Scientists on most sides of the climate debate agree that the effect of carbon dioxide is ameliorated as more of the gas enters the atmosphere. After all, there is no other realistic way to explain how temperatures have been lower on Earth in the past, while CO2 levels have been between 10-20 times higher. On one side of the ‘saturation’ debate, the effect is seen as minimal and unimportant. But others argue that at current atmospheric CO2 levels around 420 parts per million (ppm), most of the heat radiating from the surface has already been trapped. The latter view has the advantage of providing a more coherent explanation of the behaviour of climate across the historical and paleo record, but it leads to the inevitable conclusion that rising levels of CO2 are no threat to the planet, and in many ways are beneficial. Needless to say under ‘settled’ climate science, this hypothesis is either ignored or demonised in favour of the Net Zero-friendly version that seeks to downplay and ignore any hint of saturation.
The saturation effect can be described in simple terms by the example of loft insulation in a house. After a certain point, doubling the lagging will have little effect since most of the heat trying to escape through the roof has already been trapped. In the atmosphere, CO2 and other greenhouses gases such as water vapour and methane only radiate heat back to the surface in limited bands of the infrared spectrum. It is more complex than the loft analogy suggests, and detailed work on the subject was published two years ago by Princeton Emeritus Professor William Happer and the Canadian physicist Professor William van Wijngaarden. These two distinguished atmospheric scientists analysed around 330,000 lines of the HITRAN spectrum to observe and calculate the ability of five greenhouses gases to radiate heat. For full scientific details, their paper can be viewed here, while a recent podcast by Tom Nelson here broadcasts a detailed presentation by Dr. van Wijingaarden.
The above graph is used to show the result of their work across the spectrum. The blue line shows 394 watts per square metre (W/m2) being radiated back to space without any greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This would lead to a world about 33°C colder than it is now. CO2 only radiates heat back in certain narrow bands and this can be seen by the dipped black line. The marginal effect of doubling current levels of CO2 is seen by the red line, and this is said to amount to trapping just a further 3 W/m2, and a rise in temperature of no more than 0.75°C.
Needless to say this work has been ignored in the important science journals and its findings have not been reported in mainstream media. Why is this? It’s not difficult to provide an answer. At a stroke, it eliminates the need for Net Zero, a political project now embedded in many countries around the world and supported by an almost unlimited transfer of wealth to many controlling and financially-interested elites. In addition, as a collectivist project seeking to change society, Net Zero is particularly appealing to many on the Left.
In his recent paper, ‘Challenging “Net Zero” With Science’, Happer made it clear that the diminishing warming value of CO2 was logarithmic, with 88% of possible warming having already occurred. “This means that from now on our emissions from burning fossil fuels will have little impact on global warming. We could emit as much CO2 as we like with little warming effect. There is no climate emergency threat at all,” he wrote.
Happer and van Wijngaarden’s work is backed up by other scientists. The German physics professor Dieter Schildknecht notes that atmospheric increases of CO2 past 300 ppm, “cannot lead to an appreciably stronger absorption of radiation, and consequently cannot affect the Earth’s climate”. He found that doubling CO2 led to 0.5°C warming as the saturation “was close to 100%”. The atomic physicist Dr. Boris Smirnov is another who has worked on the radiative abilities of greenhouse gases. He suggests that doubling CO2 would lead to a rise of only 0.4°C in global temperature, with the human contribution put at a “negligible” 0.02°C. Most of these warming figures from 0.02°C to 0.75°C are in margin of error territory, and would be impossible to discern in any natural warming phase. For their part, alarmists frequently quote rises of up to 6°C in the next 80 years.
There are many parallels in this climate science debate with Covid. Even before the first lockdown, there was enough evidence from the isolated Diamond Princess cruise ship and northern Italy to show that Covid was a respiratory disease that was only a major worry for the very old and already ill. The young were barely affected and the healthy had almost nothing to fear. But hard observations and evidence were supplanted by computer models painting wildly improbable ‘reasonable worst case’ scenarios. The Hancock WhatsApp messages show clearly what happened next. Seemingly incapable of independent inquiry, emotional politicians panicked, shut down society and were unable to find a way out of they mess they had themselves caused.
As with climate, alternative narratives were demonised, ‘garbage in, gospel out‘ models were central to misinformed Government policy, hard Left, fear-driven solutions of command-and-control were promoted, and a compliant mainstream media was enrolled to spread whatever daily message was seen as appropriate by the increasingly clueless politicians.
