Is Carbon Dioxide An Existential Threat?

Governments, high courts, and many international institutions seem content to declare that ongoing human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are an imminent existential threat—a red light for humanity.

When pushed for a coherent scientific explanation, they may reference the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports or attempt to stifle any sober debate by dismissing the inquirers as deniers (I prefer to use the word “heretic”).

With the unfolding energy crisis in Europe caused by the rapid elimination of carbon dioxide emitting fossil fuels, combined with the concurrently increased demand in Asia for those same fossil fuels, it seems obvious that carbon dioxide emissions are not coming down significantly anytime soon.

It is long overdue for our governments, high courts, and institutions to stop passing the buck to the IPCC and give their constituents an opportunity for a full, open, multi-disciplined scientific debate on the purported existential threat of carbon dioxide.

The IPCC’s last full report was released in 2014. A significant opinion expressed was that they were confident human activity caused at least 50% of the increase in global temperature from 1950 to 2012.

It is generally accepted that from the beginning of the 20th century to 2012, the average global temperature increased by about 0.8°C of which approximately 0.64°C occurred between 1950 and 2012.

The 2014 IPCC report concluded at least half of the 1950 to 2012 increase was caused by humans (about 0. 3°C) while remaining silent on the cause of the larger balance between 1900 and 1950 (up to 0.5°C). That implies natural factors were a greater global warming influence than human factors.

Anthropology, which borrows data from many other science disciplines, confirms many natural climate-change events. About 14,500 years ago the Last Glacial Period (Earth’s last ice age) began to end with 12°C of global warming occurring over a few hundred years.

This was followed by 3,000 years of wildly fluctuating temperatures, which dragged the globe back into ice age temperatures. Three thousand years later, the Earth warmed up by 10°C over about half a century.

From then to today, the Earth was appreciably warmer than now for at least 90% of the time, with spikes of temperature changes of up to 5°C.

During the Roman Warming Period of 500 BC to 535 AD, people were wearing togas and growing grapes in Scotland, and growing olives in the Rhine region of Germany.

Vikings used an ice-free pass in Norway that was later ice-covered, and in Canada, there was a thick forest growing 130 km north of the current treeline. These are all confirmations the Earth was warmer than at present.

Then came the Dark Ages (535 to 900 AD), or actually the Cold and Dark Ages because there was ice reported on the Black Sea and the Nile, and glaciers expanded in North America. A global drop of 1°C may have caused crop failures and famines in Europe and weakened the population to be susceptible to the bubonic plague.

The next climate change event was the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1300 AD when agriculture expanded northward in Europe. Vikings established farms in Greenland and visited a place they called Vineland (now called Canada) because of the grapes growing there. Grapes grew in England also.

The Little Ice Age occurred from 1300 to 1850 AD, which was probably just a few degrees cooler than the 20th century. The forests in northern Canada that started growing in the Roman Warming Period burned down and it was too cold to regrow. And then it warmed up again.

Climate change is real, natural, and occurred frequently in past centuries without human emissions of carbon dioxide or natural variations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But carbon dioxide can also cause limited global warming.

To understand the limitations of carbon dioxide in global warming we need to first look at some basic thermodynamics. The mainstream media, even NASA, simplify this to the point of nonsense by describing our climate as a greenhouse.

The Earth is not a greenhouse

The solid roof of a greenhouse traps heat by blocking the normal escape of evaporated water and convection currents (think of a thunderhead cloud) but allows energy as infrared radiation (think of a toaster) to escape.

Greenhouse gases do not form a solid roof around the Earth; unlike a greenhouse roof, they allow the convection and evaporation heat to escape and capture and recycle some of the infrared radiation back to the Earth.

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide only absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared radiation (which are in limited supply) from the Earth. This energy is re-emitted in all directions, including outer space (think of a lightbulb), which places a practical limit on global warming from the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas effect.

To understand this practical global warming limit, we next need to look at some basic physics. Data observed shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased by 50% since the 1880 level of 280 parts per million (ppm), and once it has doubled the mathematics project a temperature increase of 1.5°C. (Note that in 2021 we are at about 410 ppm with an increase of about 1.0°C.)

Based on this data, classical scientists and the IPCC agree that the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration must be doubled for each 1.5°C unit of temperature increase. If carbon dioxide were the sole driver of climate change (which it is not), each doubling of carbon dioxide would result in a 1.5°C temperature increase.

The progression would look like this:

• Doubling the first time from 280 ppm to 560 ppm results in 1.5°C of warming.
• Doubling a second time from 560 ppm to 1,120 ppm results in an additional 1.5°C of warming for a total of 3°C
• Doubling a third time from 1,120 ppm to 2240 ppm results in an additional 1.5°C of warming for a total of 4.5°C

One scenario of the IPCC predicts a 4.5°C increase in temperature by the year 2100. The observed data indicates that would require 2,240 ppm CO2. The current CO2 concentration increase is about 2.3 ppm a year, so reaching 2,240 ppm and 4.5°C warming would take many centuries. That’s the math.

At some point, the addition of carbon dioxide will contribute to a global warming effect that is too small to matter.

This is definitively proven by the observation that over the last 540 million years we have had up to 12 times the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than exists today without runaway global warming.

And if the 2014 IPCC opinion is correct that carbon dioxide contributed to a smaller fraction of the total global warming experienced since 1900, then the temperature increase for each concentration doubling would be less than 1.5°C, which further undermines their own prediction of a 4.5°C increase in temperature by 2100.

Contributions from other sciences are inexplicably being ignored. Here are a few examples:

• Horticulture tells us that carbon dioxide is plant fertilizer, not a pollutant. Actual greenhouses get 40% higher plant growth when the carbon dioxide concentration is increased from the ambient 410 ppm to as much as 1,500 – 2,000 ppm.
• Chemistry tells us that carbon dioxide cannot turn the oceans into acid. That’s because the oceans contain salt which prevents this from happening by a chemical process called buffering. It would take 330 times the acid to make the same PH change in neutral seawater as it does in neutral freshwater.
• Biology tells us that since ocean life evolved with higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, it is largely unaffected by today’s increases.

The fossil-fuel-free energy crisis in Europe and the fossil fuel binge in Asia should be a wake-up call for all nations.

Our governments, high courts, and institutions cannot overrule the laws of multi-disciplined classical science, nor can they rewrite the long history of humans surviving more severe—and naturally occurring—climate change.

Rather than adopting opinions biased by politics, they should recognize classical observational science as the highest court because it seeks only the truth. And the truth is that carbon dioxide is not an existential threat to humanity.

Ron Barmby (www.ronaldbarmby.ca) is a Professional Engineer with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, whose 40+ year career in the energy sector has taken him to over 40 countries on five continents. He recently published “Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria” to explain in understandable terms the science of how both natural and human-caused global warming work.