From anecdotes and data: The four most recent warming periods ( Minoan, Roman, Medieval ... and the present Modern Warming, since the late 1600s), were more prosperous times, with good crop production. The Modern Warming featured the greatest increase of human productivity, prosperity, and food production, in the history of our planet. Happening as CO2 levels rose. The cooling periods brought more storms and famines.
Today there is a multi-trillion dollar "green" industry demanding less CO2 in the atmosphere, that features a Swedish teenage girl, who dropped out of high school, and got rich. This blog cares about Swedish girls, and honors them. Ms. Greta "Thundering" Thunberg, for one example, was my "Climate Buffoon of the Year" for 2019. There is no greater honor presented at this "The Honest Global Warming Chart" blog!
This blog depends on real science, not angry Swedish teenagers: Not false assumptions that the precise effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is known.
Not false assumptions that the future global average temperature is easily predicted, by merely estimating the future CO2 level.
Real climate science starts with geology: The CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is unusually low now, at 415 parts per million (ppm), relative to levels determined by geologists, during the history of our planet (ranging from roughly 180ppm to 7,000ppm). The C3 photosynthesis plants we eat for food evolved with CO2 levels ranging from about 2,000 to 3,000ppm.
C3 plants are actually starved for CO2 at the current 415ppm outdoor CO2 level. All plants grow larger and faster, and need less water too, when grown inside greenhouses using CO2 enrichment systems. The enrichment target may be about 1,000ppm, rather than 2,000 to 3,000 ppm, because the natural gas burned to create CO2 is not free. An Ideal CO2 level, based on recent Earth history is at least 1,000ppm. But CO2 above 1,000ppm, closer to the 2,500ppm average for geological time, should be even better for the C3 plants.
CO2 in the atmosphere should be considered in a geological context, not just the past few hundred years. And as part of the whole Carbon Cycle, including the three media which hold CO2 (air, oceans, and rocks). The majority of our planet's CO2 is locked up in organic carbonaceous rocks, exceeding the amount in ocean water by several orders of magnitude. Those pesky mollusks, when making their shells, were really good at CO2 sequestration!
Most of the rest of the CO2 on the planet is stored in the ocean water. When the oceans get warmer, they release some of their dissolved CO2 out of solution, causing the atmospheric CO2 level to increase. When the oceans get cooler, more CO2 is dissolved in the water, causing the atmospheric CO2 level to decline.
Think of a warm soda pop in a two liter bottle you just bought at the store. Drive home and open it up right away, while it's still warm, and it loses lots of CO2. If that's me, it sprays all over the place, and the wife scolds me like I was a child, And even worse, the soda pop tastes "flat". You need patience to get the bottle really cold before opening it, so there will be more carbonation in your drink, and it will taste better. For example, you can more quickly chill a warm can of pop in the freezer. If that's me. I'll forget about it until it explodes that night, and get scolded again, which happened to me yesterday ! That example somehow explains CO2 dissolved in oceans.
The greenhouse warming effect in the atmosphere has NOT been proven outside of a laboratory closed system experiment, usually using artificially dried air. The greenhouse effect in the atmosphere is merely assumed, not proven. The lab experiments suggest a mild, harmless warming effect.
I have no problem with that assumption -- I just do not declare it to be a fact.
Brilliant scientists, such as Freeman Dyson and William Happer, have been quoted as saying that if it the greenhouse effect does exist, the effect of CO2 could be too small to measure. Reason: Water vapor in the atmosphere, another greenhouse gas, which does not stay constant, is the primary greenhouse gas.
There is also no empirical data which proves an atmospheric concentration of 280ppm pre-industrial age is “ideal”, and that 415ppm today, or more, is dangerous. There is no evidence that anyone has ever been harmed by the rise of CO2 from 280ppm (rough estimate for the mid-1700s from Antarctica ice cores) to 415ppm today.
We should be thinking about a real long term danger from CO2 -- levels below 200ppm, would severely stunt plant growth. Such low CO2 levels are expected the next time Canada and other northern nations are covered with a thick ice glacier, which last happened only 20,000 years ago. We should be figuring out how to liberate the CO2 bound up in carbonaceous rocks ... for after fossil fuels run out.
Any discussion on the "right" level of atmospheric CO2, without any reference to the historical Carbon Cycle, is a deliberate deception. The atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased from roughly 280 ppm AT ONE LOCATION (Antarctica ice core proxy) to 415ppm today, measured real time at one Hawaii location, in the air, since 1958. The measurements since 1958 are reliable.
There is NO statistically significant dataset(s) to prove the increase in atmospheric CO2 caused any of the estimated / measured warming since the late 1600s. There is NO statistically significant dataset(s) to prove global warming since the late 1600s made our planet's climate worse.
But there are hard data from geological history which demonstrate no correlation between the estimated level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the estimated global average temperature. For the past 500,000 years, Antarctica ice core studies tell us atmospheric CO2 levels did NOT cause ocean temperatures to change. The opposite relationship happened. Ocean temperatures caused changes in the atmospheric CO2 levels hundred of years later.
The Carbon Cycle has been "out of sync" for 160 million years. This is caused by the evolution of shelly marine organisms which sequestrate CO2, combined with calcium, to make hard shells from calcium carbonate. After these creatures die, their shells form organic limestone. Much more CO2 is going into rock creation, than is being released by erosion of those rocks.
160million years ago, the atmospheric level of CO2 was around 2,500ppm. 20,000 years ago, during the coldest portion of the current Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 levels were estimated at 180ppm, using air bubbles trapped inside Antarctica ice cores. Below 200ppm, C3 plant grtowth is severely stunted, and below 150ppm, C3 plants begin to die because photosynthesis stops.
The oceans contain about 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere, and 19 times more than the land biosphere. CO2 moves between the atmosphere and the ocean by molecular diffusion. In general, warmer tropical waters release CO2 to the atmosphere, while cooler high-latitude oceans take up CO2 from the atmosphere. The CO2 level is about 10 percent higher in the deep ocean than at the surface.
The two basic mechanisms that control the distribution of CO2 in the oceans are referred to as the solubility pump (and there is a biological pump). The solubility pump control follows Henry’s Law, modified for the chemistry of the oceans. As we exited the cooler centuries of the Little Ice Age, after the 1600s, oceans have warmed and released an unknown amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Humans have also added CO2 by burning fossil fuels. Those fossil fuels, oil gas and coal, contain carbon that originally came from carbon dioxide in the air. The carbon ended up being sequestered underground. By burning fossil fuels, we release CO2 into the atmosphere that was originally in the atmosphere long ago. Think of fossil fuel burning as CO2 recycling !
Burning fossil fuels also releases real pollution. Not that much with modern pollution controls, but some. It is obvious from the air pollution in Indian and Chinese cities that some fossil fuels are being burned without modern pollution controls. That's a serious environmental problem. But it gets almost no attention from "environmentalists" outside those nations. CO2 is not a pollutant, no matter what the Obama EPA declared. CO2 is the staff of life on our planet. And the current level of CO2 is too low.
But never mind the real science I present here. High school dropout Greta "thundering" Thunberg says the world is going to end in 12 years from climate change! And how could such a happy, pleasant, certain, and "mild mannered" girl, be wrong?