This article is one person’s summary explanation of a private email conversation with over 50 parties interested in real causes of climate change.
The cause of global warming - Hype vs Reality Russ Babcock November 10, 2021 Rather than dig up all the examples of rabbit holes (aka red herrings) and examples of nonsense science and try to explain how these examples rate such unflattering labels from me, I'd like to share a response I gave a friend (non-scientist) who had asked me to comment on an article that he read. I'm passing this along in the hopes that what I had to say might help clarify some issues without my attacking any specific messengers. The black font words are taken unedited from the article that I was asked to comment on. The blue font words are my comments. Why does CO2 drive global warming when there is only 0.04% of it in the atmosphere? And why isn’t water vapor the major driving factor? The above title of the article are the two questions being asked. The author does not answer either of them. He explains how molecules like CO2 and H2O can (and they do) absorb and re-emit (i.e. scatter) specific wavelengths of infrared radiation (aka IR radiation). He is not wrong about that, but much of what he says is opinion or conjecture, and he leaves out a great deal of factual information that makes the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative to be completely bogus. None of what he says answers these 2 questions. He just dodges them. So why didn't he answer these questions? Probably(?) because 1. The CO2 in earth's atmosphere is not the driving force of global warming now and cannot be in the future. I will explain below. And 2. because water vapour (aka H2O) in earth's atmosphere absorbs and scatters magnitudes more IR energy than does CO2 and therefore H2O is indeed much more a factor than is CO2 when it comes to absorption and scattering of IR radiation. Without gases like these to absorb the energy, our planet’s average surface temperature would have been near zero degrees Fahrenheit. WRONG! Gases like these do contribute to moderating the flux of energy (heat) from earth's surface to some unknown and relatively small degree, but they do not explain how and why the temperature of 99.9% of the atmosphere (all the nitrogen, oxygen, and 1
argon molecules) rises and falls about 25 degrees centigrade every day as the sun goes up and goes down. Neither N2 nor O2 nor Ar absorb IR, so they must be assimilating and shedding that energy every day some other way. It has to be some way that does not involve radiative energy transfer. The only other way to transfer energy to and from N2 and O2 is by way of mass transfer (i.e. gaining energy through collisions with other masses with higher energy, and losing energy through collisions with other masses with lower energy). An energy transfer that causes a change of 25 degrees centigrade of Earth's atmosphere is a huge amount of energy and it happens every day. In fact, recent research now indicates that without the atmosphere, earth's average temperature would be even less than zero degrees Fahrenheit. The difference in temperature with and without an atmosphere is likely closer to 90 degrees centigrade than the heretofore accepted 33 degrees centigrade. The portion of that heat transfer that we can scientifically attribute to 1 part of that atmosphere out of 10,000 parts (i.e. 0.04%, which is the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere) is infinitesimal. About 99 percent of the atmosphere is made of oxygen and nitrogen, which cannot absorb the infrared radiation the Earth emits. Of the remaining 1 percent, the main molecules that can absorb infrared radiation are CO2 and water vapor, because their atoms are able to vibrate in just the right way to absorb the energy that the Earth gives off The remaining 1% of the atmosphere is not all CO2 and H2O. Far from it. CO2 is 0.04% and H2O averages about 30 to 40 times that amount, or ~0.1%. Most of the remaining 1% of the atmosphere are noble gases, mainly argon. Argon, like N2 and O2 cannot absorb IR radiation. So we might ask this author why he insinuates that the remaining 1% of the atmosphere are gases like CO2 and H2O, when in truth only about 1/10th of them are? In fact Argon is ~0.9% of the atmosphere. Because of the greenhouse effect created by these trace gases, the average temperature of the Earth is around 15˚C, or 59˚F, which allows for life to exist. The earth is indeed maintained at a higher temperature than it would otherwise be, all due to the atmosphere. So how does the atmosphere do that? Answer: It has very little to do with CO2, and little (but more) to do with water vapour. During daylight hours, the sun warms the earth. 99.9% (not just 99.0%) of the atmosphere is nearly completely transparent to incoming radiation, but the earth's surfaces absorb a lot of that energy and some parts of it more so than others. This coincidently explains why black pavement is so much hotter during hot summer days than is the lighter colored sidewalk right beside the pavement. It is also why we feel cooler in the shade when the temperature of the atmosphere is the same in or out of the shade. Why? Because the vast portion of the atmosphere can't absorb incoming radiation from the sun, but human beings can. Heat transfers from the warmed earth each day to the adjacent atmosphere and it warms the atmosphere mostly by way of mass transfer. Except for the 0.1% of the 2
atmosphere that is capable of absorbing IR radiation, most of this warming must occur by way of mass transfer, just like the cold return air to the furnace in our homes is heated by passing it over the heating coils of the furnace. The remaining portion of heat (IR radiation) which is radiatively emitted from the warmed earth can be absorbed and scattered by CO2 and H2O, but it eventually makes it to outer space. The law of conservation of mass and energy states that the incoming energy to earth from the sun must equal the outgoing energy to outer space. But the earth's surface is protected by a warm atmosphere and therefore must be warmer than it would be without the warmed atmosphere. So in this respect, the atmosphere effectively extends the boundary of earth, creating a temperature gradient from earth's surface to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. None of this boundary extension would exist and neither would the temperature gradient if the atmosphere did not exist. So with the atmosphere, the earth's surface still emits the same amount of energy as it would without an atmosphere, but it must be and is warmer in order to do so. With or without CO2! CO2 makes up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere, and water vapor can vary from 0 to 4%. But while water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, it has “windows” that allow some of the infrared energy to escape without being absorbed. In addition, water vapor is concentrated lower in the atmosphere, whereas CO2 mixes well all the way to about 50 kilometers up. The higher the greenhouse gas, the more effective it is at trapping heat from the Earth’s