There is no scientific evidence that the minuscule 0.01% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since 1780 has had any effect on the Earth’s average temperature.
Nonetheless, in the 1980s, a religious/political movement against man-made or anthropogenic CO2 arose.
It was driven by catastrophic predictions from a gaggle of impenetrable and undecipherable computer climate models operated by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and quickly metastasized into a worldwide mass movement with all the fervor of a new evangelical religion.
As Eric Hoffer observes in his book, The True Believer, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in God, but never without belief in a devil.”
In this new “doomsday” mass movement, millions of people truly believe that man-made CO2 is a modern-day devil that will cause glaciers to melt, seas to rise, and coastlines to submerge. They also believe that mankind can, and must, save the planet from this catastrophe by reducing emissions of the devil CO2 to net zero.
Those who don’t believe are labeled “climate deniers,” a derogatory reference to those who deny that the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, most politicians in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, as well as the press and heads of many large corporations have blindly joined this Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) religion to stamp out the CO2 devil.
These true believers will not accept any challenge to their deeply held religious beliefs which are supported by nothing more than emanations from the IPCC’s inscrutable climate models. Their minds are closed.
CO2 is a devil that must be vanquished and our country, therefore, must reduce its CO2 emissions to net zero or we will all perish. Most non-believers dare not directly challenge the false claim that man-made C02 is the sole cause of our current warming period.
Indeed, most members of the press have been so intimidated that they have adopted the religion’s vocabulary and talk as if “climate change,” “reducing emissions,” “clean fuel,” and “green energy,” were gospel.
To accomplish their goal of reducing CO2 emissions to net zero the true believers have adopted the utopian dream of an all-electric economy that would obviate the need for fossil fuels [except, of course, to generate electricity, and to power aircraft, ships, steel mills, etc., which proves the absurdity of the goal] Instead of utopia, that dream constitutes a nightmarish suicide pact to irreparably damage the economy.
It would require the US to spend trillions to expand the capacity of our electric grid and its generating facilities to accommodate the conversion of some 300 million vehicles and 140 million homes and buildings from fossil fuel to electricity.
The alarmists have also put the cart well before the horse and propose spending trillions on Chinese-made wind turbines, solar arrays, and electric vehicles before the existing grid and its generating capacity can be properly expanded to accommodate them.
Witness California: it prohibits residents from charging their few thousand electric vehicles when the utilities’ generating capacity is insufficient, due to over-reliance on intermittent solar and wind power generation.
Worse yet, the true believers would require us to trash our current inventory of over 300 million gas-powered vehicles as well as the fossil fuel heating systems in more than 140 million homes and buildings by 2050.
They simply ignore the enormous waste of perfectly good vehicles, heating systems, and the supporting manufacturing infrastructure, valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars.
They also avoid any discussion of the Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines that require replacement every twenty years or the millions of electric vehicle batteries, that would die every few years, and have to be buried. In reality, the utopian dream is not just delusional – it is insane.
As a matter of basic science, the absorption of a tiny amount of infrared radiation by increased CO2, cannot raise the temperature of the Earth.
Composition of the Atmosphere: The tropospheric atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, 0.4 to 4% water vapor, and several trace gases.
The largest trace gas is carbon dioxide at 0.041%, followed by methane at 0.0018%, and nitrous oxide at 0.0003%. The volume of atmospheric molecules is also expressed in terms of parts per million (ppm): nitrogen 780,000 ppm, oxygen 210,000 ppm, and argon 10,000 ppm.
Scientists have also speculated that water vapor constitutes something between 4,000 and 40,000 ppm, depending on time and location. By contrast, the trace gas CO2 has only 410 molecules per million (.041%); methane (CH4) has only a minuscule 1.8 molecules per million; and nitrous oxide (N2O) is only a barely detectable 1/3 molecule per million.
