Chemistry Expert: Carbon Dioxide Can’t Cause Global Warming

Written by Dr Mark Imisides (Industrial Chemist)

Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming.

Why on earth do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.

Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans, and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps. While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges.

In a nutshell, water takes a lot of energy to heat up, and air doesn’t contain much. In fact, on a volume/volume basis, the ratio of heat capacities is about 3300 to 1. This means that to heat 1 litre of water by 1˚C it would take 3300 litres of air that was 2˚C hotter, or 1 litre of air that was about 3300˚C hotter!

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you ran a cold bath and then tried to heat it by putting a dozen heaters in the room, does anyone believe that the water would ever get hot?

The problem gets even stickier when you consider the size of the ocean. Basically, there is too much water and not enough air.

The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required.

Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years to heat the ocean by just this 1˚C!

In short, our influence on our climate, even if we really tried, is miniscule!

So it makes sense to ask the question – if the ocean were to be heated by ‘greenhouse warming’ of the atmosphere, how hot would the air have to get? If the entire ocean is heated by 1˚C, how much would the air have to be heated by to contain enough heat to do the job?

Well, unfortunately for every ton of water there is only a kilogram of air. Taking into account the relative heat capacities and absolute masses, we arrive at the astonishing figure of 4,000˚C.

That is, if we wanted to heat the entire ocean by 1˚C, and wanted to do it by heating the air above it, we’d have to heat the air to about 4,000˚C hotter than the water.

And another problem is that air sits on top of water – how would hot air heat deep into the ocean? Even if the surface warmed, the warm water would just sit on top of the cold water.

Thus, if the ocean were being heated by ‘greenhouse heating’ of the air, we would see a system with enormous thermal lag – for the ocean to be only slightly warmer, the land would have to be substantially warmer, and the air much, much warmer (to create the temperature gradient that would facilitate the transfer of heat from the air to the water).

Therefore any measurable warmth in the ocean would be accompanied by a huge and obvious anomaly in the air temperatures, and we would not have to bother looking at ocean temperatures at all.

So if the air doesn’t contain enough energy to heat the oceans or melt the ice caps, what does?

The earth is tilted on its axis, and this gives us our seasons. When the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, we have more direct sunlight and more of it (longer days). When it is tilted away from the sun, we have less direct sunlight and less of it (shorter days).

The direct result of this is that in summer it is hot and in winter it is cold. In winter we run the heaters in our cars, and in summer the air conditioners. In winter the polar caps freeze over and in summer 60-70% of them melt (about ten million square kilometres). In summer the water is warmer and winter it is cooler (ask any surfer).

All of these changes are directly determined by the amount of sunlight that we get. When the clouds clear and bathe us in sunlight, we don’t take off our jumper because of ‘greenhouse heating’ of the atmosphere, but because of the direct heat caused by the sunlight on our body. The sun’s influence is direct, obvious, and instantaneous.

If the enormous influence of the sun on our climate is so obvious, then, by what act of madness do we look at a variation of a fraction of a percent in any of these variables, and not look to the sun as the cause?

Why on earth (pun intended) do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.

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Dr. Mark Imisides is an industrial chemist with extensive experience in the chemical industry, encompassing manufacturing, laboratory management, analysis, waste management, dangerous goods and household chemistry. He currently has a media profile in The West Australian newspaper and on Today Tonight. For a sample of his work visit www.drchemical.com.au

To be critically honest, it is only the near surface of the oceans that affect the global climate. The ocean doesn't have to be heated right to the bottom of Marianas Trench. It would be more meaningful if Dr Imisides had produced calculations based on the top one meter, or so, of the ocean. Although there are large areas where the water turns over on a regular, or irregular basis. His numbers would still be absurdly impossible and his theory that the sun warms the ocean, not the air, would still stand. 

If you take this principal in conjunction with the previous post on this blog, New Studies Reveal Climate Models Overestimate Man's Effect on Climate by a Factor of 10, it seems obvious that there has been decreased cloudiness and, consequently, increased sunshine since the mid-1990s. So the oceans should be warming for that reason alone.

