Climate Change - A Reality Check
Part 1 : Climate Change Science Of The 1990s Revisited
Most of us were skeptical about climate change in the 1990s and even more so about it being caused by carbon dioxide in the air. How did we come to believe atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing climate change? A few climate scientists had been advocating it for decades but were largely ignored until the data from the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores was published in the early 1990s. Many climate scientists jumped on board. Al Gore championed it with his 2006 book An Inconvenient Truth and speaking tour. The media covered it and politicians soon followed.
Now the climate really does appear to be changing and many have accepted the mantra that carbon dioxide is the cause. At the turn of the century there was no on-line shopping and no social media. That’s come a long way in a short time. Climate science has come a long way too. It’s time to take a fresh look at what climate scientists are saying now about climate change.
We assume earth’s climate has been stable for a long time, probably since the last great ice age began to melt about 20,000 years ago - it’s not true.
11,500 years ago earth’s temperature shot upward 12 degrees Celsius (22 F) after the Younger Dryas, the final, frigid 1,200 year plunge to ice age temperatures during the 8,500 year transition from the last great ice age. Carbon dioxide followed temperature rising from 240 to 260 parts per million (ppm)
10,000 years ago the world was 2 to 4 degrees C (3.8 - 7.2 F) hotter than it is today and stayed hotter for the next 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide barely changed about 260 parts per million (ppm) of air.
6,000 years ago the temperature dropped to the range that we have today and stayed there for 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide slowly rose to 280 ppm.
2,000 years ago the temperature began a slow decline to the start of the Little Ice Age 550 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels didn’t change.
230 years ago carbon dioxide began to rise quickly. The Little Ice Age persisted another 30 years. 200 years ago the temperature began to rise slowly.
Earth’s climate is always changing, usually creeping invisibly in our perspective of time, but always on the move in geological time. Accurate climate history now goes back 500 million years as shown in this graph.The Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica were ice free most of the time. For most of the last 250 million years global temperatures were much hotter than today. Temperature and carbon dioxide were completely independent from each other strongly suggesting carbon dioxide does not cause temperature change.
Carbon dioxide data by Dr. Berner, 2003, referenced by hundreds of Climate Scientists. Temperature data by NOAA, data plotted by The Smithsonian Institution, 2017. Graph of the combined data October, 2024.
How did we come to believe carbon dioxide is causing climate change? The idea was proposed in 1895 but gained little traction until 1959 when Dr. Roger Revelle, a highly respected oceanographic scientist, said it might be possible in the scientific journal Tellus 9, Issue 1, Page 27. When the early Greenland and Antarctic ice core data became available preliminary analysis found that carbon dioxide and temperature usually changed together. Up to that time climate scientists couldn’t figure out what was causing climate change. The early data looked convincing. Many climate scientists jumped on board. Yet no one was concerned that Ice Ages are a time of extreme climate with half of the northern hemisphere, one third of earth’s total land mass, completely frozen. Everywhere north of the equator was far colder than today greatly inhibiting plant growth, evaporation from the oceans and altering the carbon cycle.
The “difference from preindustrial refers” to 1800 CE, 2 degrees C less than 2024. Northern Europe, the northern United States and all of Canada were under massive ice sheets.
There are two problems with the mathematics of assuming the early ice core data demonstrated that carbon dioxide controlled temperature. The first is that when two lines on a graph appear move together (or opposite each other) it is a correlation - only a suggestion that there may be a relationship. Mistaking a correlation as proof of a relationship is called the Correlation Fallacy, a fundamental mistake. Unfortunately many in the scientific community made that fundamental mistake. Former United States Vice President Al Gore promoted that mistake by advocating carbon dioxide as the cause of climate change in his speaking tour and book, An Inconvenient Truth (2006). Wide spread skepticism swung to public acceptance. An internet search of Correlation Fallacy will provide the explanation by qualified presenters. This graph is similar to the graph in An Inconvenient Truth.
Jouzel et al, 2007; Luthi et al. 2008 via Penn State U., Introductory Meteorology
The second contradiction is that in a cause and effect relationship, the leading (independent) variable must always cause the following (dependent) variable to change in the same direction, by the same lag in time (if any) and by same proportion as the amount of change in the independent variable. For carbon dioxide to prove it causes temperature change, it must always cause temperature to change in the same direction, time and proportion to the change in carbon dioxide. An Inconvenient Truth’s graph compressed 100,000 years (an entire ice age) into one and a third inches ((3.25 cm). When the time line is expanded of a highly compressed graph, it is easy to see there many times when the three requirements of direction, time and proportionality don’t match. These contradictions are problematic to stating that carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change.
The carbon dioxide and temperature data lines look convincingly close in the highly compressed time line above. This expanded snippet from the time line from An Inconvenient Truth (2006) 500,000 years ago shows an example of carbon dioxide rising proportionally more than temperature for about 35,000 years on the left. Temperature is rising while carbon dioxide is falling for about 13,000 years on the right.