All atmospheric molecules create a blanket of heat that slows the loss of infrared radiation to space. The sun’s short-wave radiation passes through the troposphere generally unimpeded by nitrogen, oxygen, and argon molecules to the surface, which increases the kinetic motion (heat) of all impacted surface and atmospheric molecules.1
The increased molecular motion, in turn, increases full spectrum (blackbody) infrared radiation (IR) in all directions. All atmospheric molecules, including water vapor and CO2, take up the additional heat by conduction (contact), from both the surface and surrounding atmospheric molecules.
In other words, as all air molecules bump into the heated surfaces and each other, their kinetic motion (heat) and its attendant blackbody IR, are increased. Thus, all of these atmospheric molecules form a blanket of heat that, like a hot liquid in a thermos bottle, slows the exit of the IR to space and keeps the surface warm.
The Earth’s weather system then facilitates the never-ending cooling process. The continuous evaporation of water vapor from the oceans and land creates convection currents, wind, clouds, and precipitation (weather) that move the heated air away from the warm surface and, via convection, up to the colder regions of the atmosphere and ultimately to space.
At the top of the atmosphere, as the kinetic motion of all atmospheric molecules slows to zero, all of the associated blackbody IR is emitted to space in this continuous and eternal cooling process.
In addition to taking up the heat by conduction, water vapor, and trace gases also absorb “fingerprint” IR, i.e., certain wavelengths of the IR spectrum, and convert it to heat. While water vapor strongly absorbs up to 70% of the IR spectrum, CO2 weakly absorbs only 8%, principally at the 15-micron wavelength.
Thus, when a full spectrum IR wave impacts a CO2 molecule, that molecule absorbs only 8% and the other 92% either goes on to space or is partially absorbed by water vapor molecules.
Absorption of that fingerprint IR by a CO2 molecule slightly increases the molecule’s kinetic motion (heat) which also increases its blackbody IR. Some scientists believe that the simultaneous increase in the CO2 molecule’s blackbody IR may offset any increased heat created by the 8% absorption.
If there is, in fact, any net heat gain from the conversion, it is trivial. It is also clear that CO2 molecules do not “trap” any IR in the atmosphere. Instead, they simply convert the fingerprint IR into heat, i.e., slightly raising the kinetic motion of those molecules as the molecular heat is continuously streaming toward space.
The false science initially published by the IPCC and its computer model wizards has been disproven.
Most scientists believe that our recent warming, as the Earth is coming out of a Little Ice Age, is the result of constantly changing natural forces, e.g., the Sun, the Earth’s orbit, cosmic rays, Earth’s albedo, and volcanism, that are all beyond human control.
The IPCC and its computer model wizards, however, claim that the absorption of 8% fingerprint IR, by the minuscule 0.01% increase in CO2 molecules, is entirely responsible for the recent 1° Celsius increase in the temperature of the Earth.
In 2007, the IPCC displayed a chart in its 4th Assessment Report, prepared by Kenneth Trenberth, depicting the “Earth’s annual and global mean energy balance.”
That chart showed 324 watts per square meter of back radiation from greenhouse gases and clouds being absorbed by the surface.
In other words, the IPCC claimed that back radiation from the tiny 0.01% increase in CO2 molecules in the cooler atmosphere above was being absorbed by the warmer surface below to make it even warmer.
The IPCC’s back radiation conjecture, however, violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that “Heat cannot move from a cooler body to a warmer one.”
Accordingly, in 2009, the concept of back radiation from greenhouse gases heating the Earth was falsified by two distinguished German physicists who thoroughly disproved the IPCC’s imaginative conjecture.
The physicists also demonstrated that the computer climate models only pretend to solve unsolvable physical problems and exposed them as science fiction, stating that:
“To derive climate catastrophes from these computer games and to scare Mankind to death is a crime.”
See Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics, by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner, Int. J. Mod. Phys. B, Vol. 23, No. 3, (2009) and rebuttal in the same Volume at pp. 1333-59.
Since that time, no reputable scientist has even attempted to refute that falsification. To the contrary, tens of thousands of scientists have written papers, books, and signed statements and petitions rejecting the specious claims of the climate modelers that anthropogenic CO2, methane, or nitrous oxide have had any negative effect whatsoever on the Earth’s climate.