surface. On average, the concentration of water vapour is less than 0.1%. Very few places on earth get warm enough, and are close enough to a source of water, and are windless enough, to reach humidities so high that the concentration of water vapour reaches 4%. So considering that the average concentration (< 0.1%) is much closer to the lower end (near 0), I suggest that the purpose of even stating the high end in this discussion is solely to mislead the reader. And as for H2O having windows, CO2 has more windows than H2O. In other words, H2O is transparent to fewer wavelengths of IR than is CO2. Water vapour is indeed more concentrated lower in the atmosphere, and that is because of temperature. It does not cause the higher temperature. The temperature of the troposphere is highest at earth's surface and drops precipitously with increasing altitudes due to gravity and the relationship between pressure and temperature (discussed further below), and water vapour is for all practical purposes barely even present in the levels of the atmosphere above the troposphere. The troposphere reaches 10 km, while the highest region of the atmosphere ( the thermosphere) reaches 400 km. There is definitely heat generated in the stratosphere (10 Km to 50 Km up), but that is due to interactions with dangerously energetic UV wavelengths from the sun, O2, and formation of ozone (O3). Again, we can thank Mother Nature for that. It's all about natural protection of earth from dangerous radiation, and it has nothing to do with CO2. 3
Scientists say that if CO2 doubles, it could raise the average global temperature of the Earth between two and five degrees Celsius. Only a very few scientists and a whole lot of inappropriately educated media and politicians say that. A whole lot more scientists (appropriately trained scientists) say that a doubling of CO2 will have little to no discernible effect on global temperatures. And they give very good reasons for saying so. There is a wide range of IR wavelengths that are emitted from earth's surfaces. Those wavelengths that are absorbable by CO2 amounts to about 10% of that range. The remaining 90% find CO2 molecules to be transparent on their route to outer space. That 10% is already absorbed / scattered before reaching the outer perimeter of the atmosphere, so adding more CO2 will contribute to more absorption and scattering only in a logarithmically diminishing fashion. Forgive me for the analogy, but adding more CO2 and expecting more absorption of IR is no different than adding more fruit pickers to an apple orchard with already enough fruit pickers, expecting to harvest more apples. Both water vapor and CO2 are responsible for global warming, and once we increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, the oceans warm up, which inevitably triggers an increase in water vapor. It does not make any sense that CO2 can cause enough warming to evaporate more water. If CO2 were capable of this, then water vapour would certainly be capable of this. After all, the concentration of water vapour in the lower regions of the troposphere is about 40 times higher than that of CO2, and water vapour is capable of absorbing a far greater range of IR wavelengths than is CO2. So why is CO2 necessary in this picture? This is absurd. This is what the alarmists are calling their "positive feedback loop", and they invented it because even the alarmists have to admit that CO2 cannot do what they originally claimed it could do. It's just another phoney attempt to hoodwink the layman. Thank goodness for Mother Nature. She made water vapour a condensable gas. Water vapour condenses into liquid particles forming clouds and causing rain when it cools to below its dew point. Water vapour concentration and dew points rise with increasing temperatures. Temperature drives water vapour and CO2 concentrations higher. IT IS NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. For each 1000 metres in elevation, the temperature of the troposphere (lower part of the atmosphere) drops by almost 10 degrees centigrade. This is an effect of gravity. The pressure drops as we go higher, the air gets "thinner", and thus colder. Cold air is less capable of holding the same amount of water vapour as warm air, so the water vapour condenses into a liquid. This cooling effect we see with increasing elevation is why we experience such strong convective currents in the troposphere. Heat rises as they say. It rises because the mass molecules holding the energy have enough energy to flow against the force of gravity, leaving the mass holding less energy behind. Convection is another form of mass transfer of energy. The atmosphere is naturally warmer at the interface between it and earth's surface than it is at higher elevations because that is where the atmosphere is most dense. Most 4
dense means that it exerts a higher pressure. The higher pressure results in higher temperature, all due to another law of Mother Nature. It's called the Ideal Gas Law. PV = nRT, where P = Pressure, V=volume, n is the number of molecules in the system, R is the Ideal Gas Law Constant, and T is the temperature of the system. You can see from the formula, that temperature goes up as Pressure goes up so long as all else is held constant. The cause of the higher pressure is GRAVITY. Gravity is what keeps all mass on earth and in its atmosphere from flying off into outer space. But while we have no way to control water vapor, we can control CO2. And because we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by continuing to burn fossil fuels, even in relatively small amounts compared to the entire mass of the atmosphere, we are disturbing the entire heat balance of the planet. Another falsehood. Yes, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing and it has been doing so for the last 180 years. But this increase is from the warming oceans. The oceans have been warming for several hundred years (consistent with the diminishing ice, as we progress through an interglacial period). Temperature drives CO2 concentration. AGAIN, it is not the other way around, and we ALL know it! Not just us AGW skeptics, but the alarmists know it too. Another thing we know is yet another of Mother Nature's laws. We've named it Henry's Law and it states that the distribution of a gas in a gas/aqueous system is a constant and the constant is dependent upon temperature. The warmer the water, the higher the distribution to the gaseous phase and vice versa. Henry's Law states that any CO2 introduced to such a system will tend to equilibrate such that 98% deports to the liquid phase, while only 2% equilibrates to the gaseous phase. But if the aqueous phase is warmed, then a higher deportment to the gaseous phase will occur. So effectively, only 2% of the CO2 entering the system (from burning hydrocarbons or from anywhere else) will end up in the atmosphere, while 98% will end up in the oceans. Not the specific CO2 molecules of course, but these percentages of the total CO2 in the gas/liquid system.
All life in this photo exists thanks to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 5