New Studies Reveal Climate Models Overestimate Man's Effect on Climate by a Factor of 10

Climate change hoax COLLAPSES as new science finds human activity has virtually zero impact on global temperatures

I have edited some of Mike's comments from this article. They strike me as being unnecessarily inflammatory. This is not my favourite web site, but articles like this don't appear on mainstream news sites because #PCMadness is rampant on mainstream media.

Mike Adams

Natural News

Climate change hoax COLLAPSES as new science finds human activity has virtually zero impact on global temperatures

The climate change hoax has collapsed. A devastating series of research papers has just been published, revealing that human activity can account for no more than a .01°C rise in global temperatures, meaning that all the human activity targeted by radical climate change alarmists — combustion engines, airplane flights, diesel tractors — has virtually no measurable impact on the temperature of the planet.

Finnish scientists spearheaded the research, releasing a paper entitled, “No Experimental Evidence for the Significant Anthropogenic Climate Change.”

The paper explains that IPCC analysis of global temperatures suffers from a glaring error — namely, failure to account for “influences of low cloud cover” and how it impacts global temperatures. Natural variations in low cloud cover, which are strongly influenced by cosmic radiation’s ability to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere due to variations in the strength of our planet’s magnetosphere, account for nearly all changes in global temperature, the researchers explain.

As this chart reveals, more cloud cover is inversely related to temperature. In other words, clouds shield the surface of the Earth from the sun, providing shade cover cooling, while a lack of clouds results in more warming:

Cloud cover accounts for the real changes in global temperatures

This is further supported by researchers at Kobe University in Japan who published a nearly simultaneous paper that reveals how changes in our planet’s magnetic field govern the intensity of solar radiation that reaches the lower atmosphere, causing cloud formation that alters global temperatures.

That study, published in Nature, is called, “Intensified East Asian winter monsoon during the last geomagnetic reversal transition.” It states:

Records of suborbital-scale climate variation during the last glacial and Holocene periods can be used to elucidate the mechanisms of rapid climate changes… At least one event was associated with a decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. Thus, climate records from the MIS 19 interglacial can be used to elucidate the mechanisms of a variety of climate changes, including testing the effect of changes in geomagnetic dipole field strength on climate through galactic cosmic ray (GCR)-induced cloud formation…

In effect, cosmic rays which are normally deflected via the magnetosphere are, in times of weak or changing magnetic fields emanating from Earth itself, able to penetrate further into Earth’s atmosphere, causing the formation of low-level clouds which cover the land in a kind of “umbrella effect” that shades the land from the sun, allowing cooling to take place. But a lack of clouds makes the surface hotter, as would be expected. This natural phenomenon is now documented to be the primary driver of global temperatures and climate, not human activity.

Burn all the oil you want, in other words, and it’s still just a drop in the bucket compared to the power of the sun and other cosmic influences. All the fossil fuel consumption in the world barely contributes anything to actual global temperatures, the researchers confirmed.

As they explain, the IPCC’s climate models are wildly overestimating the influence of carbon dioxide on global temperatures:

…the [IPCC] models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature. A too small natural component results in a too large portion for the contribution of the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. That is why J. KAUPPINEN AND P. MALMI IPCC represents the climate sensitivity more than one order of magnitude larger than our sensitivity 0.24°C. Because the anthropogenic portion in the increased CO2 is less than 10%, we have practically no anthropogenic climate change. The low clouds control mainly the global temperature.

The entire “climate change” hoax is a fraud

Carbon dioxide, in other words, isn’t the “pollutant” that climate change alarmists have long claimed it to be. CO2 won’t destroy the planet and barely has any effect on global temperatures (the IPCC’s estimate of its effect is, according to Finnish researchers, about one order of magnitude too large, or ten times the actual amount).

In fact, NASA was forced to recently admit that carbon dioxide is re-greening the Earth on a massive scale by supporting the growth of rainforests, trees and grasslands. See this map showing the increase in green plant life, thanks to rising CO2:

Importantly, reducing our global consumption of fossil fuels will have virtually no impact on global temperatures. The far bigger governor of climate and temperatures is the strength and configuration of Earth’s magnetosphere, which has always been in flux since the formation of the planet billions of years ago. The weaker the magnetosphere, the more cosmic rays penetrate the atmosphere, resulting in the generation of clouds, which shield the planet’s surface from the sun. Thus, a weaker magnetosphere causes global cooling, while a stronger magnetosphere results in global warming, according to this research. This phenomenon is called the “Svensmark Effect.” (See bottom of story on link).

