported the increase in polar bear numbers in a lecture she gave to her former girls’ school; it sent the ‘fact’ checkers at the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) into a spin resulting in a long essay that was short on facts and big on snow.
How dare Ms. Rinehart – whose profits from mining fund them – have an opinion on bears. I suspect Twiggy Forest is allowed to have an opinion on bears because he knows better than to explain that despite a decrease in the amount of ice at the North Pole, polar bear numbers have been increasing.
It is a fact that over the last few decades there has been an overall decrease in the amount of ice at the North Pole, but there has been a contrasting increase in the amount of ice at the South Pole.
It is also a fact that should all the remaining ice melt at the North Pole it will have hardly any effect on global sea levels because it is sea ice, not land ice.
Should all the ice melt at the South Pole, well this could cause global sea levels to rise by some 70 meters. So, we might be grateful that it is trending as it is, with more ice at the South Pole, even though there are no polar bears there.
But whenever I talk about the South Pole to those wishing they were off to Glasgow I’m told I should be talking about the North Pole as though I am trying to trick them with any mentions of the South Pole.
Just yesterday I was told that what is most important is not that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or the amount of new ice accumulating at the South Pole, but that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing.
When I ventured that this could be a consequence of increasing temperatures, I was shouted at. Specifically, I was told that while atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide increase do lag behind temperature increases, this is not relevant, and this does not prove that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas.
I had to write that down to check I wasn’t missing something, that I was being thrown a non sequitur.
It is difficult having a rational and logical discussion with a true believer. I suspect they get very emotional very quickly because climate change is a topic to which they are very attached, while knowing really very little about it.
It is something like an infatuation – not to be scrutinized, lest the feeling dissipates, and the individual find themselves all alone again and without a cause.
If none of this makes sense to you, it is probably a good thing that you are not going to Glasgow where they could probably be convinced that 78 percent of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide and 21 percent oxygen with this percentage rapidly declining with every new coal-fired power station.
h/t RO
Read rest at Jennifer Marohasy
90+% of people I speak to haven’t a clue but believe the popular press with a passion.
“Nothing is more frightening than ignorance in action.” – Goethe
I enjoy “baiting” alarmists with the following question – “Do you know the percentage of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere ?”.
They normally haven’t got a clue and mumble and obfuscate – so I up the ante “Alright, it must at least be significant if we can use it to control the climate ?”
At which point they normally throw in an answer of four or five percent. (Some idiots guess 40% – now that would kill us.)
“Too big !” says I. “Try a smaller guess…….”
They then go through an iterative (and increasingly incredulous) process of reductions and prompting until they get to the actual figure of 0.04%.
At this point some go “that can’t be right – where do you get your data !” and some just outright don’t believe it – but all look vaguely perplexed by this piece of information.
At which point I tell them – “Don’t believe me – just go and look it up – then come back and explain to me how on earth we are going to “control” the climate with this one tiny variable – and while you are at it check out the natural cycle and find that man is only contributing only 8% of total – so if you think 0.04% is small now try using 0.0032% to control the climate – and even then only if we completely abandon fossil fuel use in its entirety – immediately !”
And we haven’t even begun to allow for the 99.99% IR saturation or the production of volcanic CO2 which reduces its “effects” by several orders of magnitude further.
A surprisingly large number come up with 4% – which leads me to conclude that whenever they hear or read 0.04% they presume they have either misheard or misunderstood and only the 4 remains lodged in their brains. Clearly 0.04% is too small to be significant and creates a cognitive dissonance between their belief and reality.
Stop being ignorant and proud of it – do some actual checking.
Great article from Dr. Marohasy and comment from Ken Irwin.
Yes, people are attached to their beliefs and don’t want to hear that they’ve been suckered. The atmosphere is only .04% carbon dioxide and humanity accounts for 8% of that. That we could control the Earth’s weather by eliminating our .0032% CO2 contribution to the carbon cycle is like believing that you can turn a 747 into a kite with a string. If humanity quit using fossil fuels today, completely, what possible reward could negate the misery it created?
Natural CO2 emissions of 770 Gt/yr dwarf human emssions of 36.7 Gt/yr by a factor of 21, i.e. human emissions are less than 5% of the total.
Politicians want to be popular and to show how much they care. That’s why they don’t look at the facts and end up with repugnant energy policies and wasteful conferences. Scientists want funds so do work and write reports to get them. The media want doomsday stories. Big business wants to make profits so invests in government-subsidized renewables. The founders of the anti-carbon dioxide campaign wanted to destroy industrial civilisation and reduce populations so came up with the big lie. So everything is based on a lie.
I have found it very entertaining to ask people I know what would happen if they landed on a planet that had a mostly-nitrogen atmosphere and negligible CO2 content. They almost universally reply that it would be too cold and they’d asphyxiate. Good laughs