A Realist Analysis of Global Temperature

And Carbon Dioxide, CO₂ Levels

Way too much effort has been put into a non-issue in regards to extreme climate change; because the planet’s climate has never been constant since the planet was formed. In general, the temperatures have run from 12 degree C to 22 degrees C with the average around 17 degrees C. Since we are now around 15 degrees C, which is on the cold side of the average, it’s hard for me to see where the problem is. Especially, since more people die from the cold weather then the hot weather and current temperatures are below normal and therefore not a threat.

Then we have CO₂ which has run from a high of around 7,000 ppm around 500 million years ago to 420 ppm today, again historically very, very low. And there does not seem to be any correlation between the two. In fact, if you look at the last 65 million years the CO₂ dropped from around 800 ppm to below 200 ppm and temperature dropped form 22 degrees C to around 12 degree C around 1650.  But then CO₂ had been dropping for over 100 million year so where is the correlation?

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So now, let’s look at the more current climate. But before we can do that, we must look at where all our information comes from. CO₂ started to be actually tracked by NOAA in 1958. Their website is https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ and the CO₂ levels are published monthly. There is an annual cycle to the CO2 levels, as in the summer, in the northern hemisphere the CO₂ levels go down as the vegetation uses the CO₂ as food. Then in the winter, we burn lots of carbon based fuels for heating and the levels go back up. Local temperatures have been recorded since the time of the U. S. civil war but they have only been turned into a global temperature going back to 1880 recently with modern computers by NASA. The estimated global temperatures can be found at https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/  in their table Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) in text or CSV format. However, they are not published as a temperature but as an anomaly from the average temperature from 1950 to 1980 estimated to be 14 Degrees C. which is odd since it’s in the middle of the range that we are looking at which is not a good practice statistically. The reason I say this is that the calculated global temperatures are re-calculated every month as adjustments are made to the software. The process used in called Homogenization by NASA. 

To get the anomaly, you would take the current temperature, say 14.8 degrees C and subtract 14 degrees C leaving .8 degrees C and then multiple that by 100 to give you an anomaly of 80. The NASA LOTI table shows that value for every month from the current back to January 1880. I don’t understand why this is done like that nor why they don’t use kelvin like everyone else would use doing research on the quantity of heat in a subject material. I guess it’s because the temperature changes are so small that it’s hard to show a change relevant to the subject as 80 looks a lot bigger than .8 but we have to work with what we are given. For example, 14.8 degrees C divided by 14.0 degrees C equals 5.7% and 287.95 degrees K divided by 286.15 degrees K = 1.0%. A Note, Kelvin or K is used when making these kinds of calculation is science and engineering.

I have all these values in an Excel spreadsheet in column format by month from the current year back to September 2012, Sadly I didn’t keep the ones back to when I started in 2007 since I didn’t realize, back then, that the values in the table were not fixed and there were changes in them as NASA modified the process used to calculated all the values. There are presently 1,707 values in the LOTI table.

We use the NOAA Co₂ value starting in 1958, as is, then use the NASA anomalies from 1958 with an adjustment to determine if there is a reasonable correlation between the two over time. The method used was to create a monthly percent increase for each since 1958 the NOAA data is useable as published. The NASA anomalies need to be adjusted as they don’t represent the actual heat in the atmosphere. The base has to be absolute zero 273.15 K (Kelvin) so we can determine the actual increase in thermal energy in the atmosphere. That is a straight forward calculation which needs no description. Once we have the monthly temperature in degree kelvin, we then calculate the increase in thermal energy from 1958 to the present.

The comparison is then very simple. The first plot shown below as the black plot is the monthly CO₂ level in the atmosphere as a percentage increase from 1958. The annual cycle is clearly shown in the Chart. The blue plot is the trend line with a excellent fit with a geometric increase that shows there has been no slowdown in the increase. The equation for the trend is shown in red. The second plot shown below in red (hard to see here) is the monthly heat value of the atmosphere in Kelvin and as percentage increase from 1958 just like CO₂. The yellow heat content plot is the trend line with a reasonable fit and the equation for it is shown red at the bottom of the chart. The scales on the chart axes are the same for both plots 95%5 to 150%, so the relationships are correct.

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Now since it’s kind of hard to see the temperature changes on Chart 8a as they are so small let’s change the scale on the chart and make a new chart. The new Chart is Chart 8 and the scale on the right side is from 95% 105% the scale on the left side is the same at 95% to 150%. With that change, we can see some movement as shown in Chart 8 on the next page. When you compare the two Charts, you can also see how easy it is to make something look like it is something else.

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 This chart shows that if nothing changes from what it is now, by 2038 CO₂ will have gone up by 145% and the heat in the atmosphere only .5% and that’s both from the base of 1958. Since we are told that the base is 14 degrees C which is actually 387.15 degrees Kelvin, 100.5% will only be 288.6 degrees Kelvin or around 15.5 degrees C. That is still nowhere near the historic average of 17.0 degree s C.

There is however, scientific evidence that this is probably relatively close to what the physics is predicting as what is shown in a paper written by W. A. Wijngaarden and W. Happer and published on June 8 2020 titled Dependence id Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases. It’s a 38 page work with significant ramifications to the validity of the IPCC climate change narrative. The bottom line to this scientific study is that there is NO DANGER to additional CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere. Any warming that might be caused by CO₂ has for the most part already been accounted for.  Page 13 from that paper, shown on the next page, clearly shows that the sun’s radiation absorption bands for CO₂ are now saturated and there will be no additional effect. The green line is no CO2, the black line is the correct level of CO₂, and the red line is double the current level of CO₂. As can be clearly seen the black and red lines are virtually identical. In other words, the absorption bands of water in the atmosphere are saturated by the CO₂ level around 400 ppm so that even if CO₂ goes to 800 ppm it will have little to no effect on global temperature.

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In summary, we have shown using two methods that CO₂ is not a danger but we will be in great danger if we really try to get rid of Fossil fuels. There are three reasons for this assessment that a realistic engineering assessment of switching from fossil fuels to Solar PV and Wind power is just not realistic.

First, the Green power generation required to replace the existing fossil fuel power generating capacity exceeds the “scarce” raw materials available on the planet to make and maintain them. As shown in the next, three reasons.

Second, the life spans of solar PV and wind power devices are “significantly” less than conventional power plants. So they will need to be replaced constantly.  

Third, Solar PV and Wind are both intermittent sources and are not suitable for base load power at the levels required for an advanced technology based economy. The amount of batteries required to smooth the load are also of a relatively short life and would be to be replaced constantly.

Four, The locations for solar PV and Wind generation are generally not were the needs are and they are all in different time zones the Transmission grid will need to be significantly  increased to allow for the high voltage flows over long distances.

Then there is the fact that CO₂ levels are now below optimum for plant life to use photosynthesis efficiently; the chemical process of converting sun light and CO2 into sugars to make the food they need to grow. CO₂ levels above 1,000 ppm would be desirable and anything below 300 ppm CO₂ is risky as planets need a minimum of 180/200 ppm CO₂ or they die.