As reported by Science Daily:

This suggests that the increase in cosmic rays was accompanied by an increase in low-cloud cover, the umbrella effect of the clouds cooled the continent, and Siberian high atmospheric pressure became stronger. Added to other phenomena during the geomagnetic reversal — evidence of an annual average temperature drop of 2-3 degrees Celsius, and an increase in annual temperature ranges from the sediment in Osaka Bay — this new discovery about winter monsoons provides further proof that the climate changes are caused by the cloud umbrella effect.

Of course, there was immediate reaction to the posting of these studies. Here's one:

Timothy Osborn, Professor, University of East Anglia, and Director of Research, Climatic Research Unit:

The unpublished paper by Kauppinen & Malmi is deeply flawed and the claims that (1) CO2 has caused only 0.1 degC of warming and that (2) only 10% (0.01 degC) of this warming is from human activity are both unsupported claims.

The paper should not be relied upon.

Their claims are based on a chain of reasoning with multiple flaws:

(1) They claim that climate models cannot be relied upon but do not demonstrate this.

  Hmmm. I thought an overestimate in the effect of anthropogenic CO2 was a good demonstration.

(2) They instead make a new climate model (despite this being in contradiction of (1)).

    It's not a contradiction if you are not overestimating one effect by a factor of 10.

(3) Their new climate model is unvalidated. It is based upon datasets of cloud and humidity without any sources given and which are not up-to-date. They provide no assessment of the accuracy of the data used—these variables are very difficult to measure on a global basis over the time period used. No physical basis is given for their new climate model (e.g. no process is given for how higher relative humidity can make the globe cool).

Many climate models are unvalidated - not put out for examination and testing by other scientists as good science would require, yet they go unquestioned by scientists and media.

No question cloudiness is difficult to measure, yet there are those who claim to measure global sea levels to within a millimeter. They two are unquestioned by scientists and media. If they actually can do that, it would require an astonishing degree of accuracy.

'No process is given...' Seriously. You need to have explained that higher humidities lead to more clouds? 

(4) They fail to consider cause and effect. For example, they assume without any support that a decrease in relative humidity is natural. They give no reasons why it would have decreased. They fail to consider whether climate change could have caused relative humidity to change.

(5) They state without any support that most of the atmospheric CO2 increase is due to emissions from the oceans. They ignore anthropogenic CO2 emissions which are more than large enough to explain the full increase. They ignore observational evidence that shows that the oceans are net sinks of CO2 at present, not net sources.

(6) They dismiss the entire body of climate science—especially that there is a significant greenhouse effect—and instead cite their own work (unpublished or published in journals outside the field).

  

    You forgot about Kobe U research and Svensmark (at least 3 studies see references at bottom of link)

In reality there is strong scientific evidence for conclusions in stark contrast to those of Kauppinen and Malmi, namely that (a) all of the CO2 rise is from human activity, (b) that 100% of the CO2-induced warming is therefore anthropogenic, and (c) that (together with anthropogenic emissions of other greenhouse gases like methane) the total anthropogenic warming is around 1 degC.

Professor Murry Salby revealed that over eons of history peaks in CO2 levels tend to follow peaks in temperature by about 800 years. This, of course, indicates that warming temperatures produce increased CO2, and since 96% of CO2 comes from the ground or the oceans, only a very tiny increase in natural CO2 production would exceed large increases in anthropogenic production.

In all this, we have to also consider sunspot activity - reduced activity results in cooler temperatures as per the Maunder Minimum. Solar scientists expect sunspot activity to reduce significantly sometime in the next ten years or so. Scientists in China and Russia are both more concerned about global cooling than global warming.

The biggest problem with the current climate change alarmism is the extraordinary stresss that it is putting on children. They are being targeted by #PCMadness to the point where many don't think they will live long enough to be an adult. What incredible child abuse! It takes away the dreams and plans of an entire generation. It reduces birth rates among young adults who see no point in bringing a child into a dying world. It is insanity and evil! But, at least I'm not unnecessarily inflammatory.

