WEBCommentary Editor

Author: Bob Webster
Date:  September 12, 2007

Topic category:  Other/General

Climate Change Clarity
Global Warming is NOT caused by burning fossil fuel

As reported by Michael Asher in his blog of August 24, 2007, "Researchers on three different continents agree; CO2 is not the devil we once thought." Michael might have written, "... we were once led to believe." The three studies to which Asher refers are:

Basically, these studies conclude that, as David C. Archibald has maintained for some time, there is a limit to the heat retention capacity of carbon dioxide no matter how much is added to the atmosphere!

To explain the limitations of carbon dioxide it is important to understand that CO2 is a barrier to only a certain range of infrared radiation and there is a limit to how much CO2 is needed to block all of the infrared radiation it has the capacity to trap. Once that level of CO2 is substantially reached in the atmosphere, additional CO2 will contribute little or nothing. As it turns out, according to Archibald, the first 20 ppm of atmospheric CO2 provide as much greenhouse heat retention as the next 400 ppm combined!

Dr. Tim Ball, a climatologist, explains CO2's limitation with this analogy: "The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint."

Another analogy comes to mind. Suppose you had a parrot with a four-inch girth and you wanted to cage the parrot. If you built a cage with 12-inch openings, you're parrot could easily escape the cage (though it would have to avoid cage wires). So you halve the sides of openings to six inches. Your parrot could still escape, though not as easily as it would need to avoid more cage wires. So you further reduce cage openings by halving the sides again to just three inches. At this point, your parrot could no longer escape the cage since his four-inch girth could not manage the three-inch cage openings. Now, no matter how many times you continue to halve the cage openings, your parrot will still not be able to escape. So further reductions in the size of the cage openings will do nothing to change the status quo once you're parrot is unable to escape.

In this analogy, the parrot is heat at a narrow frequency in the infrared spectrum that carbon dioxide can block. Just as the parrot tries to escape, this radiating heat tries to escape from Earth. The cage openings represent the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As atmospheric CO2 increases (as cage openings are reduced), a point is reached fairly quickly where the heat retention capacity of carbon dioxide is substantially achieved (cage openings are too small for the parrot to escape).

Just as with the parrot, regardless of how much additional CO2 is added to the atmosphere, no meaningful additional heating is achieved once the capacity of CO2 to retain heat has been saturated.

According to Archibald, the first 20 ppm of atmospheric CO2 has the heat retention capacity of the next 400 ppm combined! Current studies support this view and explain how the Earth could have experienced one of the coldest ice ages in its history (with oceans frozen to the equator) when atmospheric CO2 was well more than ten times higher than it is today.

An opinion piece by Syun-Ichi Akasofu in the September 12 Wall Stree Journal, Climate Corrections contains the following statement:

Scientists have no clear knowledge of the cause of the Little Ice Age and of the subsequent rebound; or of the Big Ice Age; or of a warm period when the Arctic Ocean had no ice; or of the medieval warming period. In fact, IPCC scientists do not understand the causes of the rapid increase of temperature from 1910 to 1945; or the decrease from 1945 to 1975, when CO2 levels were rising. Without understanding these recent changes, it is premature for the IPCC to jump to the conclusion that CO2 is the main cause of the last 30 years of global warming.
These points are well worth considering together with the large body of recent science that has completely refuted the false theory of human-caused climate change being promoted by the IPCC and Al Gore.

Wouldn't it be a costly shame to allow politicians to squander much-needed resources (e.g., for highway and bridge infrastructure) on foolhardy schemes aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions when such reductions cannot possibly produce any benefits?

Believing humans can cause significant climate change is akin to worshiping at the altar of false gods. Humans are powerless to alter climate and no amount of false prophesies can change that.

Bob Webster
WEBCommentary (Editor, Publisher)


Biography - Bob Webster

Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.

A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.


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