Lose the CO2 IPCC Assumptions; Find Nature Raising CO2 Levels

I ran into this over at Tallblokes:


Who to Blame for Rising CO2?
Posted: April 14, 2018 by oldbrew in Analysis, atmosphere

As Dr Ed Berry says: ‘How can human carbon dioxide, which is only 5 percent of natural carbon dioxide, add 30 percent to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide? It can’t.’

Kind of sums it up…

Generally just points at this summary of 3 new papers finding Nature not Humans accounts for most of the CO2 increase since the start of industrialization:


Blaming global warming on humans comes down to two assertions:

Rising CO2 in the atmosphere causes earth’s surface temperature to rise.

Humans burning fossil fuels cause rising atmospheric CO2.

For this post I will not address the first premise, instead refer the reader to a previous article referencing Fred Singer. He noted that greenhouse gas theory presumes surface warming arises because heat is forced to escape at a higher, colder altitude. In fact, temperatures in the tropopause do not change with altitude (“pause”), and in the stratosphere temperatures increase with altitude. That post also includes the “meat” of the brief submitted to Judge Alsup’s court by Happer, Koonin and Lindzen, which questions CO2 driving global warming in the face of other more powerful factors. See Courtroom Climate Science
This simple-minded conclusion takes the only two things we measure in the carbon cycle: CO2 in the atmosphere, and fossil fuel emissions. And then asserts that one causes the other. But several elephants are in the room, namely the several carbon reservoirs that dwarf human activity in their size and activity, and can not be measured because of their complexity.

The consensus notion is based on a familiar environmental paradigm: The Garden of Eden. This is the modern belief that nature, and indeed the climate is in balance, except for humans disrupting it by their activities. In the current carbon cycle context, it is the supposition that all natural sources and sinks are in balance, thus any additional CO2 is because of humans.

Now, a curious person might wonder: How is it that for decades as the rate of fossil fuel emissions increased, the absorption by natural sinks has also increased at exactly the same rate, so that 50% is always removed and 50% remains? It can only be that nature is also dynamic and its flows change over time!

Well written. Several nice simple and clear observations like that last paragraph. Well worth the read.

IMHO any one of the 3 papers cited puts a hole at the waterline in the IPCC Ship Of Fools, the three together are hard to ignore and interesting in their implications. For example:



Oh Dear!

Ole Humlum proves that CO2 follows temperature also for interannual/decadal periods.

Humlum et al. looks the modern record of fluctuating temperatures and atmospheric CO2 and concludes that CO2 changes follow temperature changes over these timescales. The paper is The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature OleHumlum, KjellStordahl, Jan-ErikSolheim. Excerpts with my bolds.

From the Abstract:

In our analysis we used eight well-known datasets. . . We find a high degree of co-variation between all data series except 7) and 8), but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature.
A main control on atmospheric CO2 appears to be the ocean surface temperature, and it remains a possibility that a significant part of the overall increase of atmospheric CO2 since at least 1958 (start of Mauna Loa observations) simply reflects the gradual warming of the oceans, as a result of the prolonged period of high solar activity since 1920 (Solanki et al., 2004).

Based on the GISP2 ice core proxy record from Greenland it has previously been pointed out that the present period of warming since 1850 to a high degree may be explained by a natural c. 1100 yr periodic temperature variation (Humlum et al., 2011).

I note that to the degree this is true, then as we go cold in the next Glacial Onset, cold precipitation CO2 stripping and ocean absorption is likely to rapidly reduce CO2 levels. The, roughly, 25% increase in global food production from that increased CO2 level would also “go away”.

The implications for famine and governmental collapse are not good.

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About E.M.Smith

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21 Responses to Lose the CO2 IPCC Assumptions; Find Nature Raising CO2 Levels

  1. tom0mason says:

    My 2¢ worth —
    The paradigm of the UN-IPCC and most cAGW advocates is that natural sinks and sources of CO2 over time eventuate to a static equilibrium, and it’s man’s CO2 input which is upsetting that equilibrium.
    This is demonstrably in error. Ice core records show CO2 levels rise and fall, they do it for many reasons but mostly in accordance with nature’s response to the climate varying over long time scales [ hundreds of years, also note 800 years ago the planet was in a warm phase]. That is to say the natural equilibrium point is a variable that depends on not only current conditions but also past conditions. And the big question is what is the normal range of atmospheric CO2 levels? I would contend that it should be about twice the current 400ppm, for the vast majority (if not all) life to thrive.