Top Scientist Resigns from Post - Admits Global Warming is a Scam

UN IPCC Scientist Blows Whistle on Lies About Climate, Sea Level

Finnish Study Finds ‘Practically No’ Evidence for Man-Made Climate Change - Japanese Study Confirms

©  Reuters / Charles Platiau

A new study conducted by a Finnish research team has found little evidence to support the idea of man-made climate change. The results of the study were soon corroborated by researchers in Japan.

In a paper published late last month, entitled ‘No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change’, a team of scientists at Turku University in Finland determined that current climate models fail to take into account the effects of cloud coverage on global temperatures, causing them to overestimate the impact of human-generated greenhouse gasses.

Models used by official bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “cannot compute correctly the natural component included in the observed global temperature,” the study said, adding that “a strong negative feedback of the clouds is missing” in the models.

Adjusting for the cloud coverage factor and accounting for greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers found that mankind is simply not having much of an effect on the Earth’s temperature.

If we pay attention to the fact that only a small part of the increased CO2 concentration is anthropogenic, we have to recognize that the anthropogenic climate change does not exist in practice.

The study’s authors make a hard distinction between the type of model favored by climate scientists at the IPCC and genuine evidence, stating “We do not consider computational results as experimental evidence,” noting that the models often yield contradictory conclusions.

And yet, so many 'scientists' do consider computer models to be evidence, when really they are mostly the imagination of the model's creator. And they are almost always wrong. So why are they accepted as evidence?

Given the evidence presented in the study, the Finnish team rounded out the paper by concluding “we have practically no anthropogenic climate change,” adding that “the low clouds control mainly the global temperature.”

The results sharply cut against claims put forward by many environmentalists, including US lawmakers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who argue not only that climate change is an immediate threat to the planet, but that it is largely a man-made phenomenon. Ocasio-Cortez, better known as ‘AOC’, has proposed a ‘Green New Deal’ to address the supposedly dire threat.

Japanese researchers at the University of Kobe arrived at similar results as the Turku team, finding in a paper published in early July that cloud coverage may create an “umbrella effect” that could alter temperatures in ways not captured by current modeling.

The Other Side of the Solar Activity/Climate Change Debate

At the bottom of this article I present a brief note on the work of a Danish astrophysicist, and a link to his presentation, that I think you might find very interesting, if not a little technical.

The sun is quieter than normal, but don't panic

Some fear that we could be heading to another Little Ice Age, but (some) scientists say that's unlikely

Nicole Mortillaro · CBC News

Our sun's activity waxes and wanes. But it's been quieter than normal, and that can have an effect on us here on Earth. (ESA/NASA)

The sun is quiet … very quiet.

In February, for the first time since August 2008, the sun went an entire month without any sunspots.

Sunspots are cooler regions of the sun. How many appear on the sun's surface depends on what cycle the sun is in. Every 11 years our star goes through a maximum, followed by a minimum (the entire magnetic cycle of the sun, when the poles flip, is 22 years).

Over the past three decades, the sun has been consistently dropping in activity. Maximum has been quieter than is typical; minimum has been particularly quiet. And this has caused some to make the false assumption that, as a result, Earth is going to cool.

This graph shows the decrease in solar activity over the past 33 years. (David Hathaway)

The oscillations here are minor cycles while the overall trend is part of a major cycle.

It all stems from an incident that took place between 1645 and 1715, called the Maunder Minimum, where sunspots all but disappeared. This coincided with the "Little Ice Age" that stretched from 1500 to 1850 in the northern hemisphere. In England, the Thames River froze over; Viking settlers abandoned Greenland.

As a result, there have been strong suggestions that the Maunder Minimum caused the Little Ice Age, but some scientists warn that there were other contributors, such as increased volcanic activity.

This graph illustrates solar activity over the past four centuries. The Maunder Minimum is evident.

On average, the sun produces 180 sunspots a cycle. The greatest ever was 285 in solar cycle 19; for solar cycle 24, so far it's been 116. 

So, with the decrease in solar activity, are we heading into another Maunder Minimum?

"No Maunder Minimum. Certainly no Little Ice Age," said David Hathaway, an astrophysicist who once headed NASA's solar physics branch at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The next cycle looks like it's going to be very much like this one."

