Climate Change - A Quick Check
Since the 1990s we’ve been told that catastrophic climate change is happening because of carbon dioxide. Climate science has advanced in leaps and bounds. Scientists are making discoveries that question the greenhouse gases as the sole cause and even the leading cause of climate change. This website will show you with some of those scientific discoveries. It’s your investigator. You’re the judge. The decision is yours.
IS THE CLIMATE REALLY CHANGING ? NASA defines climate change as a period of at least 30 years. Weather is what changes from year to year. The Sahara Desert wasn’t a desert 4,500 years ago. The light yellow area was grassland, the light green area was mixed woodland and grassland. The Fertile Crescent was cooler and greener than today’s arid land.
Courtesy of National Geographic, Volume 246.
A TIME LINE OF TEMPERATURE AND CARBON DIOXIDE CHANGE
10,000 years ago the world was 2 C degrees (3.8 F) hotter than it is today and stayed hotter for the next 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide rose from 240 to 260 parts per million of air (ppm).
6,000 years ago the temperature dropped to what we have today and stayed that way for the next 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide rose to 280 ppm.
2,000 years ago the temperature began a 1,500 year decline to the start of the Little Ice Age 550 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels stayed at 280 ppm.
275 years ago carbon dioxide began to rise. Temperature began to rise 80 years later. That was the first time in 10,000 years that temperature and carbon dioxide moved in the same direction at the same time.
Dr. Vinther’s 12,000 Year Graph of six Greenland ice cores begins 11,500 years ago emerging from the frigid Younger Dryas years. Zero on the vertical temperature axis is the 1880 to 1960 CE average temperature. The 2000 CE temperature at the right side of the graph is 1 C degree higher than that 80 year average still but 1.5 C degrees lower than the period shown as 8000 to 4000 BCE.
Dr. Rosenthal’s 12,000 Year Graph of the tropical Makassar Straight temperatures (black line) is overlaid on Dr. Vinther’s graph showing that changes in the Arctic and Tropics were global, not regional like the Medieval Warm.
Both graphs show the 12,000 year time line as 2,000 CE to 10,000 BCE.
The earlier temperature lines show the average temperature for a century.
The temperature at the zero point on the time line changes 2.5 C (4.5 F) century from one century to the next which happens several time along the time line.
Perhaps our current rise of 1.5 C since 1800 isn’t historically exceptional.
500 MILLION YEARS of accurate climate history shows that for most of the last 600 million years global temperatures were much hotter than today. The Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica were ice free (68 F, 21 C) most of the time. Today’s temperature at the bottom right side of the graph, (59 F, 15 C), is far below the 150 million year average. The climate is always changing in geological time but usually creeping in our perspective of time.
THE CORRELATION FALLACY
Comparing the movement of lines on any graph only suggests a possibility. Mistaking lines on a graph as proof of anything is called the Correlation Fallacy, a fundamental error made by all of those who wanted so badly to find the cause of climate change that they mistook the lines on this graph as proof of carbon dioxide was causing climate change.
500 million year graph shows temperature and carbon dioxide moving independently which strongly suggests carbon dioxide does not cause temperature change. Yet the graph below shows temperature and carbon dioxide moving together. Neither is a mistake. The graph of the ice ages is highly compressed. Analysis of the underlying data shows that carbon dioxide followed temperature by about 800 years. It’s impossible to see only 800 years in a graph this highly compressed. This also applies to the graph in An Inconvenient Truth.
National Climate Data Center, a division of NOAA
POPULATION An example of the Correlation Fallacy is a graph showing 200 years of temperature change and population growth which increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000 and 8.1 billion in 2024 (data by DeepSeek). The graph is nearly identical to a 200 year graph of temperature change and carbon dioxide increase. Logic requires that those who believe the temperature-carbon dioxide graph is proof carbon dioxide causing climate change must also believe the temperature-population graph proves population growth is equally responsible for climate change.
Population & Temperature, created by CoPilot for this Website.
Is that really so far fetched? Consider the vast amount of energy required to support civilizations.
IS CLIMATE CHANGE REALLY CATASTROPHIC ?
Earth’s atmospheric temperature has risen 1.5 C degrees (2.7 F) since 1800. Yet the Vinther and Rosenthal’s graphs together with the Time Line Data that we are still below the average temperature of the last 10,000 years. The average century temperatures between 10,000 to 6,000 years ago were a full degree Celsius higher than today. Because century temperatures are averages, there were decades in those centuries when the temperature was even higher.
