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Simple Proof that CO2 has little Effect on the Earth's Temperature


Chuck Nafziger
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During the last few years, I have been listening to the heretics denying the global warming that everyone knows is true, and eventually came to agree with the heretics. The 'science' presented justifying an existential threat from CO2 runs the gamut between shaky and fraudulent; follow the funding, protect your career type of stuff. After commenting on a gloom and doom article, "The Basic Math of Global Warming," that contained no math, on OpEd News, the author, Kevin Marley, challenged me "You need to offer proof about GW being a natural versus a man-made thing." I replied, '...you should show me proof that the climate is warming measurably because of an invisible gas increasing in our atmosphere from a quarter part per thousand to a half part per thousand. Show me the evidence and then we can dig in and discuss the state of science these days.' I have not seen his proof, but I did come up with a simple, robust demonstration using high school-level math and undisputed physics, it's the Law, the Stefan Boltzman Law. The Law shows that CO2's effect on the average temperature of the Earth is at least two orders of magnitude, 100x, less than we are being led to believe.

My Ascent from Climate Activist to Climate Heretic

I used to be a climate activist. The covid madness made me look harder at what has happened to science. "Trust the Science" was and is a well-used and polished con. "Repeat the lie" better describes mainstream science coverage. For years, the climate/CO2 story has been getting shakier and shakier and now a Carbon Zero Boogieman has been brought in to herd us into cages.

Trust the Science
Trust the Science
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Where is the "science?"

If we want to save the Earth for humanity, we have to stop Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Mining, Gargantuan Military and our stupid suburban mind set that guides us to feed those monsters while they poison our air, food and water and pollute the landscape and oceans. Life on this planet is dying because we are killing it, not because of a CO2 boogieman.

I have a degree in science. Long ago, amid my university years, I worked in the Thermal Lab at Grumman Aircraft. We did radiative heat-transfer analyses on early spacecraft. Contrary to Big Brother's edict that Ignorance is Strength, I am not afraid to research things. Over the last couple of decades, repeated daily, I heard that "we have to make major changes now or in five years we will all be toast!! Think of the children!" The sky is falling narrative got worn out. The associated "disappearing biodiversity" mantra is explained clearly by looking at pesticides, pollution and habitat loss. "Disappearing biodiversity" is sucked into the CO2 narrative in corrupt ways, intentionally misstating the reasons for loss. The way "disappearing biodiversity" is blamed on climate raised red flags for me. I photograph bugs and the decrease in bugs in my neighborhood terrifies me but climate is not the problem. I have lived in the same place 18 years and have seen lots of weather, some extreme, but no noticeable climate change.

Influential References showing the other side

Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans explained the money pipeline behind the phony climate science. Mention climate change and grants shower down like golden rain. Go the other way and the Ministry of Truth cancel cultures you. Corbett's "How and Why Big Oil Conquered the World" gave confirmation that the climate crisis is another 'control-the-masses' scam.

To fill in the details, I read Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, by Steven Koonin. I do not agree with everything he said, especially his denial that geo-engineering is being used to heighten "weather events". What nonsense. We have the technology so of course our military is using it. The rest of his science looked sound. The difficulty of modeling climate and figuring out how to average temperatures over big regions, makes the precise predictions of future temperature rise and sea level rise impossible. Even basic trends are estimated wrongly by the climate science advocates and their models programmed for well-funded bias.

Another good read, more biting than Koonin's 'Unsettled', is 'Landscapes and Cycles, an Environmentalist's Journey to Climate Skepticism,' by Jim Steele. Steele makes it clear that the tales of disappearing polar bears and penguins that tugged at our heart strings a few years ago. were just more manipulated data and asinine test protocols. The bears and penguins are not being threatened by climate matters. The hockey stick weather chart is shown to be cherry picked and massaged data that does not hold up in the big picture. Both books dig deeply into the difficulty of measuring temperatures here and there and then coming up with an average temperature for the whole Earth. These two books show how climate data is cherry picked, impossibly complicated models manipulated, temperatures "corrected" and data massaged to make the models say what ever you want them to say. The more complicated the model, the greater the certainty that biases have been built in. By the time I finished Steele's book, the religious dogma of Climate Crisis had become another phantom used to scare us kids. All I had to do was pry open my mind's door with movies and books giving a more balanced look. Common sense returned to say this is obvious nonsense. How did I believe it so long? I guess because I trusted the science instead of actually looking into the totally corrupt science money pit being used a tool to cull and control us. The plague was and still is being used against us. The hyped flu followed in line with 9-11, WMDs, Afghanistan, Iraq, Peak Oil Libya, Syria. Swine Flu..... When will we ever learn.

