Reading discussions on social media I was struck by how alarmed the general public is by a veritable tsunami of authoritarian measures connected to combatting climate change, driving “sustainability” and tackling the “environmental emergency”. But I was struck also by general confusion over basic issues. Anti-car measures such as clean air zones (CAZ) and concerns over nitrous oxides and particulates (equally alarmist and mostly manipulative nonsense) were confused with issues around tree-planting and (bee) colony die off. Being confused and sufficiently poorly armed with facts is a recipe for compliance.

Of course, in part, keeping the public confused and alarmed at the same time suits some interested parties’ agendas. The more complicated the issue, the more confused the debate, the more there is scope for a growing clerisy of experts to interpret “the science”. It leaves them free to cherry pick that which suits their arguments (or genuine beliefs) and ultimately when ordinary people are overwhelmed to argue, “Don’t worry. Just do as we say.”

It is important to understand and remember that this not about “carbon”. Alarmists have not chosen the words and phrases they use at random. So, although the subject of the alarm is actually the trace gas carbon dioxide, alarmists choose to say “carbon” because this allows the conflation of pollution and climate in the public’s mind. Talk of a dirty, black substance as opposed to a colourless, innocuous gas that plants use to grow, allows for the demonisation of a gas that is essential to all life on earth.

Carbon is an element. Elements are the basic building blocks of all substances. Elements can differ widely in their properties and sometimes even different forms of the same element can look and act vastly differently.

Elements can be combined in an infinite number of ways and the products of the element combinations can differ as vastly from each other as they do from the elements that form them. So, terms are important. Calling carbon dioxide “carbon” makes as little sense as calling table salt chlorine. In this example, table salt (NaCl) is a compound of chlorine, a poisonous green gas used in the trenches, and sodium, a metal which will explode if it comes into contact water. But table salt (NaCl) is innocuous. In fact we eat it.

This is carbon. Black coal.

So are these diamonds. They are pure carbon but differ from coal as much as table salt does from chlorine gas.

These are the white cliffs of Dover. They are also composed of a carbon compound, chalk. Chalk’s chemical name is calcium carbonate. It is a compound of carbon, oxygen and calcium.

This is calcium carbonate too, the Statue of David. So, this is a carbon compound.

So is this coral. Again, it is calcium carbonate (CaCO3).

And so are these pearls … again calcium carbonate (CaCO3). This time in a crystalline structure.

Although these are all carbon-based compounds, none of these are carbon dioxide any more than “carbon” is.

Molecules have chemical properties, but they also have physical properties. So, the main and primal “concern” for climate alarmists surrounds the production of CO2, a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels. (I’m going to have to leave aside entirely the obvious fact that there are many other industrial processes unconnected to the burning of fossil fuels which also create CO2 as a direct by-product. E.g., hydrogen manufacture, silicon manufacture, cement and fertilisers.)

An example of the process of burning fossil fuels is the burning of petrol in a car’s engine. Petrol is mostly octane, a chemical which consists of a long chain carbon molecule with eight carbon atoms.

2 C8H18 + 25 O2 —> 16 CO2 + 18 H2O

In this equation which shows the process, two of petrol combines with 25 of oxygen (from the air) and outputs a large volume of carbon dioxide and, surprisingly to most, a similar quantity of water.

Carbon dioxide is only one of the so-called greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses are greenhouse gasses because they have a particular shape that allows them to absorb various wavebands of light. Carbon dioxide has this shape and so too does methane.

All of the following molecules also have the correct shape to be a greenhouse gas. They include water which as vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. (This fact is always ignored)

All greenhouse gasses are such because they all have the potential to absorb radiation (light) in the infra-red spectrum. They do this by having a resonant frequency which matches various wavelengths of light, like a guitar string. Carbon dioxide can vibrate in various ways. This video illustrates these vibrational modes.

Carbon Dioxide can absorb light in three infrared wavelength bands 2338cm, 1298cm and 581cm.

It was the Swedish physicist Svante August Arrhenius, a distant relative of Greta Thunberg, who used principles of physical chemistry to estimate the extent to which atmospheric carbon dioxide could increase Earth’s surface temperature. He proposed that light from the sun would hit the earth and then be re-emitted in a different wavelength as infrared radiation. This radiation having been met no barrier as sunlight would be trapped by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on its return journey. The infrared radiation would, some of it, be re-reflected back at the Earth further increasing the temperature.

Arrhenius thought that the burning of fossil was a good thing and in his 1908 book Worlds in the Making, directed at a general audience, he suggested that the human emission of CO2 from fossil fuels would be needed to prevent the world from entering a new ice age, and that a warmer earth would feed the rapidly increasing population.