    Is the current atmospheric CO2 rise ‘alarming’. Given the requirements to maintain life, the current rise is not alarming, and should be welcomed as it makes growing food that much easier.

    Is the temperature rise since the LIA till now significant? I don’t think so. About a degree in 300 years can hardly be called rapid.

    Is the recent uplift in global temperature significant? Hardly as it seems to have risen by a few tenths of a degree Celsius over the last few decades, wobbled about a bit, and stalled.

    Would a moderate rise in temperature (up to 1°C) threaten life on this planet? No! Humans along with all the animals and plants known today have survived the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.

  2. R. Shearer says:

    The statement about 50% removed/remained balance is not absolutely accurate. Some years it is more and some less, but the estimate of mm CO2 emissions seems to be reasonable. If the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would decline for a year or two, now that would be something. But it seems to be slightly accelerating, with lately the annual concentration increase approaching ~2 ppm.

  3. Hi EM, post this at Tallbloke before looking at your blog
    The assertion about CO2 and Global warming has more elements. These are 1/ CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs lots of long wave radiation (this is false as it only absorbs around the wavelength of 14.8 micron in a very narrow band) 2/ CO2 does not radiate the absorbed radiation to space which is a lower temperature (false as radiation at 14.8 micron has been measured by satelites) 3/ CO2 in the atmosphere radiates back to the earth surface (largely false because the earth surface is is mostly at higher temperature than the gases in the atmosphere 4/ There are no other gases or particles in the atmosphere (particles include water and and ice in clouds) which can overwhelm the supposed effect of CO2 (false as firstly water vapor absorbs over a much wider range of wavelength and the is much more present and secondly clouds have the most important effect as has been increasingly acknowledge by all sides 6/ the present level of CO2 is at record levels (false on many findings including actual measurements of past CO2 around 1941 continuously over 1.5 years three times per day and plus early measurements by eminent scientists dating back to the 1850’s, then proxy measurement going back 100’s of million years) 7/ CO2 changes lead temperature change (false as measurements including ice cores which show that CO2 changes lag temperature changes from daily, seasonal, short term cycles (10 to 60 years) and long term cycles of over 1000 years.)
    I agree with your comments as I mostly do. Regards

  4. oldbrew says:

    It’s normal for ‘natural’ CO2 in the atmosphere to rise when oceans are warming – the Coke bottle analogy. Therefore the natural increase in temps since the end of the Little Ice Age would be expected to show such a rise.

  5. John F. Hultquist says:

    About glacial advances:

    I seem to recall that such things are not quick but the Little Ice Age (LIA), still unexplained (for me), or The Younger Dryas (YD), still unexplained (for me) do happen rapidly.
    My thought is that it would be difficult to respond to a rapid decrease in temperature for individual farmers, but in the USA the whole farming system would respond. That is, a farm operation in Northern Michigan might not survive but replacement crops could be grown in, say, Arkansas.
    Non industrialized regions with hoe-cultivation and poor infrastructure might not fare well. Still such places as the Sahel/Savanna are less exposed to such cold impacts.
    Regarding CO2: I think the current concentration is good, 600 better, and 800-1000 would provide a nice spot with a cushion. If starting at 1,000 ppm and losing 2 per year — crops would still do well with adverse events such as the LIA or the YD.
    My event horizon is a lot shorter than any of this, and a lot shorter than I want to contemplate. I’ll let Barron Trump’s children sort it out.

  6. E.M.Smith says:

    @John F:

    Farmers must react to warm / cold shifts every year. Successful farmers are used to it. Longer term trends shift more or less in sync with the weather move.

    I personally remember the discussions about planting “Corn in Wheat Country” from the ’70s & ’80s as the increasing warmth “up north” let a cold season crop like winter wheat be replaced with a hot season crop like corn “at the margin”. Those same farms and farmers (or their kids…) we remember how “Dad used to farm wheat” and shift back in a year or two “at the margin” as the cold line moves.