While the atmospheric temperature has risen 1.5 C, the upper level ocean temperature (200m, 660 ft) has risen 1 degree C since 1800. The vast, deeper ocean (3,800m, 12,000 ft) has stayed about 4 C (39 F). Dr. Lovelock said: “The ocean’s heat capacity is about 1,000 times greater than that of the land and atmosphere”. Further gradual global warming may happen and is even likely but the evidence shows that catastrophic global warming is highly unlikely.
Melting Ice and Ocean Levels Melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic ice shelves cannot raise the sea level because they are floating ice and floating ice is simply water in a different form. As low altitude mountain glaciers melt, sea level is predicted to rise about an inch (2.5 cm) per decade. Scientists also say we are a long way (9 C, 17.4 F) from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melting.
Plants Carbon dioxide advocates would have us believe we are approaching catastrophic levels of carbon dioxide in the air yet carbon dioxide is for plants what oxygen is for us. When carbon dioxide levels during the ice ages plunged to 180 parts per million (ppm) it was starvation level for plants. The carbon dioxide Death Zone for plants is 150 ppm.
Plants thrive in higher levels of carbon dioxide. Their ideal level is four times higher than today’s so-called catastrophic level of 420 ppm. Many greenhouses operate at levels carbon dioxide two to three times higher than 420 ppm. Workers do not require special breathing apparatus to work those enriched carbon dioxide environments. Even levels of 2,000 ppm do not harm people. Source Article
Rising levels of carbon dioxide make plants more productive which is helping feed our ever increasing global population. We also benefit by the more productive plants producing more oxygen. “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/
The Jurassic Period when dinosaurs roamed the earth were four to seven times higher than today as shown in the graph above. The fossil records show that dinosaurs thrived. Plants thrived. Coral, clams and shell fish thrived. The oceans did not become acidic because of higher temperatures and the much higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
HOW DID WE COME TO BELIEVE CARBON DIOXIDE IS CAUSING CLIMATE CHANGE ?
The idea was proposed in 1895 but gained little traction until the late 1980s when preliminary data of the Greenland and Antarctic ice core data became available. The highly compressed graphs appeared to show carbon dioxide and temperature changing together. Climate scientists hadn’t been able to figure out what was causing climate change. The graphs looked like the answer. As well as making the Correlation Fallacy mistake, no one was concerned that Ice Ages are a unique time of highly unusual climate with half of the northern hemisphere completely frozen. It got worse.
Former United States Vice President Al Gore compounded the mistake by presenting the data as a graph in his speaking tour and book, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), advocating carbon dioxide as the cause of climate change. The media jumped on it. Wide spread skepticism swung to public acceptance.
Contrary to what the “100% of climate scientists agree” advocates claim, many climate scientists no longer agree. A review of post 2005 climate science research papers available on google.scholar.com shows that many climate scientists believe that atmospheric carbon dioxide is not the dominant factor in climate change. Some even question whether it’s involved at all. An article examining the “100% of climate scientists agree” claim will be available shortly.
Dr. Lovelock, a highly respected scientist and a leader of the early carbon dioxide advocates, did something in 2014 scientists rarely do. He reversed his position and said it was a mistake to say carbon dioxide controls temperature. “We're no longer in a position to say that just because carbon dioxide rises … the temperature will rise likewise.” (James Ephraim Lovelock chief scientist at MI5 for two decades.)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/no-longer-the-darling-of-the-green-movement-lovelock-explains-himself/article19571394 (Nelles interview)
Climate scientists who have published statistical research on the Antarctic ice cores since 2000 agree.
“Temperature rises first, followed by an increase in atmospheric CO2.”
Floridies: Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide Through Sciences
“CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 +/- 200 years”.
Caillon: Science 2003;299(5613):1728–31
How could Dr. Lovelock and so many climate scientists have gotten it wrong in the 1990s? As Dr. Lovelock went on to say in that article: “We were carried away by the (correlation) between the ice cores of Antarctica.”
HOW DO THE GREENHOUSE GASES HEAT THE ATMOSPHERE ?
Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are only half of the heating equation. They are what gets heated. How they get heated is by a process called Radiative Forcing. The short explanation is that some of the sun’s long wave energy is reflected from the earth’s surface heating carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases as it works its way out of the atmosphere at the speed of light. Beyond this point, the process is immensely complex and. It is interesting to note that there are three types of greenhouse gases: those that cool the air, those that heat the air and water which does both. Water vapor as cloud blocks solar energy while water vapor as humidity absorbs energy. There is between 10 and 40 times more humidity in the air than all of the other atmospheric greenhouses gases put together. More about radiative forcing is available in the Reality Check version of this article.