See, for example, Slaying the Sky Dragon, various authors (2011); Observations on ‘Back radiation’ During Daytime and Nighttime, by Professor Nasif Nahle, Principia Scientific International (2011); Refutation of the Greenhouse Effect Theory on a Thermodynamic and Hydrostatic Basis, by Alberto Miatello, Principia Scientific International (2012); Is No “Greenhouse Effect” Possible from the way that IPCC Define It?, by John Elliston, Principia Scientific International (2015); Role of Greenhouse Gases in Climate Change, by Martin Herzberg, Alan Siddons, and Hans Schreuder, Energy and Environment, Vol. 28, Issue 4 (2017); See also, the 2021 World Climate Declaration: There is No Climate Emergency (680 scientists); and, finally, www.PetitionProject.org (31,487 scientists).
The falsity of the back radiation concept is demonstrated by the well-known thermos or vacuum bottle. The hot coffee in a thermos, like the atmosphere, is surrounded by a vacuum. The vacuum enclosure prevents the heat, i.e., the kinetic motion of the hot coffee molecules from mixing with cooler molecules outside the vacuum bottle, as they do in an ordinary cup.
Therefore, the only way that the heat energy can escape the bottle is by radiation which travels through the vacuum at the speed of light. When the hot coffee is placed in the thermos, the molecules are vibrating at a high rate of speed and generate a lot of blackbody IR.
As the IR, generated by the moving molecules, gradually moves out through the vacuum, the motion of the molecules correspondingly slows down until eventually, the coffee is at the same temperature as everything else in the room.
The back radiation from each of the vibrating molecules in the thermos, obviously cannot, and does not, create additional heat in the container or the coffee would remain hot forever.
Similarly, the Earth, which is also surrounded by the vacuum of space, cannot be “further warmed” by radiation that already exists within its atmospheric system. Indeed, the cooler atmosphere above the surface will always be at a lower energy state than the surface that radiated it in the first place.
In 2021, the IPCC abandoned its back radiation conjecture, and adopted an equally invalid and unprovable conjecture, as the basis for its dire computer model predictions.
In 2021, the IPCC was ultimately forced to abandon its fallacious “back radiation” conjecture. In its place, the IPCC now claims that due to its improved knowledge of climate processes, “[T]he dominant role of humans in driving recent climate change is clear” and that:
The main human drivers of climate change are increases in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and of aerosols from burning fossil fuels, land use, and other sources. The greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation near the surface, warming the climate. See AR 6, SPM, FAQ 3.1.
The IPCC also claims to have determined that outgoing radiation since 1780, has been reduced by 2.74 watts per square meter, which is indicative of the warming. See AR 6, SPM 4.41. It then simply assumes that the entire reduction of that outgoing light was due to “human-caused radiant forcing.” In other words, the minuscule 0.01% increase in anthropogenic CO2 since 1780 has allegedly trapped “infrared radiation near the surface, warming the climate.”
That wholly unsupported conjecture, like the previous back radiation conjecture, is nothing more than illogical pseudoscientific computer model nonsense.
As shown earlier, all radiation that impacts either surface or atmospheric molecules is instantly converted into heat. Under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, heat, which is generating its own blackbody (full spectrum) IR, must move from the warm surface toward cold space.
All atmospheric molecules, including IR-absorbing gases, take up that heat by conduction as it moves toward space. Similarly, the 8% fingerprint IR absorbed by the minuscule 0.01% increase in CO2 molecules is also converted into heat.
No IR is “trapped” near the surface. Instead, that IR is simply converted into heat, which slightly raises the kinetic motion of the absorbing CO2 molecules themselves, as the heat is continuously streaming toward space.
Federal Agencies in the U. S., however, still claim that back radiation from trace gases is the root cause of our current warming period.
Federal agencies in the United States that run their impenetrable climate models, however, ignore the IPCC’s adoption of a new implausible conjecture and, to this day, still rely upon the falsified back radiation conjecture as the basis for their predictions.