For those looking for a deeper inquiry as to what science has deteriorated into, I recommend:

Science for Sale by David Lewis, Ending Plague by Ruscetti and Mikovits, Osler's Web, by Johnson, and Real Anthony Fauci by R. F. Kennedy Jr. all reveal that science is currently a totally corrupt department of our new, improved, weaponized Ministry of Truth.

The Challenge

In the comments on the OEN article, The Basic Math of Global Warming, the author, Kevin Marley, responded to my climate heresy saying, '2) You need to offer proof about GW being a natural versus a man-made thing, and not say that you got it off of a 'conspiracy-filled' website and that you also know the truth and imply that other people don't. That's childish talk.

I responded, '... you should show me proof that the climate is warming measurably because of an invisible gas increasing in our atmosphere from a quarter part per thousand to a half part per thousand. Show me the evidence and then we can dig in and discuss the state of science these days.'

Where is the science? All I see is fluff exaggerating or making up climate and weather problems. Plot CO2 by year along with 'average' temperature and there is little correlation. CO2 is going up, but not following the ups and downs of temperature. Is the temperature really going up? I don't see it in my life and I've been looking.

The Proof

But I also accepted the challenge and have come up with a robust proof that CO2 has a very small effect on Earth's temperature.. First, let's do a common-sense look at how the CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. 350.org is named for CO2 at 350 parts per million. That is the concentration of CO2 in air that they say is normal or healthy. It is over 400 ppm now and is predicted to be catastrophic if it reaches 500 ppm. How can we approximate the effect in a common-sense way to see if the narrative holds up?

The greenhouse effect says that sunlight comes in from the sun, very high temperature, high frequency energy, most of it in the visible and infrared, IR, frequencies. The high frequency energy goes through glass or CO2 like they are invisible, and supplies energy that warms the earth and makes things grow. The energy coming in has to match the energy going out or the temperature goes up until an equilibrium temperature is reached.. The energy going out radiates (is emitted) from the Earth, to the near zero cold of outer space. According to Wikipedia, the Earth has an average temperature of 14 deg C, 57 deg F, or 287 deg K. The Kelvin scale is the one that has its zero at absolute zero, so it is the one that has to be used in these calculations. Outer space has an average temperature near absolute zero, 3 deg Kelvin, -270 deg C. The energy emitted from Earth at 287 deg K is in the ultra violet, UV, range, glass and CO2 are opaque to UV so much of the emitted energy is absorbed in the glass/air or reflected back to the ground. The temperature has to go up to make up for the energy confined in the greenhouse.

Let's get a feel for the orders of magnitude involved in our circumstance. There are about a thousand squares in each grid. The first grid has about a third of one square blacked in. That is about 350 ppm of the grid. The second grid has about half if it blacked in, showing 500 ppm of that grid.

350 ppm blocked

350 ppm
350 ppm
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500 ppm blocked.

500 ppm
500 ppm
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The grids show 100 % blockage over an area representing the greenhouse gas concentration and they give an idea of the magnitudes we are discussing. The energy blockage would occur as a reduction in energy over the whole area, but still in proportion to GH gas concentration. That mode of action fits into the mathematics the same way.

The difference between those grids does not have the appearance of calamity to me, especially since clouds would cover half the grid and clouds and water vapor have orders of magnitude more effect. than CO2.

The Simplest Climate Model

My climate model is a sphere of uniform temperature, radiating energy to the near zero cold of outer space in all directions. I used the Stefan Boltzmann Law describing heat being emitted from a warm body to a colder one.

I used numbers for a sphere the size of the Earth, at the average temperature of the Earth emitting energy out to space. First, I calculated the energy emitted out assuming a clear sky. Then I calculated how much the temperature would have to increase to make up for a quarter part per thousand of opaque CO2. That was done by inserting a greenhouse factor, g, which reduces the energy leaving in proportion to the concentration of CO2 and then calculating the temperature to which the Earth would have to rise to in order to make up for the energy blocked by the CO2.

P=eSAg(T to the 4th power-Tc to the 4th power)

e, usually written as epsilon, is a factor dependent on color, material and surface texture that reflects how well a surface emits energy . Wikipedia gives an average value of 0.95 and that is in the common-sense range.

S, 5.670374419 --- 10 -'8 watt s per metre2 per K4. Stefan Boltzmann Constant, usually written as sigma.

A, m to the 2nd power, the Surface Area of the Earth,

g, dimensionless) greenhouse factor. 0 for complete blockage of energy to 1 for clear skies, proportional to the amount of green-house gas in the atmosphere. g=(1,000,000-C)/1,000,000 where C is the concentration of CO2 in the air expressed in parts per million, ppm.

