There are two gases in the Earth's atmosphere without which living organisms could not exist.
Oxygen is the most abundant, 21% by volume, but without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400 ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all.
This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells.
This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells.
This process also produced all of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
The relative proportions of carbon dioxide and oxygen have varied very widely over the
geological ages as shown in Figure 8.11.
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| Figure 8.1 Changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the geological ages |
The relationship between concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and surface
temperature over the geological record is shown below2.
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| Figure 8.2 Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and surface temperature over geological ages |
Temperature is after C.R. Scotese3and CO2 after R.A. Berner and Z Kothavala4
It will be seen that there is no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the earth’s surface.
During the Cambrian a temperature only 10ºC above today endured a maximum of 18 times the current CO2 concentration. During most of the Paleozoic this reduced to 10 times over today with no temperature change. During the latter part of the Carboniferous and the Permian 250-320 million years ago, carbon dioxide concentration and temperature were similar to today but CO2 went up to nearly 8 times what it is today with the temperature was only 10ºC higher in the Jurassic. A fall in CO2 during the Cretaceous and Tertiary made little difference to the temperature and it is only quite recently that both have reached their present level. Oxygen in the atmosphere fluctuated from 15 to 35% during the whole period.
The theory that carbon dioxide concentration is related to the temperature of the earth’s surface is therefore wrong.
The growth of plants in the Carboniferous caused a reduction in atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide, forming the basis for large deposits of dead plants and other organisms. Plant debris became the basis for peat and coal, smaller organisms provided oil and gas, both after millions of years of applied heat and pressure from geological change; mountain building, erosion, deposition of sediments, volcanic eruptions, rises and fall of sea level and movement of continents. Marine organisms used carbon dioxide to build shells and coral polyps and these became the basis of limestone rocks.
Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by return to the atmosphere of some of the gas that was once there promotes the growth of forests, the yield of agricultural crops and the fish, molluscs and coral polyps in the ocean.
An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide can be shown to be beneficial 5
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| Figure 8.3. Enhancement of photosynthesis by increases of carbon dioxide5 |
It is worth quoting the abstract of the paper by Randall et al 20135
Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.
MEASUREMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE CONCENTRATION
The above estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration were made from a range of proxy estimates. The current claim that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a controlling influence on the earth’s climate means that the claim depends on the accuracy with which this concentration can be measured, both in the past and in the present.
Early chemical measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere have been suppressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Chapter 1 of the IPCC Fourth Report6, entitled “Historical overview of Climate Change Science” makes no mention of any early measurements. Weart7 in his History of the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect also makes no mention of them.
Yet Beck8 has provided an annotated list with links to internet access of almost 200 references to peer reviewed academic scientific journal articles containing some 40,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide by chemical methods between 1800 and 1960. Comprehensive data sets in more than 390 papers were ignored despite contributions from prominent scientists like Robert Bunsen, Konrad Roentgen, and J S Haldane or the Nobel Prize winners August Krogh and Otto Warburg.
Beck lists publications of measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 18169 and in 183010 by Theodore de Saussure. He was the son of Horace-Benedict de Saussure, who invented the Hot Box (which resembled a greenhouse) which was the basis of the theory of the climate developed by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1822 and 1824 which is claimed to have originated the greenhouse effect. (See my Chapter 5)Yet the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide by de Saussure’s son are completely ignored. Other early references by Letts and Blake11from The Royal Dublin Society give an additional list of early measurements.
Beck12-14 has published several summaries and commentaries on the early measurements and includes an argument with Ralph Keeling15
Engelbeen16 has provided a useful summary of Beck’s results where he disagrees with some of his conclusions. Maijer has also been critical17
Most of the early measurements were from Northern Europe. Beck considered that the earliest measurements were subject to various errors but the widespread use of more reliable equipment, particularly the Pettenkofer titrimetric method in 1812 led to high accuracy, with a maximum 3% error reducing to 1% for the data of Henrik Lundegardh18,19.
The measurements selected by Beck were from rural areas or the periphery of towns, under comparable conditions of a height of approx. 2m above ground at a site distant from potential industrial contamination. They showed a variation with time of day, of season, and of wind speed and direction, making it difficult to derive a local average. There were frequent measurements of concentrations higher than those reported as background concentrations by NOAA at present.
These measurements were made by real people with proper instruments in a large number of localities. They give a much better appreciation of variability and change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the period than the deductions from gas trapped in ice cores which are from unrepresentative locations and subject to much uncertainty20.
In 1958 Charles Keeling, introduced a new technique for the accurate measurement of atmospheric CO2 using cryogenic condensation of air samples followed by NDIR spectroscopic analysis against a reference gas, using manometric calibration.
