Killing the Fake Climate Crisis
Part III: CO2 – Not The Villain You Thought
January 29, 2024
By: A. Withers, Member of Person County GOP
As you probably know, the cornerstone of Joe Biden’s “climate action” plan is an attempt by Democrats to use the colorless and odorless gas called carbon dioxide (CO2) as an excuse to completely control our energy industries, and from that to control as much of the entire American economy as possible.
Their plan goes like this: If we can get the American people to believe that CO2 is “likely” the cause of our “predicted” disastrous climate changes, then Democrats can eliminate all fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) that produce CO2 when burned. Then, they can control essentially everything else in our economy. Democrats would be in charge of virtually every aspect of our lives.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, more and more regular folks are coming to realize that the good life they lead today is very much dependent on these widely available, inexpensive and trustworthy fossil fuels. Perhaps you have seen stories about electric vehicles (EVs) getting dumped at companies like Ford and Hertz. Ford has been cutting back on production targets for EVs, and has been switching factories from building EVs to internal combustion vehicles. Hertz has decided to sell off 20,000 of the EVs they have in their rental inventory. That’s about 1/3 of their total EV fleet. I’m betting this is not the last EV sell-off at Hertz.
Today, most new-car dealers or distributors have huge, unsold EV inventories still on their lots. When customers don't come in for test drives, dealerships cannot place new orders for EVs from the factory.
All of these problems are based completely on the Democrat claim that CO2 made from burning fossil fuels (and cement manufacture) is damaging our climate and endangering the Earth. But isn't it also possible that there are no “likely” disastrous climate changes coming, and that in fact there are many excellent benefits to our continued use of fossil fuels and a continued growth of CO2 in our atmosphere?
How much CO2 is there in our atmosphere? Please see the Figure 1 graphic below, “Natural versus Human CO2 Emissions”. We can see that CO2 is a very tiny “trace gas” in the total atmosphere, only about 0.04% (400 parts per million (ppm)).
What else does the graphic show us? “Natural CO2 flows IN and OUT of land and ocean are assumed EQUAL.” Don’t ignore the word, “assumed". What if there is a 3% difference between the IN flow and OUT flow? Read on!
That graphic also shows that a “Very small Human CO2 source is assumed to cause the atmospheric increase.” Be sure to note the differences in the sizes of arrows used for natural versus human CO2 flows. Dr. Roy Spencer, one of the worlds foremost climate scientists, says in his latest book, “Global Warming Skepticism For Busy People” that the natural CO2 flow into the atmosphere is 20 to 30 times larger than the man-made CO2 flow. This is why those natural arrows are much much heavier than the tiny little human CO2 arrow. The percentage of human-caused CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is not a number which is well defined. After all, one CO2 molecule looks pretty much like another, whether it originated in nature or from burning coal. Over the years I have seen various sources saying the human contribution is 3% to 5% of the total, which roughly equates to Spencer’s natural flow figures of 20 to 30 times the human flow.
But if you think about this for a moment, you can understand why there is serious skepticism about the tiny human contribution being the only atmospheric CO2 source worth considering. If there is a small imbalance between the natural flow IN and the natural flow OUT, that could easily out-produce a human flow that is 20 to 30 times smaller.
Figure 1
Don’t we humans add CO2 to the air when we exhale? Yes, of course we do! But even with 8 billion humans breathing out perhaps 20 times a minute, we are nowhere near the amount of CO2 made from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement. But that doesn't mean burning fossil fuels is a bad thing, or a problem of any kind. Read on…
Aren’t plants healthier and greener with more CO2 around them? Absolutely! Please see the Figure 2 graphic below, "Change In Leaf Area”. Most of the earth shows at least a 5% increase in leaf area, and many regions are showing greater than 50% increase. Of course, those areas with the higher increases are generally arid, so a >50% increase is not massively green, just much more green than it had been.