For example, in July 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website “Climate Change Indicators: Climate Forcing,” still claims that “Greenhouse gases absorb energy that radiates upward from the Earth’s surface, re-emitting heat to the lower atmosphere and warming the Earth’s surface.” (emphasis added).
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a primary leader in the new AGW religion. Its current website also restates the same disproven back radiation conjecture.
See “Direct Observations Confirm That Humans Are Throwing Earth’s Energy Budget off Balance” (March 25, 2021):
Radiative energy enters Earth’s system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of the energy reflects off the Earth’s surface or atmosphere back into space. The rest gets absorbed, heats the planet, and then is emitted as thermal radiative energy the same way that black asphalt gets hot and radiates heat on a sunny day.
Eventually, this energy also heads toward space, but some of it gets reabsorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The absorbed energy may also be emitted back toward Earth, where it will warm the surface even more. (emphasis added).
NASA also claims that water vapor supercharges the initial warming by the trace gases. See “Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth’s Greenhouse Effect (February 8, 2022):
Increased water vapor in the atmosphere supercharges the warming caused by other greenhouse gases. It works like this: As greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane increase, Earth’s temperature rises in response. This increases evaporation from water and land areas. … The water vapor then absorbs heat radiated from Earth and prevents it from escaping out to space. This further warms the atmosphere, resulting in even more water vapor in the atmosphere. This is what scientists call a “positive feedback loop.” (emphasis added)
The above unscientific assertions by NASA may be recapitulated and critiqued as follows:
(1) NASA statement: Energy absorbed by trace gases may be emitted back toward the Earth where it will warm the surface even more. Critique: NASA completely ignores the falsification of its back-radiation conjecture.
It also fails to explain precisely how the tiny 0.01% increase in CO2 molecules since 1950, which absorb only 8% of the IR spectrum, could cause any measurable increase in the temperature of the entire Earth. That is because there has been no such measurement and there is no such valid scientific explanation.
(2) NASA statement: As greenhouse gasses increase, Earth’s temperature rises in response. Critique: There is no evidence whatsoever that increased trace gases have caused the Earth’s temperature to rise.
(3) NASA statement: More water vapor from increased temperature then absorbs more heat radiated from Earth and prevents it from escaping out to space. Critique: This conjecture is without a physical basis. First, water vapor molecules absorb fingerprint IR, not heat.
Second, absorption simply means that the absorbing molecule’s heat and blackbody radiation, which are already part of the atmosphere’s continuous stream of heat moving upwards to space, is slightly increased. Therefore, absorption of fingerprint IR by water vapor molecules prevents no heat from escaping to space.
(4) NASA statement: The heat that cannot escape then further warms the atmosphere. Critique: No heat is prevented from escaping. Moreover, heat that is already in the atmosphere cannot “further warm the atmosphere.” That is a physical impossibility.
(5) NASA statement: The increased warming results in increased water vapor in a positive feedback loop. Critique: The authors fail to comprehend that they have described an impossible perpetual motion machine whereby internal heat creates more water vapor, which creates more internal heat, and so on.
The Bottom Line.
Although the IPCC has abandoned its former back-radiation conjecture in favor of an equally invalid conjecture, government agencies like NASA still ignore the fact that the back-radiation conjecture has been conclusively falsified and continue to advance it as the sole basis for their apocalyptic predictions.
Moreover, because total or average global volumes of water vapor in the atmosphere are unknowable, NASA also apparently feels free to spout the pseudoscientific conjecture about water vapor feedback.
Unlike temperature, volumes of water vapor cannot be averaged on a global basis because water vapor is constantly changing in all parts of the World, from vapor to clouds to rain, snow, ice, water, and back again.
Therefore, the climate modelers have no scientific basis whatsoever for claiming that global water vapor volume is either increasing or decreasing – and particularly, not because of increased CO2 and other trace gases.
They must, however, enter some total volume figures for the unmeasurable water vapor and clouds into their inscrutable computer models. Any such figures are contrived and destroy any scientific validity the climate model predictions might otherwise have had.