The saturation effect of CO2 is a plausible hypothesis that is backed up by many reasoned scientific calculations and observations. It is deserving of widespread critical debate and analysis. Human-caused global warming, and the implied suggestion that CO2 is the main climate thermostat, is a simplistic hypothesis that is unable to explain any climate changes in the past. It doesn’t have a single credible science paper that proves its validity. It fails many of the tests of scientific inquiry, and relies for its longevity on the ludicrous suggestion from many interested parties that the science is settled and beyond dispute.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Stop Press: Britain has fired up back-up coal power stations for the first time ever. This is the inevitable consequence of successive Governments’ green energy policies – we’re having to rely on coal again to generate power. The Telegraph has more.
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“According to the Work of Two Distinguished Atmospheric Scientists, Net Zero is Completely Pointless”
Never!! You don’t say!
However, in the eyes of certain traders, it’s a commercial opportunity!
Most big traders!
Thanks Chris but we have an echo chamber problem here. We know there is no climate emergency and co2 is not driving dangerous runaway global warming, and we have known it for years.
Nobody else cares.
Ask Toby to ask Fraser to ask Allister Heath to publish the good stuff.
The point of publishing this is that the DS is getting more and more traction across the world now especially with people like Jordan Peterson retweeting articles from it. This kind of thing continues to trash the ‘97% of scientists’ claim that people just swallowed and it is making a lot of the fence sitters quietly wake up.
Publishing science is not going to change the minds of any of those cynically using this scam for political purposes though, we’ll need mass non-compliance and violence for that.
Richard Vobes (YouTube) has some very interesting ideas about non-compliance …. but is absolutely against violence since that will be the Establishment’s justification for more draconian laws.
Even the more sensible alarmists agree that the relationship between temperature response to changing CO2 concentration is logarithmic. That is to say, temperature increases about 1 degree C per doubling of CO2 (theoretically).
They derive their alarmist predictions by assuming there are positive feedback loops in the climate system that will amplify that response. This is easy to refute because we know that CO2 concentrations were 10X ore more higher in prehistoric times and we didn’t enter into runaway warming. QED.
‘…sensible alarmists…’
I spy oxymoron!
You can’t be “sensible” and an “alarmist”
According to me, Net Zero is a crock of sh*te, and obviously so.
I have great respect for Happer and van Wijngaarden, however to supplement their view and deviating from making this all about the never-ending climate debate, read Michael Kelly’s piece on Judith Currie’s website https://judithcurry.com/2023/03/04/feasibility-for-chieving-a-net-zero-economy-for-the-u-s-in-2050/
Looking at it from an engineering (not plumbers or pipe fitting “engineers”) and a project/investment perspective.
NetZero is unachievable and brings grave risk to the world.
The world or the few mostly western countries that have completely lost their collective minds?
Here is a map of places planning to phase out the combustion engine. Not exactly “the world”.
Ah – engineers. Practical solutions not the pie in the sky we get from “the Science”.
As a graduate engineer (BEng) I like your attitude
Love this comment, made elsewhere (Yahoo Finance, can’t access the ‘Graph):
“Although it’s never positive to use coal, it’s better than having the lights go out,” Adam Bell, head of policy at consultancy Stonehaven, said by phone. “Right now, in the middle of an energy crisis, it’s a sensible thing to do.”
Bwahahahaaaaa…..Off to throw another log on the fire.
While not directly related to the “Net Zero” concept, this YT entry re the latest proposed products by JCB was interesting, and positive overall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_qAta3Gk8&list=WL&index=4 Produced by “Harry’s Farm”.
NET ZERO????———- Now in any persons reasonable world where people were acting rationally and discussing costs and benefits and whether something is practical or impractical or even whether it is worth all the trouble and unimaginable expense in the first place, you would have different opinions thrown about and you might eventually come to a conclusion about how to move forward or as the case may be , not to move forward. With NET ZERO we see NONE OF THAT. ——-Net Zero was simply waved through parliament with not a single question asked as to cost/benefit. Net Zero is like deciding you are going to have a million dollar house. You have no clue how much money you will be earning to pay for it and you have no idea whether you really need a house that costs that amount, but your determined that you are going to buy it anyway. With NET ZERO we see the cart put truly well before the horse. Infact 100 carts have been put before one horse and the horse will just have to live with that whether it likes it or not. There are only a few governments doing this and ofcourse the UK always has to be world leaders in every kind of global absurdity going so we are one of those countries. We are taking away coal. We are taking away the best central heating system we ever had (gas). We are taking away perfectly good cars (petrol and diesel) and replacing them with electric ones with no clue where we will get all the electricity from. We want rid of beef. We want us all to fly less and will price us all out of that .——– Infact there is not one single aspect of our lives that will not be affected by this ideological “official science” of climate that really is just a manufactured crisis for political purposes and the terrible thing is that our own politicians of all major parties are fully on board with the lowering of our living standards all in the name of “saving the planet”. The biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated on a largely unsuspecting public who mostly think this is all about “Science”——–They could never imagine that they could be deceived on a scale such as this.