Rather than carbon dioxide leading temperature, detailed analysis of the ice core data by climate scientists has found that it is temperature that leads carbon dioxide. Dr. Florides summarized a data analysis project saying: “Temperature rises first, followed by an increase in atmospheric CO2.” Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide Through Sciences, Research Gate: DOI: 10.1126/science.1078758
Stated more precisely, Dr. Caillon’s data analysis found that temperature leads carbon dioxide saying: “CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming (temperature) by 800 +/- 200 years”.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12637743/
Many climate scientists no longer believe carbon dioxide causes climate change. Dr. James Lovelock, a highly respected scientist, early carbon dioxide advocate and author of The Revenge of Gaia (2006) did something in 2014 scientists rarely do. He 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.” How could Dr. Lovelock and so many climate scientists have gotten it wrong? Dr. Lovelock said “We were carried away by the (correlation of) the ice cores of Antarctica.” Toronto Globe and Mail, Nelles interview, July 11, 2014.
During the Jurassic Period when dinosaurs roamed the earth, carbon dioxide levels were four to seven times higher than today as shown in this graph. The fossil records show that dinosaurs thrived. Plants thrived. Coral, clams and shell fish also thrived. The oceans did not become acidic because of higher temperatures and the much higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Chemistry and the Carbon Cycle say the oceans cannot become acidic. Please note the mass extinction event with carbon dioxide at 150 parts per million (ppm) of air in red, bottom left of the graph.
Is runaway, catastrophic global heating really in our future? Graphs by climate scientists at Berkeley Earth show that while atmospheric temperatures have risen 2 degrees C since 1830 CE, the upper ocean level (200 m, 600 ft.) temperature has only risen 1 degree C. The vast, deeper ocean (3,650 m, 12,000 ft.) has remained a constant 4 degrees C (39 F). The United Nations (un.org) says: “The ocean … captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by (greenhouse gas) emissions.” Dr. Lovelock said: “The ocean’s heat capacity is about 1,000 times greater than that of the land and atmosphere”. (Nelles interview as cited above.)
Water is 800 times denser than water. 1 cubic metre/ yard of water = 800 cubic metres/ yards of air.
The world has been as warmer or warmer than today for the last 10,000 years except for the 350 year long Little Ice Age which ended 200 years ago. With today’s temperatures still below earth’s 10,000 year average, why is anyone concerned about the temperature rise from the end of the Little Ice Age 200 years ago? Further gradual global warming may happen and is even likely but the evidence shows that catastrophic global warming is highly unlikely.
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Dr. B. Vinther, University of Denmark : 12,000 years of data from 6 Greenland ice cores. The low area at the far right side shows the Little Ice Age, then the climb to today’s temperatures.
Carbon dioxide and temperature graphs can show different results from different eras and parts of the world. Carbon dioxide levels can vary depending on the location and method of sampling. The correlation of Dr. Vinther’s Greenland and Dr. Rosenthal’s Makassar, Indonesia data lines strongly suggest temperature changes have been uniform in the northern hemisphere containing 2/3rds of earth’s land mass for the last 12,000 years.
Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are what gets heated. Radiative Forcing is how they get heated. The University of Southern Florida collaborating with NASA explains the basics.
“The sun's visible wavelengths of radiation pass easily through the atmosphere and reach Earth. Approximately 51% of this sunlight is absorbed at Earth's surface by the land, water, and vegetation. Some of this energy is emitted back from the Earth's surface in the form of infrared radiation.
Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in Earth's atmosphere absorb the longer wavelengths of outgoing infrared radiation from Earth's surface. These gases then emit the infrared radiation in all directions, both outward toward space and downward toward Earth. This process creates a second source of radiation to warm the surface – visible radiation from the sun and infrared radiation from the atmosphere – which causes Earth to be warmer than it otherwise would be”. https://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-2/how-greenhouse-effect-works.php
Graph by Frank van Mierlo, Public Domain : PW is a petawatt, one billion million watts of energy.
That explains, ever so briefly, the basics of radiative forcing. The key question is how long does a day’s heat last? This is radiative forcing’s Achilles Heel. As night follows day, heat energy moving at the speed of light gradually escapes to the heavens. The morning after a clear night with low humidity is much cooler than the morning after an overcast night with high humidity. With high humidity, tomorrow may start warmer because of heat left over from today. But it is not how much heat is left over the next morning, that’s weather. What matters is how much heat caries over to the next year and year after year. Even with super computers and AI, it is impossible to calculate that with any hope of accuracy. Why? Because there are a vast number of known factors and undoubtedly important but unknown factors affecting the global quantities stored heat energy. Here are two examples:
NOAA estimates that there are between 1,600 and 40,000 thunderstorm each day world-wide each releasing vast quantities of heat energy. https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/thunderstorms
An El Nino year limits the number of hurricanes (aka cyclones, typhoons) allowing heat to build up in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. A La Nina year does not impede hurricanes, which are said to release the equivalent of one atomic bomb per second, thereby depleting vast quantities of stored heat.
Given that the sun’s energy is relatively constant from year to year, radiative forcing and the greenhouse gasses should produce a net gain every year if they are causing climate warming. Yet sometimes the next year is warmer and sometimes the next year is cooler as shown by this graph of the last 10,000 year from the Baltic region. While this graph is not related to the Vinther graph, it shows the same shape over the same time period as the Vinther and Vinther, Rosenthal graphs above.
