Guest post by GreenMedInfo Research Group
In a scientific bombshell that could reshape the climate debate, researchers have found evidence suggesting that Earth’s atmosphere may already be saturated with CO2, potentially nullifying the warming effect of future emissions. [emphasis, links added]
A groundbreaking new study published in Applications in Engineering Science challenges the increasingly prevalent narrative that rising atmospheric CO2 levels will lead to catastrophic climate change.
The research, conducted by scientists at the Military University of Technology in Poland, suggests that the impact of additional CO2 emissions on global temperatures may be far less significant than commonly portrayed.1
The study, titled “Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases,” introduces the concept of “saturation mass” – the amount of an absorbing gas above which further increases produce negligible additional absorption of radiation.
Through laboratory experiments and theoretical analysis, the researchers determined that for CO2, this saturation mass is approximately 0.6 kg/m2.2
Critically, the authors note that the current amount of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere is already over 6 kg/m2 – about ten times the saturation mass.
This implies that additional CO2 emissions may have little to no further warming effect, as the gas has already absorbed nearly all the infrared radiation it can within its absorption spectrum.3
“It should be noted that unlike the used cuvette, the vertical structure of the atmosphere undergoes changes in both pressure and temperature,” the authors write. “Nevertheless, the question arises as to whether the additionally emitted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will absorb thermal radiation.”4
The study’s findings align with the work of independent researchers like Randall Carlson, who have long argued that the climate impact of CO2 has been overstated while its benefits are often ignored.
In his essay “The Redemption of the Beast: The Carbon Cycle and the Demonization of CO2,” Carlson contends that rising CO2 levels are having an overall positive effect on the biosphere.5
Carlson writes: “Hundreds of studies have consistently demonstrated significant improvements in plant growth, crop yields, and drought resistance under elevated CO2 conditions.”
He cites research showing that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 increased agricultural yields by an average of 33%.6
Furthermore, Carlson points to evidence of global greening in recent decades, with satellite data showing an 8% increase in vegetation cover in Australia from 1981-2006 and increased foliage cover across Earth’s warm, arid environments in proportion to rising CO2 levels. Some studies attribute 70% of observed greening to the CO2 fertilization effect.7
The new Polish study adds weight to Carlson’s argument that the prevailing narrative around CO2 and climate change may be overly simplistic and alarmist.
The researchers conclude: “This unequivocally suggests that the officially presented impact of anthropogenic CO2 increase on Earth’s climate is merely a hypothesis rather than a substantiated fact.”8
While acknowledging the need for responsible environmental stewardship, the study’s authors caution against unsubstantiated arguments that could hinder economic development. They call for more empirical research to definitively resolve disputed issues in climate science.
“In science, especially in the natural sciences, we should strive to present a true picture of reality, primarily through empirical knowledge,” the researchers assert.9
This study, along with the work of independent thinkers like Randall Carlson, underscores the need for a more nuanced and empirically grounded approach to understanding CO2’s role in Earth’s complex climate system.
As the scientific debate continues, it’s clear that simplistic narratives about CO2 as an unmitigated environmental threat may not align with the latest research findings.
Furthermore, advocates of the prevailing global warming narrative that focuses myopically on carbon dioxide and methane emissions, including Bill Gates, are taking this view to such extremes that recently, Bill Gates suggested a methane vaccine scheme to ‘fight climate change.’
Clearly the thinking has gone in the wrong direction, and we need to have deeper, more open, and more constructive discussions about how anthropogenic climate change is affecting the environment, e.g. asking questions on how are microplastics and the petroleum industry as a whole polluting our bodies and our environment.
References
1: Jan Kubicki, Krzysztof Kopczynski, and Jarosław Młynczak, “Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases,” Applications in Engineering Science 17 (2024): 100170, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
2: Ibid.
3: Ibid.
4: Ibid.
5: Randall Carlson, “The Redemption of the Beast: The Carbon Cycle and the Demonization of CO2,” GreenMedInfo, April 14, 2024, https://www.greenmedinfo.com/
6: Ibid.
7: Ibid.
8: Kubicki, Kopczynski, and Młynczak, “Climatic consequences.”
9: Ibid.
This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo.
Read more at Vigilant Fox
The CO2 is saturated myth never dies
CO2 is never saturated
That’s what the logarithmic effect means
CO2 is already a weak, harmless greenhouse gas at the current level of 420 ppm. It does not stop being a greenhouse gas at any specific concentration.
I wrote an article about the saturation myth to explain what is happening. The author of this “study” appears clueless.