As Eric Hoffer observed, “If a [mass movement] doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague: and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable.”
That perfectly describes the false, unintelligible, and unverifiable AGW religious mass movement doctrine that evil man-made greenhouse gases, rather than natural forces, are solely responsible for the slight warming period the Earth is currently experiencing, as it comes out of a little ice age.
Accordingly, as U.S. Senator James Inhofe demonstrates in his recent book, the false AWG religion is, indeed, the Greatest Hoax of modern times.
Footnote:
- The sun’s radiation also directly heats several thin atmospheric layers above the troposphere called the thermosphere and the ozone layer. The thinly dispersed nitrogen, oxygen, helium, and ozone molecules in those upper layers absorb x-ray and ultraviolet light directly from the Sun and convert it into harmless heat, thereby preventing most of that radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface, where it can harm the human body.
Don Crockett served the U.S. Department of Energy as an attorney for more than 30 years. During that time, he dealt with many technical and scientific issues such as nuclear waste and the hypothesis that man-made CO2 is causing the Earth’s current warming period.
This nonsense has been dragging on for decades. I see that Greta Thunberg has deleted a five year old tweet that the ice at the North Pole would have all melted by 2023.
It is not just Greta who was deluded, it is everyone on the planet that has noticed that none of these dire predictions have any basis in reality! Atmospheric CO2 has a negligible effect on climate.
Don,
The story of the greenhouse gas warming has always been a narrative based on a false conjecture that informs the design of a bogus climate model.
When you dig into the weeds you find that the field is littered with false assumptions.
For example: That the annual surface insolation flux intercepted by the lit face of the planet is divided by 4. The rationale for this error is that the surface area of the planet is four times the cross-sectional area of the planet’s disk, and because all of the intercepted insolation energy is lost from the surface of the planet, the 1 to 4 geometric ratio applies. By this means night is removed from the foundational climate science model, a clear absurdity. Therefore, the model calculation starts with a solar power reduction of divide by 4 that is invalid making the power of the Sun too weak to heat the Earth, rather than the obviously correct divide by 2 surface area ratio of the lit hemisphere.
The next issue is the role of atmospheric thermal radiant opacity.
Climate Science takes as its premise that all the energy in the post-albedo insolation flux is converted to thermal radiant energy. While this premise is valid it requires that all of the post-albedo surface reflectance is captured by the opacity of the atmosphere. The point here is that by using the Bond Albedo as a pre-filter that measures the solar flux quantity of planetary reflectance that returns to space, the post albedo surface flux must therefore be fully absorbed by the climate system.
Now the planet is observed from space to be a thermal black body with a global emittance of 1. However, the global surface emittance is less than 1 (the surface is a grey body) so Kirchhoff’s Law applies and all of the post albedo surface reflectance must be absorbed by the atmosphere, otherwise the external thermal blackbody status of the planet could not be achieved. Therefore, the atmosphere must already be fully opaque to post albedo radiation.
There are only two parameters that can impact the climate. These are variations in the planetary Bond Albedo, and variations in the Atmospheric Window. Atmospheric opacity as determined by greenhouse gas content is already fully maximised.
You guys are criminals, liars, ignorant and scum of society! Conspiracy theories lunatics.
Whoa, Reinaldo! Did you read the entire post? Did you understand it?Can’t handle the truth? Don Crockett explains why there will be no climate hell in our future , and you lose your marbles? You should be relieved but instead you’re agitated.
And the High priest’s of Climate Change demand the Sacrifice of our Soventry to appease their false gods of Climate Change
When such common sense is written by Don Crockett, I despair that we are so misled by the power elites that we blindly put our trust in. Accountability and the need for life changing decisions, justified scientifically as well as morally, should have to be made to an independent authority. This should not be necessary, but is because the public is being hoodwinked and impoverished unnecessarily. Don Crockett’s views are not only supported by the science but also by many highly qualified academics who dare put their heads above the parapet