Graph by Frank van Mierlo : PW is a petawatt, one billion million watts of energy
DOES RADIATIVE FORCING CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE
While radiative forcing is absolutely a factor in weather, however, climate change and weather are very different things. According to NASA, the sun‘s power is constant and the greenhouse gases increase slightly year to year. Logic requires that constant solar energy combined with increasing greenhouse gases must show a matching yearly temperature increase. But it doesn’t. Temperature graphs going back hundreds of years to hundreds of millions of years show that whether by year, decade, century or millennia temperature does not carry over consistently. Without consistency, radiative forcing of greenhouse gases cannot be the sole cause nor even the main cause, it can only be one of multiple causes of climate change. This uncomfortable reality questions how much impact reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases can have on lowering the world’s temperature.
FEEDBACK LOOPS Scientists know about some of nature’s loops and there are likely other loops yet to be discovered. One well known loop is rising ocean temperature causes more evaporation which causes more cloud cover and less radiative forcing. Less radiative forcing lowers ocean temperatures causing less evaporation and less cloud cover. And so the multiyear loop continues. Another example is the El Nino - La Nina. There are many more.
THE NEW REALITY OF CLIMATE SCIENCE
6,000 to 10,000 years ago our planet was a full degree Celsius (1.8 F) hotter than it is today (2020 - 2025)
Advances in ice core sampling technology show that temperature leads carbon dioxide by 800 years, +/- 200 years.
Warming due to radiative forcing should increase every year with the increases in GHGs.
Warming does not carry forward from year to year by decade, century or millennia.Radiative forcing is a major factor of weather.
Radiative forcing’s role in climate change is uncertain.
RECENT CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOVERIES
Nature has been changing the climate since the world began without any help from mankind’s greenhouse gases. How does it do that?
EARTH’S ORBIT Dr. Milutin Milankovitch proposed a ground breaking theory in three parts:
Orbital Eccentricity: Earth’s orbit around the sun changes from round (warmer) to oval (cooler) in 100,000 year cycles. Earth is in the warming phase.
Axial Obliquity: How far the earth tilts toward and away from the sun between summer and winter varies in 41,000 year cycles. Earth is in the warming phase.
Axial Precession: The earth also leans like a wobbling top as it tilts toward and away from the sun in a 26,000 year circle. It’s currently warming the southern hemisphere more in its summer than the northern hemisphere in its summer. It’s about to reverse and give more summer warmth to the northern hemisphere. Images courtesy of NASA in collaboration with Florida Atlantic University.
Highly accurate technology and computing power have confirmed Dr. Milankovic’s theories. Climate scientists have noticed a loose correlation between cooling alignments and the ice ages of the last two and a half million years. Research is investigating how much these three factors can heat and cool earth’s climate. Yet the Milankovic Cycles have been in motion for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years. Why has earth’s climate been so much cooler for the last two and a half million years?
CASSIOPEIA
Recent astrophysics research found a star, HD 7977, of the Cassiopeia Constellation passed close enough to our solar system 2.8 million years ago to disturb the orbits of our giant outer planets. Their orbital wobbles in turn disturbed earth’s orbit and occurred shortly before the start of the current progression of ice ages and interglacial warm periods (including the one we live in). Did earth’s orbit return to its pre-Cassiopea fly-pass pattern or has our orbit been permanently affected?
EARTH’S MAGNETIC POLES
Another interesting relationship is the correlation between climate change and the movement of earth’s magnetic north pole. In 200 AD (red dot upper left) earth’s magnetic north pole was located on the coast of Siberia. The middle east was referred to as The Fertile Crescent, then a green and temperate region. By 750 AD the magnetic north pole had moved to the northern tip of Canada’s Baffin Island. The middle east had become hotter and dryer. In 1,000 AD the magnetic north pole was at the geographic north pole. Europe and some other parts of the world were experiencing the Medieval Warm. By 1,500 the magnetic north pole was in the Arctic Ocean slowly migrating to Canada’s northern coast. The Little Ice Age began. The magnetic north pole stayed near Canada’s north shore until fifty years ago when it began to move rapidly north and west toward Siberia. Now it’s closer to Siberia than Canada again and the world is warming.
Researchgate.net, Public Domain Each dot represents a 50 yr. progression.