The left side vertical grey lines show 100 year averages and 50 year averages on the right. The red and black lines show moving averages. Temperatures were 4 degrees C higher 7,000 years ago.
These graphs are not unique. Five hundred million years of climate history shows that greenhouse gases and earth’s temperature move independently of each other. During the ice ages of the last two million years when they appeared to move together, especially in highly compressed timeline graphs, it was a correlation, a suggestion that there might be a relationship, not proof of causation. Radiative forcing is unable to show yearly gains which questions its ability to effect climate change.
Part 2 - Some Of The Forces Of Nature That Likely Contribute to Climate Change
Nature has been changing the climate since the world began without any help from mankind’s greenhouse gases. How does it do that? One way is a theory developed a century ago by ground breaking structural engineer turned astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch.
Dr. Milankovitch formulated three theories:
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.
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?
Recent astrophysics research found that a star 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 its orbit been permanently affected? The discovery of the Cassiopea star’s fly-by has changed a long held belief by astrophysicists that our solar system was not influenced by other stars. More climate related astronomical discoveries are likely.
Astrophysical Journal Letters, Kaib, et al. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ad24fb
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 had begun. 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.
Fertile Crescent Reference: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abg4044
Researchgate.net 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, and both northern hemisphere and global temperatures. Although these correlations are surprising, a statistical analysis shows there is a less than one percent chance they are random …”
A.K. Kerton, 2009 : Climate Change and the Earth’s Magnetic Poles, A Possible Connection
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? Recent research found that the movement of earth’s magnetic poles causes gravity waves which affect earth’s very high altitude magnetic radiation shield. That affects air currents in the earth’s upper atmosphere.
Vlasov, D.I., et al.. Seasonal Features of the Spatial Distribution of Atmospheric Gravity Waves in the Earth’s Polar Thermosphere. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0884591322020076
Other researchers found that changes to the magnetic radiation shield affected lower levels of the atmosphere which affects our climate.
“Magnetic field changes directly affect the temperature and wind in the upper atmosphere … we also find significant responses in (the lower atmosphere).”
Cnossen I., H. Liu, and H. Lu (2016), The Whole Atmosphere Response to Changes in the Earth's Magnetic Field From 1900 to 2000. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Solar radiation hitting earth’s magnetic radiation shield (not to scale).
Jing Liu, et al. Solar flare effects in the Earth's magnetosphere, Nature Physics (2021)
Could the movement of earth’s magnetic poles be affecting air and ocean currents another way? Curiously, while water is attracted to static electricity, water is diamagnetic - repelled by magnetism. Could the higher density of water in atmospheric rivers and hurricanes be enough for them to be affected by the movement of earth’s magnetic poles? Could the differences in density due to temperature layers and salinity concentrations be enough to affect ocean currents? And if so, to what extent?
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.
“The sun is the ultimate factor in causing change of the terrestrial climate. At a small but measurable level, the sun varies, just like most of the stars do.”
W. W. Soon, Astrophysics (Harvard), Climate Change : The Facts, chapter 4, page 57.
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 ?
Graph : Maunder Minimum : Author Unknown, graph widely available on the internet
Little Ice Age : paragraph 2 of this Article. Also see Little Ice Age at Wikipedia.org
Paraphrasing a research paper by Dr. Schmutz: 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%.
Schmutz WK, https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2021016
We are constantly reminded that that we are approaching catastrophic levels of carbon dioxide in the air yet during the Jurassic Period carbon dioxide levels were four to seven times higher than today. The fossil records show that dinosaurs thrived. Plants thrived. Coral, clams and shell fish also thrived. The oceans did not become acidic because of higher temperatures and the much higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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. OSHA’s Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) is 5,000 ppm CO2 over an 8-hour work day.
Dr. Patrick Moore (Greenpeace Co-founder) Should We Celebrate CARBON DIOXIDE
The Global Warming Policy Foundation https//www.thegwpf.org
Anran Wang, et al., Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
CO2 enrichment in greenhouse production: Towards a sustainable approach.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide make plants more productive which is helping feed our ever increasing global population. We also benefit by 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/
How likely is it that global CO2 levels will be reduced? Earth’s roughly 1,700 active volcanoes supply 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
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-china-paris-accord-net-zero-commitments/
Coal burning is the leading hydro carbon contributor to air pollution. Per unit of energy, coal gives off twice the amount the carbon dioxide as oil plus a horde of other toxic gases. Coal gives off four times the amount of carbon dioxide as natural gas which gives off very few other pollutants. 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.
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 2006 has caused many climate scientists to no longer believe carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are the sole cause of climate change - if they are even involved at all. They recognize that the forces of nature are calling the shots as they always have and that the forces of nature are now in a warming phase. Glaciers will continue to melt and sea levels will gradually rise. Yet politicians and the green industry are deeply committed to the status quo. Will we continue to believe the greenhouse gases are causing climate change or will we look at the evidence and turn the trillions of dollars intended to reduce the greenhouse gases into readying the peoples of the low lying islands and every sea port in the world for rising ocean waters?
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