T, 287 deg K, Average Temperature of the Earth, 57 deg F according to Wikipedia Tc , 3 deg K, Average Temperature of outer space according to Wikipedia.

From that, my model Earth at its average temperature with clear skies, g=1, has to emit 1.86816E+33 watts to stay in balance.

Once we know the power required, we solve the equation for T, the Earth's temperature, then vary the greenhouse effect, g, to see how the temperature increases to reach the same energy emitted while some of it is blocked.

Climate Model
Climate Model
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Results

not much temperature change
not much temperature change
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I used a 'g' of 0.999650 corresponding to 350 ppm assuming complete blockage by CO2 in proportion to its concentration. CO2 does not provide complete blockage, but I was conservative and did not include a factor to reduce effectiveness. The Earth's temperature would have to rise a mere 0.025 degrees C to make up the CO2 greenhouse effect at 350ppm. It is amazing how little rise is needed, but the Law says energy radiates in proportion to the fourth power of the temperature. That is a giant factor.

Then I plugged in a g of 0.999500 corresponding to the dreaded 500 ppm that would be completely blocked by virulent CO2. That gave a paltry rise of 0.036 degrees C. This is two orders of magnitude less than what we have been primed to believe. Then I tried g=0.998 corresponding to a whopping 2000 ppm of a perfect greenhouse gas. A tiny temperature rise of 0.14 deg C would result from that catastrophic nightmare.

What about methane? Methane is said to be a more powerful greenhouse gas. This model already gives perfect stoppage to the greenhouse gas. The model is conservative, giving CO2 more effectiveness at stopping emittance at average temp than it really has. In this article I am using CO2 interchangeably with the term greenhouse gas, GH gas. This gas is calculated to block outgoing radiation in proportion to its concentration in air. There is zero blockage at 0 concentration, 50% blockage at 50% concentration, and total blockage at 100 % concentration.

Then I simplified the model even more. I let the temperature of outer space go to zero. There was no noticeable change.. Once Tc was gone, the surface area, A, the Stefan Boltzmann constant, S, and the emissivity, e, dropped out and only the original temperature and the concentration of the perfect greenhouse gas were left, giving a concise look at the relationship between a perfect greenhouse gas and the equilibrium temperature, T2.

T2=T/(g to the 0.25 power)

T2=T/(((1000000-ppm)/1000000) to the 0.25 power), T=287 degrees(Earth's average temperature in degrees K).

The resulting numbers are very close to being identical to those that included the near-zero temperature of space.. We did not lose accuracy ignoring the 3-deg K temperature of space.

results using simplified equation
results using simplified equation
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The simplified formula hides the physical part of what we are solving, but it clearly reveals the correspondence between equilibrium temperature and the concentration of a perfect greenhouse gas. It shows how tiny that effect is at low greenhouse gas concentrations such as exist in our world. The temperature just starts to go up at 10,000 ppm, a one percent gas concentration. Beyond that, the temperature rises noticeably and 10,000 ppm, a ten percent concentration, the equilibrium temperature goes up by 7 degrees C. T^4 (T raised to the fourth power) exerts its dominance; small changes in T cover large changes in the greenhouse gas concentration in the range in which we are working. We are being told it is the other way around. I am following the Law. It makes sense and the other way never did.

We should be looking at the things that really change our atmosphere, water vapor, smog, soot, big landscape changes. The climate may be changing, it always is, but there is no climate emergency. CO2 has lots to do with life, very little to do with climate. It is being used as a boogieman scaring us into doing self-destructive behaviors.

This is a simple but robust model. Everything in it meets the common-sense test, including the results. It shows that the tiny amount of CO2 in our air cannot cause a very noticeable increase in the Earth's temperature, even if the CO2 concentration went up 100x. The CO2 narrative is the same crap as the hundred-times exaggerated covid crisis. It is another 'down the rabbit hole' madness being used to frighten the believers into giving up their place in life for a boogieman. I intend to resist being herded and abused by a climate boogieman. We would be wise to get past the CO2 distraction and deal with the way the Earth, air, water, soil, food, animals, plants and fungi are being systematically polluted and poisoned. We have to rethink lifestyles that support Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Mining, Big Oil, Big Banking and Gargantuan Military while they psychotically poison and degrade us and Mother Earth.

I hope those who critique my conclusion will argue science without resorting to the propaganda spewed out on NPR and the rest of the mainstream media. I get no profit from lying to you. They do.

(Article changed on Apr 27, 2023 at 12:38 AM EDT)

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I deal with the contradiction of being a retired mechanical engineer and a Luddite at the same time. I have lost faith in our government: it is totally controlled by the corporate monster that is gobbling up the world. It uses mechanical (more...)
 

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