To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?
October 27, 2023
By Paul Homewood
A new Norwegian paper has found that the effects of man-made CO2 emissions are not strong enough to explain global warming in the last 200n years, implying that natural factors must play a large role:
The study contains a lot of statistical analysis. But the bottom line is that Global Climate Models, GCMs, do not track past temperature changes at all well:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What wise-crack answer are they expecting to such a question? (To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?) Sounds like “The Engineer” is at it again with their biased agenda Polls. A Binary answer? Really?
So the Answer is: According to theory and reconstructed temperature data, climate is affected by the cyclical variations in the Earth’s orbit, the Earth’s axis and the planetary orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
\Thanks, so now I know where Any GHG’s come from. – READ the 123 pages.
My non scientist mind often queried how man made CO2 could make any measurable difference to the climate. How could 3% of 0.04% of the atmosphere have such a disproportionate effect?
As for the UK’s 1% of that tiny amount, where’s the problem ?
And then, DC, I have often felt, as the opening para implies, that tptb have claimed – at least as far as the BBC is concerned – warming is all down to the magic molecule and nothing to do with natural causes. I mean, as far as I know, previous climate changes have never been properly explained, let alone blamed on CO2.
Only man made causes fit the narrative, how else can we be controlled by global elites?
Harry, you have to remember that all these clever scientists on the UN’s IPCC and also the ones that they refer (defer) to have since bolted on other gases to CO2 that ‘they are claiming’ warming the planet to boiling point: methane and various oxides of nitrogen, the most laughable one being nitrous oxide!
1959 CO2 annual global measure was 316ppm
2022 was 417
CO2 is not the main Greenhouse gas nor is its effect linear
Cos molecules can be at different heights and sometimes above each other etc.
I’m grateful SG, with water vapour being by far the most abundant GHG it’s no surprise. Significant natural changes in that are more likely to affect the climate. But as I inferred you cannot target that if you’re in the anthropogenic blame game. Carbon ( dioxide) is the stick to beat us with. Some even describe it a a pollutant.
Small quantities of a substance are able to have far reaching effects. A speck of polonium the size of the dot at the end of this sentence contains about 3,400 times the lethal dose for humans. In the case of CO2, it is perfectly possible for it to absorb radiated energy and transfer it to other non absorbing molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in collisions at a rate that causes dry air to warm up. After all, it is only the very small fraction of molecules that contact a radiator in your room that warm the whole room up by diffusion and collision with the other molecules in the air. It is only when you undertake the kind of sophisticated analysis done by Wijngaarden and Happer that you can show that the residual effects in a real atmosphere with water vapour and varying atmospheric composition (particularly of water vapour in the weather system) mean that extra CO2 does not have the warming potency that a lab experiment might suggest.
The transitions by which gases absorb energy are translation, rotation, vibration and electronic, small to large in that order.
Through a great deal of sleight of hand, largely the assumption of positive feedbacks e.g. water vapour increasing.
I agree and also I have never read any explanation of why the man made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes climate change, but the natural CO2 doesn’t.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article about NOAA saying they were predicting the halting of sunspots in a few years which would lead to another mini ice age. I was very surprised at the fact that a Government agency was linking solar activity with climate change. Whether they are right or not is a bit immaterial as the main change has been the first time we’ve heard by implication from official sources that man induced CO2 levels is not the sole, or even the strongest, factor in climate change.
https://electroverse.info/noaa-zero-sunspots-2035-through-2040/
Here we have another government agency coming to the same conclusion about CO2 and it’s affect on the climate
But sensible people and proper scientists who have studied it already know this. The problem is there are too many gullible people and idiots in the media and in politics etc
Indeed.
Get this:
‘The finding that the GCMs are only capable of reproducing some of the temperature variations in the past casts serious doubts about their ability
to produce credible climate scenarios.’
No one with half a brain ever thought they could.
A great deal of what we might broadly call “science” nowadays is people trying to prove that things we know are true aren’t for the things they want to do. Economics seems to be almost entirely devoted to proving established mechanisms that we know work don’t apply to e.g. minimum wages, rent controls and tax, wholly because the Left wants to enact certain policies but Economics says they won’t work. The social sciences are entirely devoted to proving biology & evolution wrong in the areas they want them to be wrong. Similarly everybody knows we cannot model non-linear coupled complex systems, yet the climate scientists refuse to accept that.
The refusal to accept reality would mean the drying up of grant cheques and that would never do
The Right invented reality to confuse people.
Why only the last 200 years? Did the climate never change?
This is dangerous stuff. Millions nay billions are involved in this scam. To pull away the main prop will collapse the whole. Will the msm give a voice? A young keen journo might make his career?
This is very dangerous. There are billions involved in this scam. To pull away the main prop will collapse the whole structure. Perhaps some keen young journalist could make his name and fortune in the Mainstream Media?