Is this correlation between climate change and pole movement just a coincidence or is it suggesting a real possibility? “Analysis of the movement of the Earth's magnetic poles over the last 105 years demonstrates strong correlations between the position of the north magnetic, and geomagnetic poles …. Although these correlations are surprising, a statistical analysis shows there is a less than one percent chance they are random …” (A. K. Kerton, 2009) Source Article
While it is highly likely that the movement of earth’s magnetic poles are contributing to climate change, how is that possible since air is not attracted to magnetism? One possibility is that while water is attracted to static electricity, water is repelled by magnetism. Could the higher density of water in atmospheric rivers and hurricanes be enough for them to be affected, even slightly, by the movement of earth’s magnetic poles? Could the differences in density due to temperature layers and salinity concentrations be enough, even slightly, to affect ocean currents? The possibility is being studied.
GRAVITY WAVES
Recent research found that the movement of earth’s magnetic poles is causing gravity waves which affect earth’s very high altitude magnetic radiation shield. That in turn affects air currents in the earth’s upper atmosphere. Other researchers found that changes to the magnetic radiation shield affected lower levels of the atmosphere, the stratosphere and the troposphere, which is where our weather happens.
THE SUN
Yet if everything currently known about climate change conspired to reach its maximum cold phase at the same time, it still wouldn’t be cold enough to explain the abrupt 1,200 year long plunge back to the near ice age temperatures during the Younger Dryas (12,700 to 11,500 years ago). What caused that abrupt plunge and equally fast recovery? Could it happen again? The simplest explanation is the sun. We’ve always been told the sun’s strength doesn’t change. It might be time to rethink that.
It’s been known for centuries that the sun’s north and south poles reverse like clockwork every eleven years. When they reverse there is a sharp rise in sun spot (solar storm) activity as shown in the even march of the blue spikes. The black line shows the moving average number of sun spots. During the Maunder Minimum it flat-lined which coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age. The Dalton Minimum also had significantly fewer sun spots and was the last cold phase of the Little Ice Age. Is the drop in temperature and sun spots a coincidence ?
“The correlation between the sun’s strength and temperature for 660 years indicates a 98% probability that the Little Ice Age was caused by variations in the sun’s strength. If the period is limited to 1650 to 1890, the probability increases to 99.99%.”
(Dr. W.K. Schmutz) Source Article
COAL - The Great Air Polluter
How likely is it that global CO2 levels will be reduced? Earth’s roughly 1,700 active volcanoes give off about 50% of the world’s annual carbon dioxide input. Of the contributions by major nations, India has said it will not be able to achieve its carbon emission targets until 2070. India needs a lot more electrical power for its billion plus people. Clean power is expensive, more coal plants and their emissions are India’s reality. Until recently, the U.S. had spoken volumes by its silence on decommissioning coal power plants. The U.S. may not build more coal plants but neither are they hurrying to decommission any either. The recently announced G7 treaty commitment to install emission scrubbers by 2034 may or may not happen in the United States.
According to the International Energy Agency, China burns over half of the world’s coal. A New York Times International article April 7th, 2024 raised that level to 66% of the coal burned in the world. China is building coal fired power plants in Afghanistan. And while China talks about going green, the reality is quite different as detailed in an article by respected journalist Eric Reguly.
“China approved 10 gigawatts of new coal plants in the first quarter of this year, after approving 100 gigawatts in 2022 – the equivalent of 100 large plants. The capacity of the plants under construction last year was six times that of the rest of the world. China, building coal burners with alacrity, has yet to state credibly how it will achieve net zero 37 years from now even as its emissions keep rising. At some point, the West will ask: Why are we punishing our economies to achieve net zero when China, the biggest emitter, is not ?”
The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition), 12 Aug 2023, Eric Reguly
Coal burning is the leading hydro carbon contributor to air pollution. Per unit of energy, coal gives off twice the amount of carbon dioxide as oil plus a horde of toxic gases. Coal gives off four times the amount of carbon dioxide as natural gas which gives off even fewer pollutants than oil. The United Nations says coal’s air pollution is a major contributor to the death millions of people every year and causes respiratory distress to many millions more.
CLOSING NOTES
We have had 450 years of very slow climate change causing generation after generation to believe the climate doesn’t change. Now we see it changing. Research since 2005 has led many climate scientists to believe carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are not the sole cause of climate change and perhaps not the dominate cause of climate change. They recognize that the forces of nature are calling the shots as they always have long before mankind and our gases, and that the forces of nature are now in a warming phase. Yet politicians and the green industry are fixated on just 200 years of earth’s climate history and are deeply committed to the status quo. Will we continue with the outdated 1990s belief that the greenhouse gases are the cause of climate change or will we look at the evidence and turn the trillions of dollars intended to reduce the greenhouse gases into readying the world for the constant reality of climate change?
A fuller explanation of all topic will be provided in the Reality Check version of this page soon.
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