By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
There is a wild debate in the skeptic community on whether CO2 plays a role in climate changes over time and if so how much. I am going to avoid getting embroiled in that discussion because no one knows, including the IPCC, which starts with the basic assumption that it does, that we understand the forcing and proceeds from there. They back into the forcing in their models which are seriously flawed with very poor understanding of the clearly important factors of water in all its forms in our atmosphere and in the role of the sun and oceans. Even with seriously contaminated surface observation data, their models are failing miserably even just a decade or two into the runs.
There was a very similar divisive argument in the meteorological community in early to middle part the last century as Dr James Fleming of Colby College documented in the book “Historical Perspectives on Climate Change”. The pertinent chapter was on the web and can be found here. This was before models and was based on theory as the write-up documents.
As a Synoptic Meteorologist and Climatologist over the years I have let the data do the talking. The data says that CO2 plays little or no role in climate change – which is cyclical and relates far better with the cycles in sun and ocean.
When correlating CO2 with temperature trends in various periods of cyclical warming and cooling the last 110 years we find a negative correlation from the late 1800s to 1917 (-0.35), positive from 1917 to 1940 (+0.43), negative during the WWII and post WWII boom from 1940 to around 1975 (-0.40), positive from 1975 to around 2000 (+0.36) and negative in the short period to 2009 (-0.56).
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The Russian scientists Klashtorin and Lyubushin (2003) found a similar alternating pattern comparing GLOBAL temperature trends and World Fuel Consumption. They found a +0.92 from 1861 to 1875, a -0.71 from 1875 to 1910, +0.28 from 1910 to 1940, -0.88 from 1940 to 1975, +0.94 from 1975 to 2000.
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In the paper they projected a reversal post 2000 which has verified. This on again, off-again correlation suggests that CO2 is not the primary climate driver. Since the solar TSI and ocean multidecadal cycles are much better correlated, they are more likely candidates.
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CO2, The Gas of Life
As opposed to be a pollutant or an agent of harm, CO2 is a blessing, a plant fertilizer that has supported an agricultural revolution. Nurseries use CO2 to boost plant growth in greenhouses, pumping it in at levels maybe 3 times ambient levels.
Just the increase in the last century has improved crop yields as shown by NASA greening studies and the UN’s own graph.
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Yes better hybrids, better crop practices, fertilizers, insect and disease control as well as irrigation has helped, but CO2 has played a key role. This can be shown by isolating on CO2 and keeping other factors constant as shown in the following two studies:
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More CO2 means more plant growth. Yale professor Robert Mendehlson testified to congress in 2000, climate change as projected then by IPCC would result in benefits of up to $23B/year to agriculture and forestry
CO2 enriched plants are more drought resistant and have lower water irrigation needs. CO2 benefits crops under moisture stress most! This eases water supply issues in semi-arid regions and in Mediterranean climates like California, an added benefit. Ironically California greenies are all too anxious to negate that benefit under the delusion they are saving the planet.
We should be rewarding producers of CO2 not taxing them out of existence. Taxing them becomes a value-added tax as it affects of prices of all goods and services on the way to consumers. It is a highly regressive tax, hurting the poor and middle class the most.
But we know the real motive is not to save the planet but to address or generate revenues to pay for other issues that the administration favors.
NOAA’s Lubchenko when she was president of AAAS in 1999 said:
“Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract…a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day, in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding.”
The government has delivered to the tune of $79B so far to support the big lie.
We hear this week, the UN with the administration’s help is said to be seeking to tax the world $100B/year for 10 years to help fight climate change (a George Soros idea). That is $1 trillion the next decade – a redistribution to a totally corrupt and ineffective global organization.
The right US move would be to kick their collective corrupt butts out of New York City and turn off the spigot. And get off the carbon kick. Address real issues like the economy and jobs. Your wacky enviro friends may not appreciate it but the vast majority of real Americans would.