He explains that, while the sun does dim during a minimum, it's only by a tenth of a per cent, which translates into a tenth of a degree Celsius. And with the warming by about 1C  that we've seen due to climate change — and the warming that is to come — it's unlikely that we'll notice.

Different cycles

The sunspot cycle is also called the Schwabe cycle. At the moment we are at the end of cycle 24, heading toward 25. And scientists predict that this quiet trend is going to persist.

"There's been this steady decline," Hathaway said. "I'm fairly confident looking at our own predictions and predictions of others, that cycle 25 is going to be another small cycle."

The sun had no sunspots for the entire month of February, a sign of an approaching period of solar minimum next year,

when the sun's activity will be at the low end of its 11-year cycle. (Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA)

Sunspots dot the sun's surface, or photosphere. The sunspot unleashed a spectacular show on Oct. 28, 2003.

This sunspot released one of the biggest solar flares ever recorded. (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, NASA)

But it's believed that the sun goes through many different cycles. Aside from the Schwabe, there is also one called the Gleissberg Cycle, where solar activity decreases roughly every 90 years.

And Hathaway said data over the past two centuries suggests that what the sun is now going through may be part of this cycle.

"We've now seen three or four of these modulations where we have small cycles, then they get bigger and then they get smaller again," he said. "We're at that bottom phase, where we haven't seen cycles this small in 100 years."

This image shows a tiny sunspot on the surface of the sun on March 7. (Helioviewer/NASA/SDO)

Hathaway said that he's probably seen thousands of satellites drop out of space as a result of solar activity causing drag.

"Skylab really opened up our eyes," Pesnell said.

Since then, there has been an increase in missions to study our star, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, Hinode and the recently launched Parker Solar Probe.

So, are we in a minimum?

When astrophysicists talk about solar minimum, they're not referring to the quietest time on the sun, but rather to the sun coming out of its quiet time and and starting a new cycle.

Though February went without a sunspot, a tiny one appeared on March 5. However, it wasn't a sunspot that was part of the coming cycle.

Sunspots are magnetic and have both a north and south pole. One sign that a sunspot is part of a new cycle has to do how the magnetic field lines connect and this sunspot connects in the same pattern as the current cycle.

The sun doesn't rotate as a solid sphere. Instead, different parts of it rotate at different speeds. As a result, the magnetic field lines are stretched out. The magnetic field of the next cycle, instead being north-south would become east-west.

As well, there's the location.

"To be a cycle 25 spot, it's apt to appear at about 30 degrees latitude, Hathaway said. "This was at nine [degrees]. So this was definitely old-cycle."

However, both Hathaway and Pesnell believe that solar cycle 25 should begin sometime in 2020.

Some astrophysicists believe that the next cycle, the one beginning about 2031, will be very significant, perhaps approaching the level of the Maunder Minimum.

And when that happens, sunspot activity will increase. And as activity increases, we are almost certain to see more solar flares and coronal mass ejections, eruptions from the sun. While these eruptions are responsible for our beautiful northern lights, they can also cause power outages as was seen in Quebec in March 1989.

While Hathaway is officially retired, he continues to monitor our nearest star, to unravel its mysteries and better understand its effects on Earth.

"I continue to strive to understand this beast," Hathaway said.

For another point of view:

Another astrophysicist stated recently that there is much more research that needs to be done in the area of cosmic rays effect on global warming.  Henrik Svensmark is a physicist and professor in the Division of Solar System Physics at the Danish National Space Institute in Copenhagen. He is known for his theory on the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation as an indirect cause of global warming.

Basically, his theory is that cosmic rays cause ions in the atmosphere which eventually contribute to cloud formation. Sunspot activity acts as an umbrella reducing the cosmic rays that reach the earth, thereby reducing cloud cover, resulting in warming temperatures. Periods of minimum sunspot activity correlate well with reduced cosmic rays and temperatures.

Over the past 10,000 years, temperature fluctuations of up to 2 deg. C have been noted. Over the past several million years, temperature fluctuations of up to 10 deg. C have been determined to be associated with this effect. At least, that's the theory.

Basically, there is a lot more about global warming that we don't know, than that we know.

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