The title to this post is !00% true despite what anyone can or will say and it’s actually very easy to prove. Chart 8 below, from another paper, shows this in a simple easy to understand Chart. Chart 8 was constructed by plotting CO2 as a percentage increase from when it was first measured in 1958 the Black plot, the scale is on the left and it shows CO2 going up about 28.5% by January of 2018. That is a large change as anyone would agree. This chart was creating using the exact values as shown on The NOAA-ESRL website which showed CO2 at 407.98 PPM for January 2018. No changes were made to the raw CO2 numbers. The blue trace shows the trend line of CO2 and the equation for the trace is also shown. By the end of 2018 CO2 will be 30% higher then it was in 1958 when the first reading were taken. So this is a hard fact.
Now how about temperature, well a global temperature is an abstraction since we have the north and south poles which are almost always frozen and receive almost no energy from the sun and then we have the equatorial region which is either steaming jungle or uninhabitable desert and which receives the bulk of the energy from the sun. Add to that, that only half the planet receives the energy from the sun while the other half is always in the dark. So even though there really is not one global temperature NASS-GISS has found a way to create one though very complex algorithms which they call Homogenization and they publish that value every month in their Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) table. The value for January 2018 was 14.78 degrees Celsius; although they show it as a deviation from a base of 14.0 or 78, its not my system.
Because of the Homogenization process, itself, there is a large monthly swing in temperature so I use a 12 month moving average to minimize the sometimes wild swings in the numbers. Then to measure the heat content of the atmosphere we have to convert Celsius (C) to Kelvin (K); engineers and scientists will under stand this and it is required to get a absolute value not a relative one. With that done we can make a plot of the change in heat in the atmosphere as a percentage change from 1958 so we can match the global temperature to the increase in CO2.
When we look at the percentage change in temperature using the proper units Kelvin we find that the changes in global temperatures are almost un-measurable. The temperature red plot, also starting in 1958, shows that the thermal energy in the earth’s atmosphere has varied by less than +/- .17%; while CO2 has increased by 28.5% which is over 80 times that of increase in temperature. So is there really a problem here? The yellow trace is a linear trend line of the global temperature in K and the equation for it is also shown.
In summary we have in Chart 8 shown why large increases in CO2 are not increasing the temperature of the planet by any meaningful amount. The problem, intentional or not, goes back to physics and how we show information. It’s critical that when we talk to non scientists that information is properly displayed. And nowhere is this more important than when we are discussing temperature. When we talk about weather and local temperatures its going be in Celsius (C) in the EU or degrees Fahrenheit (F) in America e.g. for the base temperature that NASA uses it’s 14.00 C or 57.20 F; but these are both relative measures and do not tell us how much heat (thermal energy) is there. To know that we must use Kelvin (K) and that would be 287.150 K and all three of those numbers 14.00 C, 57.20 F, and 287.150 K are exactly the same temperature, just using a different base. But if the current temperature is 15.00 C that is a 7.1% increase in C, a 3.1% increase in F and a .35% increase in K; so which one is real? The answer is .35% because Kelvin is the only one that actually measures the total energy!
Lastly, it is critical that the reader understand that CO2 IS NOT A POLLUTANT!!!! It is a requirement for life to exist on the planet and more is good not bad. CO2 levels would actually be better if they were twice to three times what they are now as plants would grow faster and bigger. Further, by some crazy means we actually reduced CO2 to much below half of where it is now we would start killing off all the plants on the planet and with no plants there are no animals including humans so be very careful in what you actually do with what you think you know!
Passion of purpose does not constitute correctness of thought!