    Similar story on Tomatoes in Florida. California is a big tomato state. Folks here talked about the entry of Florida into the market in the ’80s or so. As the frost line moved north, tomatoes spread north… Now a lot of tomatoes are grown in Florida. As cold returns, the marginal producers in the furthest north with more experimental “entry” will call it a failed experiment and shift back to prior crops. This process will move south with the frost line…

    Farmers are also usually ready with a location friendly “catch crop” to plant if the main crop has a failure. Things like radishes or 45 day sweet corn or buckwheat. Since weather is variable, they are already doing this at times. As the frequency increases, they reassess what ought to be the main crop. Corn vs Sorghum is a good example. Sorghum is more heat and dry tolerant. More is grown in Texas than in Indiana for that reason.

    Although well-adapted to Indiana climate and soils, grain sorghum is a minor crop in the state. Since Purdue has conducted relatively little agronomic research on this crop, links are provided to grain sorghum information from other states where the crop is grown more widely. If you have questions about the geographic or climatic adaptability of the information from other states, contact the Purdue specialist listed to the left of this paragraph..

    On a ‘ride along’ with my Uncle Ken around Dallas, we talked Sorghum. A common local discussion by the farmers is “Corn or Sorghum this year?”. Based on expected rains and how well they did the prior year on guessing ( i.e. guessed wet, was wrong and corn was marginal, going to plant sorghum this year…) the local ratio of corn to sorghum planting changes. Over time, as average water variation shifts wetter or dryer, more farmers ‘just plant corn” or “just plant sorghum”. The “corn / sorghum” line will move with average heat and wet, north / south and east / west.

    So I don’t expect to see some massive failure of northern farmers so much as I’d expect to see the corn / barley and corn / wheat and corn / rye and corn / oats lines move southward. The greater the rate of cold shift the faster the move. The “tell” on this will be more sudden use of catch crops and more planting acres of buckwheat and oats…

    IMHO, the biggest issues will NOT be cold. Not even snow. (Winter wheat is planted and sprouts in the fall, then over winters under the snow, and starts growing again “whenever” the snow melts, for a late spring / early summer harvest. Widely used in very cold places where spring planting is unpredictable). The biggest issues will be increased wind (“blowdown” of grown crop causing lodging loss just before harvest), increased rains (more ‘rotted in the field’ and more mold problems), and just mud. Lots of cold rain makes ploughed fields into mud wrestling arenas. It just isn’t possible to functionally farm a mud wallow. Even rice requires a dry time to disk and prepare the dirt (and works better with managed flood irrigation than variable rains).

    You can not fix “lodging” with planting time changes. You can’t fix persistent mud with change of crop planted. You can’t dry your crop for harvest with persistent rains. So the thing to watch for, that will cause lots of failures, is persistent excess (compared to past averages) wind, hail, rains, mud and storms. BTW, that’s what was seen in the LIA and what caused France to have wheat failure and lead to the French Revolution (“let them eat cake” was a reference to the lack of bread flour…)

    To some extent you can shift entire planting regimen to a different paradigm. The Irish and Germans did that with potatoes (so did not have The French Problem…) but the entire handling and processing and cooking process changed That’s a longer harder change. Germans putting more rye in their bread is easier… thus pumpernickel… The English had vineyards but those were lost in the LIA, so England shifted to beer based on a cold weather grain, barley. (Similarly the German tendency to beer over wine). The Russians – vodka from potatoes as even barley has issues in Siberia at times ;-)

    Knowing that, you can predict similar shifts. More vodka and beer, less Zinfandel and Cabernet. More potato fritters and less baguette. Rye bread (and whiskey) rising while corn flakes and tofu rise in price and drop in availability. (Or get shipped in from Brazil)

    Per CO2:

    The plants tell us how much is the right amount. It is 1000 to 2000 PPM. Anything less than that for C3 plants, growth and yield drop as they are unhappy. C4 plants down to 200 is OK and they survive lower if needed. While we have crops in both C3 and C4 (and CAM!) types, it limits your choices a lot to only grow C4 and CAM species. In any CO2 stripping plunge, we’ll shift, though. Even if you don’t know a thing about it, you will know if your corn produced more than your wheat.
    and adjust your plantings year over year.