Subsequently, this technique was adopted as an analytical standard for CO2 determination throughout the world, including by the World Meteorological Association.
The climate models sponsored by the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change are based on the belief that the global climate has a balanced energy which is only changed by increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. These gases are assumed to be well-mixed so that their concentration, all over the world, is a constant at any one particular time, only increasing with human emissions.
In order to support this theory Keeling at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, discovered that there was an almost consistent backgroundconcentration of carbon dioxide which could be considered to apply globally and identified from suitable sites which could be shown to increase with carbon dioxide emissions.
The procedure required to indentify this backgroundis described in some detail by Tans and Thoning21 for the observatory at Mauna Loa.
Measurements whose standard deviation fell below a specified minimum were rejected. On average, over the entire record, there are 13.6 retained hours per day with background CO2. The rest were rejected as noise.
Beck22 has discussed the Mauna Loa measurements. Comparison between old wet chemical and new physical methods in 1958 and 1967 on sea and land give a difference of about +10 ppm for the new procedure
A similar procedure has been described for New Zealand 23
At Baring Head maritime well mixed air masses come from the Southerly direction, and a baseline event is normally defined as one in which the local wind direction is from the South and the standard deviation of minute-by-minute CO2 concentrations is <<0.1 ppmv for 6 or more hours
This background concentration is supposed to be well- mixed and to be unaffected by sources and sinks.
Yet the oceans are themselves contaminated with sources and sinks24
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| Figure 8 4 CO2 flux for the oceans24 |
The region around Mauna Loa includes areas with CO2emissions, and much of the rest is a sink. It is understandable how difficult it is to get a sufficiently constant sample.
In order to claim that there is such a thing as a background CO2it has been necessary to ensure that all measurements everywhere in the world are made from samples from over the oceans. Measurements over land surfaces have been comprehensively discouraged.
Yet the greenhouse effect is about emissions, namely contamination. It is crazy, to take all this trouble to make measurements which do not involve the emitted gases themselves, but only a small fraction that is considered to be well-mixed, then to claim that it is these background figures apply to the entire atmosphere.
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| Figure 8.5 Distribution of carbon dioxide emissions25 |
This map shows that actual local concentrations of carbon dioxide are greatest over the three large industrial areas. Since the supposed greenhouse effect is dependent on the logarithm of the carbon dioxide concentration, increases above these areas is negligible or zero and the main supposed effects are on the areas with low current concentrations.
This map does not tell the whole story. Satellite measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have recently improved with the Atmospheric Infra Red Sounder (AIRS) on NASA;s Aqua level 3 satellite, which is able to provide monthly figures for mid troposphere concentration26
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| Figure 8.6 Average carbon dioxide concentration in the mid troposphere July 200926 |
This map shows that for the mid troposphere regions the high emissions from the industrial countries are circulated, by the atmosphere, so that they are no longer above the regions of emission. Since this is a time as well as a column average the actual carbon dioxide concentration at any small region in the atmosphere is changing all the time and an overall figure above a particular place on the earth is continuously varying and currently unpredictable.
It also means that background measurements are no longer relevant, as are any measurements made only on the surface. If extra emissions have an effect on the climate those places where the CO2 concentration is high will have little or no change because of the logarithmic relationship. Rural and lower CO2 places would have the greatest changes from an increase and has been shown in Figure 8.3, this is likely to be beneficial. So carbon dioxide is not well-mixed in the atmosphere and the overall global models need to be modified to allow for regional CO2 change as they have already been modified to allow for regional temperature and precipitation27.
NASA has even provided an animated video30 based on a model of what they think happens. It shows that actual carbon dioxide concentrations vary with time and level everywhere in the atmosphere. The new OC-2 satellite promises to make individual time- and level-based measurements.28
A comparison between Figures 8.5 and 8.6 shows that there is a strong correspondence between regions with high CO2 emissions in Figure 8.5 and regions with higher CO2 concentration in Figure 8.6s. It is therefore true that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is largely caused by CO2 emissions.
There are two stable nonradioactive isotopes of carbon C12 about 98.9% and C13 about 1.1%. Since there is a slight difference in the ratio between them for C3 and C4 plants whose difference in physiology attempts are made to prove that decreases in the proportion of C13 is due to fossil fuel combustion. This is now unnecessary as the AIRS map (Figure 8.6) proves it is true.
MEASUREMENT OF DOWNWARD INTENSITY
There are now measurements of downward radiation from regions absorbing radiation from the earth in associated with carbon dioxide. An example is shown in Figure 8.7
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| Figure 8.7 Downward radiation intensity from atmospheric carbon dioxide |
CONCLUSIONS
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is essential for all life on earth. The IPCC has deliberately concealed its irregular distribution in the atmosphere and the oceans and suppressed the evidence in the published literature. They have even ignored current satellite-derived evidence. Climate models based on an assumption that carbon dioxide concentration is approximately constant in the atmosphere or the oceans are therefore wrong.