What is “normal” CO2 concentration on planet earth? Over the past 600 million years, CO2 has been mostly 1000 to 7000 ppm (0.1% to 0.7%). Plants today thrive when given 1000 to 5000 ppm. Conversely, most plants will start dying with CO2 below 150 ppm. Over much of the pre-industrial times we had CO2 levels of 275 ppm. So, we can afford to increase CO2 from the current 400 ppm by 2X - 4X for plants' benefit, and not cause problems elsewhere – including our climate. Agriculture around the globe should benefit hugely from such increases, allowing us to provide food for billions more hungry people.
Figure 2
For anyone who might worry about these higher CO2 levels, please see the following Figure 3 chart, “As carbon dioxide increases, it has less warming effect”. This is a very important relationship from basic physics of CO2. For some reason the Democrats don't ever publish this chart.
Figure 3
With all the thousands of lefty scientists spending billions of dollars studying climate change, has anyone managed to prove that CO2 from human (anthropogenic) activities is causing even mild climate changes, much less an immediate and catastrophic destruction of planet Earth? NO, because the Democrats’ claim that planet Earth will be destroyed in a few years is only a scare tactic based completely on useless computer models and outright lying.
Real proof must include observations, not just models, narratives, and street protests by children. If any technical paper showing proof had been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, we would have seen stories about such a finding every day on every mainstream media news outlet, month after month.
But no such paper exists. Nor is there any likelihood whatsoever of catastrophic, earth-destroying climate changes. Nothing in our monthly satellite or balloon observation datasets shows any increasing temperatures outside long-term norms.
Speaking of computer models, please see the following Figure 4 graph, “Tropical Mid–Tropospheric Temperature Variations”, showing the differences between actual temperature measurements (observations) and plots from many computer models over the last few decades. The plots of circles and squares show actual observation datasets (temperature measurements) from balloons and satellites. The diamond plots are a “reanalysis” of existing datasets, but I cannot tell you which datasets were used.
Figure 4
The lightly-colored dotted lines are from runs of computer models. The heavy red line is an average of 102 computer model runs. Notice that the models predict significantly higher temperature increases over time, compared to observed temperatures. However, please note that satellites and balloons show results largely similar to each other, whereas the computer models are all over the map. Please also note that this "all over the map" characteristic has happened in spite of the fact that computer modelers had the answers (easily available observation datasets) beforehand! It's like your buddy giving you the answers to a chemistry test before you take the test… but you still fail the test!!
Dumb and dumber.
If you were proposing to mandate MANY TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in changes to the American economy, much of it taxpayer funded, would you trust the computer model projections, or the observed data? As you might imagine, our Democrat friends are quite happy to use fearsome-looking computer models to project how warm our planet might be in the future. One must wonder how they choose which model to follow, or do they follow that lovely red "average plot”? I would not put any of my money — or yours — on any of these models.
Nor would I vote for any politician who believes these models are worth using for such a purpose.
Let's finish with a bit of basic chemistry from Britannica:
The process of photosynthesis is commonly written as:
6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
This means that the reactants, six carbon dioxide molecules and six water molecules, are converted by light energy captured by chlorophyll (implied by the arrow) into a sugar molecule (C6H12O6) and six oxygen molecules, the products. The sugar is used by the plant for growth, and oxygen is released as a by-product.
Without this chemical reaction, all plant life on earth and in the oceans dies.
Without that plant life, virtually all animal life on earth and in the oceans dies.
Without plant and animal life, all human life dies.
Seems to me we should be quite happy with much more CO2 creating much more sugar for plants to use for growth, providing more food for animals, and humans!!
And yet, today we have about 500 times more O2 in the atmosphere than CO2. These molecules (plus water) share the responsibility for maintaining life on earth. And yet our Democrat friends managed to convince the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in 2007 that CO2 is a “pollutant” since it endangers life on earth. But no such endangerment has been proven! And CO2 is still considered by many to be a great villain.
Fortunately, the SCOTUS of today sees things differently. They have recently ruled against the EPA that major policy changes cannot be dreamed up and implemented as regulations solely by federal bureaucrats. The Congress must direct such changes, which must then be approved by the President.
Fortunately, our Congress (US House) is currently in Republican hands, so no changes killing fossil fuels or CO2 are likely anytime soon. This is one more reason we need both the US House and Senate under Republican control, with a Republican President.