Well timed for my outing to ‘Battle of Ideas’ in London this weekend. Van Wijngaarden and Happer showed conclusively in 2019 that the effect of so-called GHGs is minimal. CO2 in particular is saturated as far as any increase in concentration is concerned. The others are present in such tiny amounts that there is no significant effect. Monckton has shown that Hansen misapplied feedback theory by considering only the atmospheric uplift rather than the whole signal (that great fiery ball in the sky). With luck Mark Steyn is about to demolish the ‘hokey shtick’ in a DC court (10 years after Mann sued over a 270 word article and claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner)
Click to access Infrared-Forcing-by-Greenhouse-Gases-2019-Revised-3-7-2022.pdf
https://co2coalition.org/publications/van-wijngaarden-and-happer-radiative-transfer-paper-for-five-greenhouse-gases-explained/
All apocalyptic climate predictions by academics have failed. None of the predictions from Earth Day 1970 have come to pass. Climate models used to generate alarm have no skill when checked against reliable tropospheric
temperatures. The most important argument against climate alarmism is that the proposed solutions are unworkable and dangerous and would do most harm to the poorest and weakest. Preventing poor people from accessing affordable electricity (hence clean water) and cooking fuels are far worse sins than colonialism or even slavery.
The biggest argument is that ghe models on which Alarmism are based simply cannot be right. If you run enough of them enough times, you might sometimes get a result a bit like reality, but that’s like claiming people can pick Lottery numbers because someone wins. The models are worthless. Believing they can forecast future climate is simply false.
“10 years after Mann sued over a 270 word article and claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner”
“The process is the punishment.” — Steyn
Pretty obvious to me, the doom mongers push their crackpot ideas purely because there’s money to be made (taxes, green electric etc) if they can get us to believe climate change is somehow man-made?
It’s not about money. It’s about freedom. Communists hate freedom and will kill to stop it. Sure, some foot soldiers are in it for the money, but that’s not the root of this evil. They would rather you be dead than free.
It is incontrovertible that climate science cannot explain the major drivers of natural variability – ENSO. AMO, PDO – nor explain the various warm periods we see throughout recorded history. It is incontrovertible that we cannot model complex, coupled, non-linear systems.
Yet those in power believe we can.
According to the American physicist, William Masters, there is no such thing as a ‘greenhouse gas’ as all gasses in our atmosphere block out more heat than they let in. Cooling the Earth by a net average of 65°C.
From, ‘The Science Against Human Caused Carbon-Dioxide Warming’.
The study is completely worthless.
There is strong evidence that manmade CO2 is one of MANY causes of climate change.
CO2 emissions were relatively small before the 1960s, so manmade CO2 emissions could not have more than a small effect on the climate/
This study looks at the past 200 years. proof that the authors are fools.
Only since the 1960s has there been enough CO2 emissions to matter.
The global average CO2 level increased from about 280ppm in 1850 to 350ppm in May 1986 — a +25% increase spread over 136 years. Since May 1986, CO2 increased from 350ppm to 420ppm — a +20% increase in only 37 years.
The study wastes a lot of paragraphs criticizing climate models without understanding them. Climate models do not have to make accurate predictions to prove that CO2 is a climate change variable.
What the authors do not know is that climate models of the 1970s have done an excellent job predicting global warming fro 1975 to 2023. But only when using the reasonable RCP 4.5 CO2 growth rate and looking at the first 75 years of the predictions.
So how do you explain why C02 levels have been 4,000 ppm long before humans were on the planet?
“There is strong evidence that manmade CO2 is one of MANY causes of climate change.”
Define “climate change.”
Yeah. Didn’t think so.
On re-reading your post, there is much that is wrong with it. Climate models can’t be trusted as they can easily be manipulated to get any result that suits the user. Rubbish in, rubbish out. Your figure of 280ppm in 1850 is close to that of the corrupt IPCC, 270ppm.
Yet there are 90,000 measures of atmospheric C02 that began in 1812 that show an average level of 335ppm.
There must have been a tremendous amount of fossil fuels burnt during WW2, yet from 1940 to 1977 the Earth was cooling.
The IPCC was co-founded by a Canadian communist who openly admitted that his main aim was to destroy western industry.
About 3 years ago, NASA made the statement, “There has been no significant global warming for the last 20 years”. Despite the rise in C02. By the way, the 4,000ppm level of C02 came at the end of the Ordovician period, in the middle of an ice age. No correlation there then. The only correlation between C02 and temperatures is that heat rises first and some 800 years later C02 levels rise. So C02 is the RESULT of heat and not the CAUSE.
With no atmosphere and at the same distance from the Sun, ‘Daytime temperatures near the lunar equator reach a boiling 250 degrees Fahrenheit (120° C, 400 K), while nighttime temperatures get to a chilly -208 degrees Fahrenheit (-130° C, 140 K).’
Click to access LROlitho7temperaturevariation27May2014.pdf
Earth’s atmosphere has to be considered as a whole, not 0.04% of it.
Important to note that this paper comes from a state body and it comes at a time that a second paper has been published also on the failure to find the link between CO2 and temperature.