  7. gallopingcamel says:

    It gives me a warm feeling to have a bunch of experts confirm what my amateur analysis showed several years ago. The fact that temperature leads [CO2] by 500 to 800 years makes perfect sense given that it takes centuries to heat or cool the oceans. The solubility of CO2 in sea water is strongly temperature dependent:

    There is so much hard scientific evidence showing that temperature leads CO2 you have to wonder how anyone can claim a “Consensus” that CO2 drives temperature. It seems that our scientific institutions have been corrupted by politics just like our justice system.

  8. John F. Hultquist says:

    Regarding EM’s comment at 8:45 pm –

    Note that a late season major storm has just now impacted much of the north American grain region. This sort of stuff will be much talked about as the ag industry waits for the mess to clear.
    I look at this site about once a week to get a take on things:

  9. John F. Hultquist says:

    DTN & PF = Data Transmission Network + The Progressive Farmer {magazine}

  10. mddwave says:

    I remember hearing a lecturer talk about the long term carbon cycle. With plants such as coral, the CO2 is removed from atmosphere and eventually converted to limestone. Without plate tectonics where the CO2 would be released from limestone and back to atmosphere, carbon life forms would be doomed. When she stated that fact, she knew she had to “dance around” the CO2 man made believers.

    When I see the huge limestone formation around my area, I wonder what the CO2 leaves would be if those formations were concerted back to CO2.

  11. E.M.Smith says:

    @John F:

    Good point! Lots of folks have no idea that farmers are constantly communicating and networking while they plan yearly crop cycles and coping strategies.

    Originally this was done with “general store heaters” and talking over fences (and some is still done that way). Growing up in a farm town restaurant I saw lots of it happening over morning coffee at the counter. Now it’s moved to radio, TV, and internet.

    Diving thorough the Texas Pan Handle one morning, turned on the radio. “Now for our daily stock report” – Oh, goodie, I thought, I’ve been out of touch with the DOW and stocks for a while… “Corn is up a tenth on weak rain, so lean hog prices are rising, quoted as… ” Oh, THAT kind of stock… live stock…

    RFD-TV (on satellite among others) has lots of farm and weather news, crop prices (current and futures), and more.

    The idea that Farmers are just sitting around planting corn year after year until they go under when the cold comes is just soooo out of touch with the daily (sometimes hourly) adaptive nature of real farming.

    Every August in the California peach country, there’s 2 weeks where it sometimes rains. IF the rain is followed by clearing and sun, peaches dry out, no problem. IF cooler and overcast, brown rot fungus takes your crop. There’s limited spray rigs and more limited crop duster planes. My first exposure to what I would later learn was linear programming was farmers talking about the probability of rain this year, would it clear after, and ought they book the crop duster (and potentially waste that money) or not book and risk being “SOL” when he was all booked up and their crop needed sulphur… Lay in the sulphur, rent a row sprayer, and have crews standing by? (Cheaper but still costly, and if it’s a very heavy rain, mud can make it hard to use).

    Each year a dynamic jockey for positions and mutual strategy game… Longer term, we had early and late season peaches. IF you regularly lost the August gamble, you might choose to replant to the other season when the time came…

    Something similar happens at harvest. Predicting optimal time to pick and scheduling crews for then. Pick too early or late, quality penalties take your profit. Pick at just the perfect time, you are competing with everyone else for crews and costs rise (UNLESS you contracted well in advance and won that lotto…) Again a day by day multi-player betting game… Some folks booking crews in advance for The Usual prime time, for about 1/2 the crop; then hoping to get added crews, one side or the other, if it ripened early or late, and stretch the booked folks to longer hours if all came at once.

    In the end, for things like grains and legumes (and farm animals) the net-net of it all is reflected in the futures markets. Guess right on Hog Bellies and can make a bundle… (My college roomie picked Hog Belly Futures in his class on trading and just happened to win the class competition… but then again, he called his cousin who raises hogs in Indiana who said “Hog Bellies are going up big this year, corn isn’t doing all that well.”)