Only leftist fools claim CO2 is dangerous
Some conservative fools claim CO2 does nothing.
https://honestclimatescience.blogspot.com/2024/04/tthe-greenhouse-effect-co2-is-saturated.html
Don’t pay any attention to Ritard Greene… he’s recently dedicated himself to attacking conservatives, and he’s merely carrying out that self-set mission to show the world that he’s really a poorly-closeted leftist warmist. LOL
https://honestclimatescience.blogspot.com/2023/01/sunday-morning-climate-rap-some.html
Sunday, January 29, 2023
”We conservative Climate Realists have our share of science deniers, and I’ve decided to challenge them this year. That will make me plenty of enemies, and down votes of my comments. I don’t care.”
He then goes on to attack every single conservative poster and commenter he can find, while claiming he’s not a warmist and while claiming to be a conservative. How many leftists has he attacked? None… he leaps to their defense.
Ritard Greene (aka DoubleSix6Man… 666Man) buys into every warmist premise; argues from the warmist perspective; leaps to the defense of leftist woketards; bleats about ‘consensus’; denigrates bog-standard radiative physics, quantum physics and thermodynamics in favor of the warmist mathematical fraudery in their misuse of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and reliance upon ancient and long-debunked scientific principles (Prevost principle); and attacks anyone smart enough to mathematically and scientifically prove the warmist blather is unscientific. He masks up as a climate realist while spewing warmist bilge. That’s why, with leftist warmists, one must look at their actions, not their words… because leftist warmists lie. It’s what he does. LOL
He’s a warmist wolf in climate skeptic lambs-wool, a Judas goat sent by his warmist overlords to lead legitimate climate skeptics astray, to trick them over to the warmist side as means of incrementalizing them into leftism. His brand of warmism is just rehashed AGW / CAGW. His brand of leftism is just rehashed communism. His claims to be conservative are just lies.
He hasn’t changed in years except to get worse… this image was made ~6 years ago.
https://i.imgur.com/sTboYtJ.png
I blame age-related dementia. LOL
The saturation they speak of pertains to the fact that there is only so much 14.98352 µm radiation being emitted, and at any concentration above ~50 ppm, the extinction depth is such that that radiation doesn’t have an unfettered path out to space. At current concentration, the extinction depth is ~10.4 m. A doubling of CO2 concentration would reduce that to ~9.7 m.
At 287.64 K (the latest stated average temperature of Earth) and an emissivity of 0.93643 (calculated from NASA’s ISCCP program from data collected 1983-2004), at a photon wavelength of 14.98352 µm (the primary spectral absorption wavelength of CO2), the spectral radiance is only 5.43523 W / m^2 / sr / µm (integrated radiance from 13.98352 µm – 15.98352 µm of 10.8773 W/sr-m^2 to fully take into account the absorption shoulders of CO2).
That means that the maximum that CO2 could absorb would be 10.8773 W/sr-m^2, if all CO2 were in the CO2{v20(0)} vibrational mode quantum state. Of course, it’s not.
As I’ve shown, while the Boltzmann Factor calculates that 10.816% of CO2 will be excited in one of its {v2} vibrational mode quantum states at 288 K, the Maxwell-Boltzmann Speed Distribution Function shows that ~24.9% will be excited (and that percentage increases as temperature increases). This is higher than the Boltzmann Factor calculated for CO2 because the Maxwell-Boltzmann Speed Distribution Function takes into account all kinetic temperatures (whereas the Boltzmann Factor only takes into account one kinetic temperature), and faster molecules collide more often, weighting the reaction cross-section more toward the higher end.
Thus that drops to 8.1688523 W/sr-m^2 able to be absorbed. Remember, molecules which are already vibrationally excited can not absorb radiation with energy equivalent to the vibrational mode quantum state energy at which they are already excited, unless a degenerate vibrational mode quantum state exists to absorb that energy. That radiation passes the vibrationally excited molecule by.
That’s for all CO2, natural and anthropogenic… anthropogenic CO2 accounts for ~3.63% (per IPCC AR4) of total CO2 flux, thus anthropogenic CO2 can only absorb 0.29652933849 W/sr-m^2.
The way absorption works is that ~50% of the radiation is absorbed in the first 10% of the extinction depth, then ~50% of the remainder is absorbed in the next 10% of the extinction depth, then ~50% of the remainder is absorbed in the next 10% of the extinction depth, etc., etc.
CO2 absorbs ~50% within 1 meter, thus anthropogenic CO2 will absorb 0.148264669245 W/m^2 in the first meter, and the remainder 0.148264669245 W/m^2 within the next ~9 meters.