REFERENCES
1Dudley R 1998 J exp Biology 201 1943-1050 http://jeb.biologists.org/content/201/8/1043.full.pdf
2 Plant Fossils of West Virginia http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
3 Scotese C R http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
4 Berner R A and Kothavala Z 2001 GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time American Journal of Science, Vol. 301, February, 2001,P.182±204]
5 Randall J. Donohue, Michael L. Roderick, Tim R. McVicar, Graham D. Farquhar. Impact of CO2 fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50563
6 Le Treut, H., R. Somerville, U. Cubasch, Y. Ding, C. Mauritzen, A. Mokssit, T. Peterson and M. Prather, 2007: Historical Overview of Climate Change. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
7 Weart S 2011, The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#S1. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
8. Beck, E-G, CO2 1800-1960 Historical References, Chemical Method http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/CO2literature1800-1960.pdf
9 Theodore de Saussure, Notes sur les variations du gaz acide carbonique dans l´atmosphere , en hiver et en ete. ; Annales de Chimie et Physique 1816, p 199 http://books.google.de/books?id=6sUNBwXDbAkC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=Annales+de+Chimie+et+Physiq ue+1816&source=bl&ots=cpEMtYnXP- &sig=9PumOQ1w0XwKTLuMN83DvbRpsOI&hl=de&ei=XePJSvirCNmM4gaWrbXHAQ&sa=X&oi=book_res ult&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=Annales%20de%20Chimie%20et%20Physique%201816&f=false
10 Theodore de Saussure 1830; Sur les variation de l´acide de carbonique atmosphérique Annales de Chimie et Physique, 44[1830], 55 pageshttp://www.archive.org/stream/annalesdechimie51unkngoog#page/n10http://www.archive.org/stream/annalesdechimie51unkngoog#page/n10/mode/1up
11 E. Letts and R. Blake, (1899) The carbonic anhydride of the atmosphere; Roy. Dublin Soc. Sc.Proc., N. S., Vol.9, 1899-1902; Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, p 167/
12 Beck, E-G, 2007.180 Years of Atmospheric Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods, Energy and Environment 18 259-281.
13 Beck E-G Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20thcentury http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/evidence-var-corrRSCb.pdf
14 Beck E-G Comment + reply from author to R F Keelng and H Mrijer on "180 Years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods by"by Ernst-Georg Beck,Energy and Environment, Vol. 18(2), 259-282, 2007 http://www.biomind.de/treibhaus/180CO2/author_reply9-2.pdf
15 Beck E-G Reply to Comments on 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 GasAnalysis by Chemical Methods.” Energy & Environment, Vol. 18(2), 2007 2
16 Engelbeen F 2010 H istirical CO2 Measurements Ernst eck http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
17 H Meijer www.biomind.de/.../180CO2/Comment_E&E-on_Beck_Meijer_update.d..http://www.biomind.de/treibhaus/180CO2/Comment_E&E-on_Beck_Meijer_update.doc..
18 H. Lundegardh, Der Kreislauf der Kohlensäure in der Natur.Fischer, Jena (680) (1924)
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/Lundegardh/lundegardh2.doc
19 H. Lundegardh , Klima und Boden und ihre Wirkung auf das Pflanzenleben, Jena 1949
http://www.archive.org/stream/zeitschriftfrb16jena#page/n271/mode/2up
20 Jaworowski, Z. 2007. CO2: The Greatest Scientific Swindle of Our Time. EIR Science (March), 38-55.
21 Pieter Tans and Kirk Thoning. How we measure background CO2 at Mauna Loa http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.pd.
22 Beck E-G 50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa. Energy and Environment 19 No. 7 2008.
23 Manning M R, A.J. Gomez, and K.P. Pohl Trends http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/baring.html.
24 Takahashi T et al.,1999 Deep-Sea Research II 49 (2002) 1601–1622 Global sea–air CO2 flux based on climatological surface ocean pCO2, and seasonal biological and temperature effects http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~csweeney/papers/taka2002.pdfhttp://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid2.htm
25 EDGAR Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/part_CO2.php.
26 Climate Change Indicators http://scentofpine.org/indicators/
27 IPCC, 2013: Annex I: Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections [van Oldenborgh, G.J., M. Collins, J. Arblaster, J.H.Christensen, J. Marotzke, S.B. Power, M. Rummukainen and T. Zhou (eds.)]. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science
Basis.Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker,T.F.,D.Qin,G.]
28 NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth's CO2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04
30 CO2 Forcing http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/25/almost-30-years-after-hansens-1988-alarm-on-global-warming-a-claim-of-confirmation-on-co2-forcing/
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