    FWIW, I don’t trade farm products futures. It takes a lot of literally “on the ground” information that I just don’t have to win that trade.

    So I’m watching this particular round of “winter storms” in mid-April and just wondering what’s it going to do to bread prices in October and blending-ethanol for gasoline ( a few years back due to shortages Premium was in short supply as it took more ethanol than regular and the gasoline companies were blending for max gallons of product so more regular.) and bacon (smoked hog bellies) come next winter… The futures markets ought to be a riot for the next few weeks as all this plays out.

  12. E.M.Smith says:


    Prior to life fixing carbon, i.e. limestone and dolomite; CO2 was way higher. Something like 20,000 ppm. That’s what we’d head back toward if the limestone were are cooked out.

    More frightening is to ask “What drives plate tectonics?” The answer is nuclear decay. Which MUST run out. One reasonable calculation has the nuclear reactor in the planet core running out of fuel after about 4 to 5 Billion years of operation… Oh, wait, that’s “now”… After which you get a persistent slowing as decay heat runs down. After which carbon recycle stops, water of hydration in rocks recycle stops, and we look like Mars.

    One explanation for Mars is that it was like Earth early on, with oceans and atmosphere. But being smaller, the reactor ran out of fuel earlier so it “froze up”, and had most of the atmosphere and water locked up in rock chemistry.

    An interesting implication of this is that any Space Aliens are more likely to come from planets Earth Sized or larger (so more likely to be strong and stocky 2 G types) and very unlikely to come from planets that are smaller (so gracile 1/2 G aliens unlikely unless they have moved to space permanently). Yet at some point getting to space becomes impractical with gravity (it’s hard enough at 1 G, think how big a rocket would need to be at 3 G…) So you won’t find many space faring aliens that are from either a lot lighter or a lot heavier gravity worlds… Most ought to be “about like us” in size and gravity preference. (Again, with allowance that if they’ve been in space a few hundred thousand years all bets are off, we’d need to talk about the “ancestral form”…)

    So while your thought experiment is interesting, the more pressing one is “What happens to CO2 and water WHEN plate tectonics slows and halts? And how soon is that?”

  13. E.M.Smith says:

    Link to RFD-TV Weather Report:


    20 minutes long. “What a weekend” shaping up… and an example of “Moist warm gulf air” being sucked up into the “cold air mass” to make snow and ice over just that area where the glacial period ice cap was a mile high… Nice example of how that would happen. Just keep this up through summer…

  14. Larry Ledwick says:

    Sort of related – item on slowing of the atlantic circulation currents.

    Gee I would really like to see their ocean current speed and temperature data from 1600 years ago, must be really rare books that they have found there.


  15. R. de Haan says:

    E.M.Smith says:
    16 April 2018 at 4:35 am


    I have believed this “nuclear” theory for a long time but since the publications of the Thunderbolts Project emerged I have serious doubts.

    The distortions in the electric magnetic field prior to an earth quake and the blue lights observed shortly before and during the quake all indicate these Thunderbolts Project guys are on the right track. https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2015/11/27/earthquakes-and-volcanoes/ and https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/06/08/serious-issues-with-plate-tectonics/

  16. R. de Haan says:

    Link above via:

  17. E.M.Smith says:

    @R. de Haan:

    While I think the Electric Universe folks have some good stuff to contribute (mostly per comets and things like planet spin and surface features) they do suffer from the “Have a new hammer all the world is a nail” effect. In their world everything gets hammered into the electric mould.

    It really isn’t needed.

    I also find that many of their articles contain unwarranted leaps and flat out errors. Usually not horrible, but still an indication that what they assert is the opposing theory isn’t what that theory really is.

    One example:

    In one of the links you gave ( I think it’s the volcanic one) they assert water VAPOR forms to raise magma and cause volcanoes. That isn’t the mechanism. Water of hydration causes rock to melt at a lower temperature, so magma can form from subducting rocks. Then this magma rises of it’s own accord. Only when pressure is released near the top of a volcano does the chemically and dissolution contained water turn to vapor in an explosive eruption.