The net effect of an increasing CO2 atmospheric concentration is not a ‘trapping’ of energy in the atmosphere, it is a reduction in the extinction depth at the given wavelength. The radiation which would be absorbed at a higher atmospheric CO2 concentration is already absorbed long before it reaches space, and always has been… it’s just absorbed in a shorter distance with increasing CO2 atmospheric concentration.
That energy thermalized increases Convective Available Potential Energy, which increases convection, which carries the energy stored in the specific heat capacity (and the latent heat capacity in the case of water) of the atmospheric molecules high enough in the atmosphere where collisional processes no longer dominate, radiative processes do. This is why CO2 is the most prevalent atmospheric radiative coolant above the tropopause, and the second-most prevalent atmospheric radiative coolant (behind water vapor) below the tropopause. A higher convection rate carries more energy to the upper atmosphere, and a higher concentration of molecules capable of emitting that radiation increases the photon emission flux (remember, the homonuclear diatomic molecules such as O2 and N2 have no net electric dipole and thus cannot effectively emit nor absorb IR unless perturbed by a collision; and monoatomics have no vibrational mode quantum states and thus cannot emit nor absorb IR in any case), thus increasing the radiation emitted to space, which is by definition a cooling process.
Further, CO2 being a polyatomic molecule, has more DOF than do the diatomic molecules, thus it has a higher molar heat capacity (CO2: 28.26916348 J mol-1 K-1) than the diatomics (N2: 20.78614962 J mol-1 K-1 and O2: 20.8 J mol-1 K-1) and monoatomics (Ar: 12.4717 J mol-1 K-1). Thus a higher atmospheric concentration of CO2 will result in more energy convectively transported to the upper atmosphere than the diatomics or monoatomics could transport, thus more energy which can be emitted, thus more energy emitted to space, which is by definition a cooling process.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190331141324if_/https://co2islife.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/spectralcoolingrates_zps27867ef4.png
Note the CO2-induced spectral cooling rate (positive numbers in the scale at right) extends right down to the surface of the planet, whereas CO2 shows only negligible warming (negative numbers in the scale at right) only at the tropopause (ie: just above the clouds, where it absorbs a greater percentage of reflected solar insolation and radiation from cloud condensation; and picks up energy from solar insolation-excited O3 which collides with N2, which collides with CO2 to excite the CO2{v3(1)} vibrational mode quantum state).
CO2, far from being a “global warming, heat trapping” gas, is a radiative atmospheric coolant at all altitudes (except for negligible warming right at the tropopause).
https://climate-dynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Maria-Hakuba-10-30-2018.pdf#page=33
“But what about CAGW?”, you may ask… at the link below, I prove CAGW describes a physical process which is physically impossible. I do this via multiple avenues… bog-standard radiative theory, cavity theory, entropy theory, quantum field theory, dimensional analysis and the fundamental physical laws… all taken straight from physics tomes.
If you want to know what actually occurs for any given change in concentration of any given constituent atomic or molecular species of the atmosphere, check the link below:
https://www.patriotaction.us/showthread.php?tid=2711
I’ve even provided the equations so you can calculate Specific Lapse Rate yourself for any gas you want, and so you can calculate for yourself what the effect upon temperature would be for any change in concentration of any gas.
Very impressive.
Richard,
You are right that the ability of carbon dioxide to cause warming is declining logarithmic curve. Such curves decline very rapidly, but never reach zero. By the time was get to our current 420 ppm, the ability of carbon dioxide to cause warming is so low that for all practical purposes we are beyond a saturation point.
Science not Liberalism and Eco-Freak Ideas
The fact that carbon dioxide is beyond its saturation point as far as being able to cause warming is not new information. I have been posting that information for a long time. The hope that this information will undermine the climate change movement is nothing more than a hope. This movement has nothing to do with real science. It is a political movement about supporting the renewable energy industrial complex, imposing new and higher taxes, make governments large and more controlling, Marxism, as well supporting many agendas that can make it on their own merit.
Very few understand complex calculations. Many are not familiar with declining logarithmic curves. Most understand empirical data so I’ll post what I have done before. Forty percent of the warming blamed on man occurred between 1910 and 1941 when the carbon dioxide levels were relatively low and raising very slowly. This is real data. In addition, it appears that the mini ice age, roman and medieval warm periods happened with no large change in carbon dioxide concentrations. At the current 420 ppm, carbon dioxide has negligible impact on warming.
No way of proving it but I suspect that China (and maybe India) have known this all along. They’re the Roadrunner, we’re the Coyote.