Climate alarmists like to refer to the “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse gasses” as this simplifies and cements the idea in the public’s mind. We can see quite clearly, though, that this hypothesis bears no relation to real greenhouses. Real greenhouses warm up because the warm air from the ground, warmed by the sun rises in the greenhouse and is trapped by the greenhouse roof. It is a convective effect.

The atmosphere has no roof. The so-called greenhouse effect is, if it is correct, a radiative effect which influences the energy budget of the Earth (how much sunlight comes in and how much goes out). So, it is unrelated to greenhouses.


Critiques of the GHG hypothesis

Despite media and political propaganda that says 97% of scientists “agree”, there is no such agreement. This is an invention of a climate activist and sometimes cartoonist John Cooke. It has been seized on by media, politicians and vested interests.

Of those that agree the hypothesis of greenhouse gasses, there is wide speculation and disagreement on the degree that CO2 warms the Earth and also whether such warming is problematic, let alone catastrophic. See Lomberg, Shellenberger, Moore, Epstein.

Many physicists do not agree the greenhouse gas hypothesis at all, stating that the hypothesis contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics in that a colder object cannot warm a hotter one. They reject the premise of “back radiation” entirely.

Others point out that models for the “radiative budget” universally show the incoming radiation spread over the entire Earth at once. They argue that this quantity should be halved reflecting the true geometry of the Earth as a sphere not as a flat surface. To do otherwise means that there is a shortfall in warming which then only be explained away by the GHG back-warming. I must admit I have not seen a diagram where the geometry of the earth IS treated as a sphere.

Still others argue that the radiative process can be examined in terms of “windows”. If a GHG is blocking radiation at a particular wavelength, increasing the quantity of GHG has little effect. They point out also, that water vapour, itself a GHG, and one we have absolutely no control over, overlaps the CO2 windows. It is argued that the majority of GHG effect occurs in the first 100 parts per million (ppm). We are currently at 400ppm and so now in a safe zone.

A good way of illustrating this critique, is to take the example of painting a wall red. The first coat makes the wall red. The second may deepen the colour and fill in gaps. But third and fourth coats have little effect. This is by no means a trivial illustration, as it is valid description of a “radiative effect” and holds more water than a greenhouse model.

Computer simulations are used to encapsulate the theories of climate scientists as to how warming is affected by CO2 and other factors. But models can only be built on the assumption that the processes at play are understood. If those assumptions are wrong the models will not produce the correct results. Moreover, if they do produce results that agree with observations this is not evidence of correct understanding.

In fact, models’ results vary widely.

More tellingly, models can be parametrised to adjust the figures so that they can be made to agree with past history (so-called hindcasting). Doing this allows model makers to “discover” and adjust the correct relative influences of positive and negative drivers (those factors that warm and those that cool) so that the models agree with the temperature history. But when those parameterised models are allowed to run forward into the future they diverge even more wildly.

Other critiques of GHG theory and the effect of CO2 come from geologists who point out that CO2 levels have been far higher in the past (4000 ppm); that higher levels have coincided with a huge increase in diversity and variety of plants and animals and that there is no demonstrable correlation of CO2 and temperature in the geologic record.

Other critics point out that there IS a correlation, and that warming can be demonstrated to increase CO2 concentrations in the air and not the reverse. CO2 is driven out of a warming ocean just as cold beer will hold more CO2 and warm beer quickly goes flat.

Alarmists point out that CO2 levels have risen (in recent history this is indisputable) and that temperatures have risen too in line with this. This is not true. In the huge industrialisation that followed World War Two temperatures fell. But even accepting the premise any scientist will tell you that correlation is not evidence for causation. There is in fact no material evidence nor experiment that confirms any such relationship.

Here are some examples of correction that I think everyone would agree does not evidence causation:

https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Conclusions

The GHG hypothesis is just one tiny part of the understanding of weather and climate, but climate alarmists’ theories are hotly contested even in just this one tiny area. It seems irrational to me that anyone can think that there is a single driver for climate and that CO2 is a control knob on the weather.

Think about it. It is being argued that we have influenced the weather by burning fossil fuels and releasing CO2. Even if we accept this, the idea that we can best mitigate those effects and put everything right by putting the process into reverse or that this is the best use of our resources is nothing short of laughable.

Critics of my explanation will argue that this is a simplistic view of climate, and it is. My contribution here is designed to explore only one part of the alarmist arguments and show exactly this: that the climate is complex and multifaceted and not susceptible to simplistic explanations of causation. Weather and climate are the result of dynamic interactions between two turbulent, moving fluids (the air and the sea) and their further interactions with ice and land masses. Such a system is not only complex, but also chaotic. Of the climate the IPCC says:

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.PDF

BTW – If you are interested in a good explanation of the interactions of turbulent fluids forming the climate you could watch the GWPF (Global Warming Policy Foundation) Annual Lecture.