    Yes, a minor point. But it indicates either they don’t really understand the accepted paradigm that they are denigrating with erroneous assertions, or they are doing it for effect. (Ignorance or malice – with a possible of incompetence in writing – i.e. they might now but write badly).

    Similarly the statement that “rocks must remain magnetized”. The reality is that the rocks are not magnetized so much as inherently magnetic species in the rock are aligned to the earth’s magnetic field at the time the magma cools and sets. An inherently magnetized species is expected to stay that way as it is by definition inherently magnetized.

    So when I read their stuff, as much as I like the novelty of it, the “slop” between what is the actual technology and what they denigrate as a straw man of that tech; well, it grates.

    FWIW, in my world view there is room for some of the E.U. stuff. There’s a heck of a lot of power delivered to the planet via stellar winds and current flows. Likely it is involved in keeping the Earth spinning as a homopolor motor and may be involved in keeping the various planets in their oddly mathematical relationships.

    Yet it isn’t needed at all to explain volcanoes or earthquakes. Magma chemistry is well researched and would become very difficult to make rational were it not for subduction. (As one example why E.U. isn’t a good fit… it causes more chemistry problems that it fixes other issues.) We’ve got clear examples of faults moving and can readily show the history. California is full of them. You have a 100% exact match of rocks both sides of a fault, but displaced many miles (including rivers that run straight, follow the fault a ways, then pick up again in the river bed on the other side). Uplift from subduction is trivial to see and prove. (Some places in California have uplifted a few feet during my lifetime here, unaccompanied by electrical artifacts).

    Yes, quakes make electrical phenomenon. But the power in those phenomenon are trivial compared to that in the quake. It’s the rock squeeze / release BY the quake making the effects, not the effects making the quake. (I’ve ridden hundreds of quakes and several in the 5+ to 7 range. There typically isn’t much electrical display at all. In fact, I’ve never personally observed any in any of the quakes I’ve been in. Including being nearly on top of the San Andreas and about 5 miles from the epicenter during the Loma Prieta ~7 quake and being outdoors directly on top of a 5.6 or so near Livermore when low sunlight would make electrical displays bright.)

    So they have something to contribute, but more in the realm of space than geology.

  18. nickreality65 says:

    Richard P. Feynman

    For the up/down/”back” radiation of greenhouse theory’s GHG energy loop to function as advertised earth’s “surface” must radiate as an ideal black body, i.e. 16 C/289 K, 1.0 emissivity = 396 W/m^2.

    As demonstrated by my modest experiment (1 & 2) the presence of the atmospheric molecules participating in the conductive, convective and latent heat movement processes renders this ideal black body radiation impossible. Radiation’s actual share and effective emissivity is 0.16, 63/396.

    Without this GHG energy loop, radiative greenhouse theory collapses.


    Of course, that doesn’t stop hosts of pompous “experts” ‘splaining the mechanisms of this non-existent loop with quantum electro-dynamics, molecular level physics, photo-electrics which, when faced with real data, ends up as pretentious, handwavium, nonsense.

    (1) https://principia-scientific.org/experiment-disproving-the-radiative-greenhouse-gas-effect/

    (2) http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/21036-S-B-amp-GHG-amp-LWIR-amp-RGHE-amp-CAGW

  19. E.M.Smith says:


    Interesting ideas. I’ll need to ponder a bit to figure out what all it demonstrates.

  20. nickreality65 says:

    The Radiative Greenhouse Effect Theory

    Premise 1:
    The earth is 33 C warmer with an atmosphere than without. (288 K – 255 K = 33 C)
    So, just how does that work?

    Premise 2:
    There is an up/down/”back” radiative CO2/GHG energy loop between the surface and the atmosphere that “traps” and recirculates energy through QED processes warming both the atmosphere and the surface.
    And what powers that energy loop?

    Premise 3:
    The surface radiates as a 288 K black body with an emission of 390 W/m^2 (K-T 289 K & 396 W/m^2)

    Premise 1, 2 & 3 are demonstrably false.

    No 33 C warmer + No up/down/”back” radiation loop + No BB radiation = Carbon dioxide and mankind play ZERO role in the behavior of the climate.

    Premise 1:
    Premise 2:
    Premise 3:

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