Dramatic new findings from two climate science professors suggest that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere follows a rise in temperature rather than coming before it and causing it, throwing into doubt the whole of the current theory of human-driven global warming.
The scientists propose that higher temperatures increase the natural processes of soil respiration and ocean outgassing, and hence boost natural CO2 emissions. If confirmed, the information destroys the so-called ‘settled’ science basis upon which the command-and-control Net Zero political agenda depends.
Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Zbigniew Kundzewicz sequenced the changes in temperatures and CO2 growth rates from 1980 to 2019 from widely available sources, and discovered that CO2 values lagged temperature by about six months. The obvious point is made that in attempting to prove causality – as climate alarmists do by arguing that increases in temperature are the result of increases in human-caused CO2 – cause cannot lag effect.
The period under review is shown by the graph below, which tracks the steady rise in CO2 and not-so-steady increase in global temperature from 1980.
At first glance, both lines are rising and appear to be correlated. But as we have seen in previous Daily Sceptic articles, the UAH satellite record displays the two long pauses that have characterised the recent temperature record. The two professors note that the erratic behaviour of the temperature line contrasts with the smooth trend of CO2. From this graph, the authors suggest it “looks impossible to infer causality”.
The scientists are not the only researchers struggling to find evidence to support the notion that carbon dioxide – human-caused or otherwise – is the global climate thermostat knob. In 2015, a group of scientists led by Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo found a similar monthly lag between CO2 and temperature. Again, using a selection of widely available datasets for the period 1980 to 2011, the researchers found that changes in CO2 always lagged changes in temperature. The lag was around 9-10 months for global surface air temperatures, and about nine months for lower troposphere temperatures.
Discussion of the climate role of CO2 in the atmosphere has largely disappeared in mainstream media, on the spurious grounds that the science is settled. At the BBC, for instance, debate on the subject is more or less banned. Humans only produce 4% of the annual CO2 that enters the atmosphere, and if this is seen to have little effect in changing the climate, the reason for pressing ahead with a ruinous Net Zero policy evaporates. Trillions of dollars for green subsidies, development work and academic grants, along with huge numbers of jobs and countless virtuous opinions and reputations, suggest a full understanding may take a little time.
As we have seen, in many scientific circles the climate role of CO2 is still the subject of active debate. No one doubts that the gas has warming properties, but Professor William Happer of Princeton suggests that CO2 becomes “saturated” once it reaches a certain level. Noting the role of the infrared spectrum, he argues that most, if not all, the heat that is going to be trapped will have already been radiated back by the CO2 molecules evenly distributed in the current atmosphere. Of course, Happer’s research is the subject of argument with other eminent scientists, but it would help explain why so little automatic connection can be detected between CO2 and temperature in the current, historical and palaeoclimate records.
Let us go back in time to the palaeo record and see what evidence there is for connections between CO2 and temperature. In an essay published in 2014 on the climate science site Watts Up With That, reference was made to the seminal paper on the Vostok Ice Core, Petit et al (1999). This examined the chemical signals in an Antarctica ice core representing 422,766 years of snow accumulation, and from this it was concluded that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years. Of course, this suggests that CO2 has little influence on temperature change at these times. The thermostat knob is switched off.
Reading right to left, the above graph shows clearly that the temperature plunge to glacial conditions around 120,000 years ago was not matched by an immediate CO2 fall. There are similar time lags of around 8,000 years in other glacial cycles going back 450,000 years. The essay concluded that geochemical cycles made it inevitable that CO2 and methane will correlate with temperature, but it was “totally invalid” to use this relationship as evidence that CO2 was responsible for forcing the climate.
And finally, let’s look at the record going back to the start of life on Earth.
In this timeframe, the monthly lags in the current record obviously disappear, as do the thousands of years disconnect in the historical ice core evidence. But again, where is the link? Huge variations over millions of years are seen. At the moment, Earth is in a colder period with long-term CO2 denudation. A little more of both might even be helpful.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Postscript: This article was fact-checked by a site called News Wise, which concluded it was “mostly false”. Chris Morrison has responded to that fact check here.
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In 2006, after watching that tiresome piece of specious piffle, “An Inconvenient Truth” by the conman Al Gore, I wondered about that graph which showed a clear connection between atmospheric CO² concentration and global average surface temperatures.
He claimed that the former caused the latter.
I asked my peers, “How do we know it isn’t the other way around?”
Stunned silence.
A bit like when I asked my geography teacher if we knew when TheHoleInTheOzoneLayer™ first appeared. Actually, I think he laughed at me, and most of the class followed suit.
Awkward questions, eh.
Sorry about the superscript 2. My phone doesn’t do subscript
I was working for HSBC at the time in a distant place, far from UK – back around 2005. Guess what, all the staff in our unit were made to watch the Al Gore film by the powers that be at Head Office. No wonder so many believe all the global warming garbage when they have this enforced on them by the bosses.
The CEO of the last company I worked for, Marsh McLennan, berated us via internal company emails and everyone else via primetime US television about the “importance of getting vaccinated”.
C*nt.
I work in the same place and I got the same email. I’d placed him in the ‘New York lefty’ box prior to Covid so I wasn’t surprised.
Spent a chunk of last year worrying about a vaccine mandate being implemented, but thankfully it wasn’t and presumably the moment has passed now.
UK leadership are a bit more circumspect than head office in US, although equally woke. Thankfully the leader of my division is a bit of a lockdown sceptic (not vaccine sceptic though).
I’d have told him to mind his own business.
The system is just too complicated and impossible replicate for us to be able to understand it. Too many variables.
So I don’t think the climate fanatics know that CO2 causes temperature rises.
But I also think their critics don’t know for sure that it’s temperature that causes CO2 rise.
It could be both – they reinforce each other. It could be neither – a completely different set of factors. It could be both or either in theory but in practice other bigger factors prevail.
Who knows.
All I want is for self appointed guardians of our society to stop telling us all how to live our lives on the pretence that they know things that they really don’t know. They are playing with people’s lives on the basis of mere speculation.
Exactly. They can stick their “models” where the sun don’t shine.
This is not “new”. Been known and written about for many years by real Geologists and some Climate Scientists, and even some amateurs have known. And there is much “science” to back up the idea. Maybe the real shock is that these so-called “climate scientists” are new to these facts and are willing to go against their peers or something.
Why are you showing in your top photo cooling towers which release *steam* not Carbon DiOxide from those cooling towers? Why perpetuate the misinformation?
It’s true, so many people I know still think it’s smoke. LOL. I mean, the clue’s in the name – – – COOLING tower!
Explaining how power stations work doesn’t seem to help them.
Too much concentration and focus needed by their porn and Netflix-addled brains.
The only way to save us from climate change is to mandate CO2 limits for everyone.
The only way to save us from Covid is to mandate vaccines for everyone.
Those with the power to mandate connect with those who implement or reinforce the mandate, and a slice of the resulting massive profits get fed back to the mandators. A nice little scheme for the in-crowd.
Good post Mr Morrison. Please don’t forget Professor Pascal Richet, who last year wrote about co2 lagging temperature over the last four glaciations in a supposedly reputable journal Copernicus. His peer approved story was pulled.
https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/2021-05-26_hgss-2021-1_latest-version-of-the-manuscript.pdf
cart before the horse!
Thank you Chris. I have watched some of William Happer’s presentations and they are compelling. If I may correct you he does not merely “suggest” that the absorption by CO2 is near saturation. He and his team have calculated the effect of a doubling of CO2 and demonstrated it in graphically form as minimal.
This has been known for years.
The problem is that facts always lose in the face of ideology, such are the times we live
in…
Why can’t we post images any more?