I did a masters degree 20 years ago which included this issue. I came to much the same conclusion. There are two important numbers. The first is that the proportion of CO2 emitted by us is only about 5% of the total emissions. The remainder are provided by volcanics, tectonics and, surprisingly by fungal mycelia. So if the total change in temperature due to CO2 is 1C, the human contribution would be would be 0.05 C. Note , however, that CO2 is neither the most effective greenhouse gas (water vapor) nor are these the only ones. At a rough and probably generous guess, CO2 contributes about one third of greenhouse warming. That fixes the anthropogenic contribution to 0.0166 Centigrade. But that isn’t the end of the story. Greenhouse gasses don’t just swallow up any old photon. There has to be a match between the characteristic frequency of the photon (and not all photons are the same) and the characteristic frequency of the gas molecule. I have not been able to find an assessment of the proportion of molecules that can be absorbed but a guestimate based on a list of absorption frequencies suggests a figure well below 10%. That reduces the anthropogenic contribution to 0.00166 C.
If you are worried about a temperature increase of just over one thousandth degree C. Then I suggest you need medical help.
That medical help would have to be of a psychiatric nature and I doubt there enough psychiatrists in the world to treat all those politicians, so called ‘climate scientists’ and their useful idiots who are the grip of their grand, climate hysteria delusions.
Mike
Every statement you made in your comment is wrong
What subject was your Masters Degree for?
Manmade CO2 emissions account for about 33% of the current 420ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not 5%.
thecliffclavenoffinance
Even the alarmists have not claimed that more than three (NOT thirty three) percent is “manmade”. And three percent of zero point zero four percent is a lot of zeros after the decimal point.
>>Manmade CO2 emissions account for about 33% of the current 420ppm of CO2
Who told you that: “Manmade CO2 emissions account for about 33% of the current 420ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.”? It is estimated that between 3% and 5% of CO2 emissions are caused by human activity, the rest is from natural causes. I can’t believe I’m the only one to point this out!
Manmade CO2 emissions added abot +250ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere since 1850
Atmospheric CO2 increased +140ppm
Therefore, 100% of the +140ppm increase was from manmade CO2
The remainder of the +250ppm, or 110ppm, was absorbed by nature (oceans, land and plants)
This is an extremely simple equation with only two “players” (humans and nature)
It is unfortunate that so many conservatives are confused about why atmospheric CO2 increased so much since 1850, after being in a 180ppm to 280ppm range for at least 800,000 years
This 3% to 5% myth makes conservatives appear to be fools, and are CORRECTLY called science deniers.
The primary problem with climate science is the 50 years of wrong predictions of climate doom. They are not science.
It is important to recognize how the CO2 level increased +50%, and that such a large increase harmed no one.
Arguing about why CP2 increased +50% makes a conservative ineffective, and ignored for a good reason, in a climate science debate.
If you falsely claim 3% to 5% of the last +50% increase of CO2 is manmade, then you contradict at least 99% of the “skeptic” climate scientists ON OUR SIDE, such as Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Roy Spencer ad John Christy, all science Ph.D.’s.
Do you really think you are smarter than they are about climate science?
CO2 emissions . . . man made, natural.
All ESTIMATES. WE DON’T REALLY F&^%ING KNOW !!!
There are 3 modes of energy: exiting, entering and entrained. The first two cancel each other. The entrained keeps us warm. Certain frequencies of exiting energy leave directly from the surface. The others leave from the atmosphere and at varying altitudes. Of those, a minor group leave from CO2.
Add extra CO2 and a very few of that group increase their altitude of escape. The effect for a doubling, 400ppm to 800ppm, is at most 1 degree C.
Now the magic happens: theorised but unproven positive feedbacks magnify the 1 degree C. The recent paper calls that out as bovine ex crement.
The water vapor positive d feedback is real, not fake. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, amplifying the initial warming cause as a feedback
The best, in my ipinion, skeptic scientists estimate +0.75 to +1.5 degrees C. global warming from a doubling of CO2 which would take 168 yers at the current co2 rise rate of +2.5ppm a year.
HARMLESS
THROW IN A FEW WORST CASE ASSUMTIONS, AS THE IPCC DOES, AND THE RANGE BECOMES +2,5 to +4.0 degrees C.
MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL THE GUESSES ABOUT CO2:
Greenhouse gas warming mainly affects night temperatures
and colder nations, EXCEPT Antarctica.
People prefer warmer centuries over colder centuries
No one was harmed by the +50% rise of CO2 since 1850
No matter what we do, the future climate (average temperature( will get warmer, unless it gets colder.
The best climate on our planet is during an interglacial and a warming trend.
We are currently in a warming trend (since the late 1600s) and in an interglacial (for the past 12,000 years)
We should be celebrating the current climate.
This recent study shows that the cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year globally mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing blood pressure to increase leading to heart attacks and strokes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
My modest contribution
ChatGPT says the consensus identifies CO2 to blame. So much for AI
AI is just a marketing term. The machine says what it was told to say, and that’s not AI. It does what it was what it was programmed to do; it doesn’t figure out on its own what it should be doing. But “AI” is sexy. Modern. The New Way.
Here is one new 2023 study that says that depending on the surface temperature and solar irradiance datasets that one uses, one can show anything from mostly human-caused warming to mostly natural warming.
‘Challenges in the Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Trends Since 1850’
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e
The datasets are historical so there is not much that can be done about them.