Hi Varmint, It wasn’t parliament that started this, it was when Boris took up with his latest partner. We know Boris has no technical or science education, so he believes everything he is told by the only people he listened to. I’m not sure if she has an education or intellect to match William Happer, but I very much doubt it, although she has had more influence now than he does and that is crazy
It is rather simplistic to think that a politicians wife started us out on the path to NET ZERO. We already had the “Climate Change Act” way back in 2008 (Miliband) Do you seriously think that all of the MP’s of the major political parties waved Net Zero Policy through parliament because Boris Johnson wife had a word in his ear? C’mon mate this Pretend to Save the Planet nonsense was on the go long before Carrie Johnson was on the scene.
Could I also point towards a similar article by Dr David Coe in Junk https://junkscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/10.11648.j.ijaos_.20210502.12.pdf
‘…Net Zero is Completely Pointless’
Doesn’t that depend on what the intended point is?
What was the point of masks, PCR testing, lockdowns, vaccines?
Was it:
A) to limit/stop spread of a virus
B) frighten the pants off people, dehumanise them, to allow dictatorial government
If you answered (B) you now know the point of Net Zero.
During the ice ages, the atmosphere concentration of CO2 was negligible since most of the free gas had been absorbed by the increasingly cooling seas and was trapped by ice.
So….. if CO2 is the driver of global warming/climate change, what caused the Earth’s temperature to warm us out of the ice ages?
If high global temperature and high atmospheric CO2 takes us past ‘the tipping point’ of no return, how did Earth during its tropical ages with CO2 concentrations more than 10 000ppm and temperature three or four times higher than now, cool down and return to the next ice age?
Dust and albedo, J. You’ll like
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
If the aim is to impoverish and enslave the masses, it is far from pointless.
I want to give two cheers to Chris Morrison for using the highly apposite phrase “garbage in, gospel out” with reference to the wretched computer modelling which plagues policy making currently in the Western world. It’s a phrase that I recommended to Toby Young back in 2020 but whilst acknowledging its relevance he, like almost everyone, preferred to stick with “garbage in, garbage out” notwithstanding that it’s surely obvious by now that that phrase has lost all impact: it’s become a sort of meaningless mantra, trotted out but then entirely ignored.The big problem with policy makers’ reaction to computer modelling is that they treat it not just as evidence but as a higher sort of evidence, hence the appropriateness of “gospel.” And Net Zero is, after all, a religious belief.
The Global Elites who are driving the Climate Scam know their “science” is bollocks …. but that is irrelevant to them. It’s about money, power and control. And their tame “news” organisations, like the BBC, are fully on-board with the scam so there will be no critical reporting or alternative opinions allowed.
As we saw with the Covid PsyOps, arguing against fear-based emotions with facts doesn’t work with the great majority of indoctrinated people.
Whilst the facts are very important, the only way we will get through to the sheeple is to use emotional arguments about the appalling consequences of a Net Zero policy on people who cannot afford to pay for the scam (those who will die of hypothermia) and the negative implications for their own lives …. no/very expensive foreign holidays; no/very expensive car; restrictions on their ability to travel; permanently high energy costs etc. They are already waking up to most of these.
Good points, but beware of condescension. People are not stupid about climate change, they simply cannot believe the scale of mendacity needed for the whole thing to be a scam. That’s an index of good nature, not blockishness.
And today the BBC’s idiot Matt McGrath is wetting himself over some cunning wheeze to take all the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. So what happens to plants then Matt??
Keep up the good work, Chris and the Daily Sceptic. I know many people with influence read your climate output. I assume those with real power who do nothing about it are either stupid or have no courage to resist the crippling of our economy by the net-zero crap.
The Climate Change industry is very lucrative for some.