CO2 – some info

One of the foremost climate scientists in America, Dr. Roy Spencer – principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, recently spoke at a breakfast where the topic was global warming policy (he also has a book out, Climate Confusion) and these articles covered it here and here on what his research was showing.

And yes, he is pooh-poohing the idea of global warming.

…Dr. Spencer observed that the most important thing we need to know about climate is its sensitivity (i.e. positive and negative feedbacks). He demonstrated just how out of whack the IPCC climate models are when it comes to those feedbacks.

A few statistics from his presentation:

Only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are CO2, and only about 5 percent of CO2 is man-made.  Furthermore, it takes 5 years to go from 39 molecules of CO2 to 40 molecules.

Nature consumes about 50 percent of our CO2 emissions.

Some 90-95 percent of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds.

You can see Dr. Spencer’s presentation on our website.

Notice that?  Water vapor and clouds (which are also made, pretty much, of water). We hear CO2 this and CO2 that, that we have to tax the production this source of CO2, that source of CO2, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Methane?  Only PETA and the vegetarians are after that – we shouldn’t be eating meat after all (the new PC area – you just wait).

So, if CO2 is, at best, only 10% of the problem, why are our politicians concentrating on it so much?

He also answered questions – a few here:

For you is there any observation that would make you believe humans are causing the planet to warm significantly?

In order to have a smoking gun we would have to have about 50 years of really accurate satellite temperature data. It’s even questionable whether the satellite data we have from the last seven years, which are our best, are good enough. But I think 50 years of satellite measurements would do it. But we don’t have it.

The global temperature trend since the year 2000 has been relatively flat. Have you seen any change in climate scientists’ point of view as a result? Does this cause them consternation?

Not that I know of. I think too much is being made of that. I don’t use that, or see that as any evidence that global warming has stopped. Because if you just look at the last 30 years we’ve had periods of no temperature increase for 7 or 8 years. That’s because of natural climate variability on top of the global warming signal, whatever the global warming signal is due to. So I don’t point to that. . . .

In Science, in 2005, you, John Christy and others admitted there was a correction needed in some of your data. Has that actually been incorporated into your temperature data?

Yes. I can’t believe this keeps coming up. We made the corrections. It’s a non-issue although it’s one the BBC, I think it was two weekends ago, they had a special and they interviewed skeptics. It was a hit piece. I remember them interviewing me for two hours, and they kept asking me about this whole satellite data thing and basically what they wanted me to do was admit on camera that I made a mistake. Which I did, and we corrected it. That’s science. But that’s all the BBC showed from the interview.

You’ve argued that temperature doesn’t necessarily move in lock step with carbon dioxide emissions. But it’s still not a good idea to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide were 270 parts per million in the atmosphere. We’re now at 385 or 390 ppm. Big greenhouses run CO2 at 1,000 ppm. I think the assumption that CO2 is necessarily bad is a philosophical assumption, not a scientific statement. Nature has picked a certain balance, but I don’t see it as preordained, or necessarily the best balance. If you talk to some plant physiologists they make it sound like life on Earth is actually starved for CO2. I think that is a position that ought to be impassionately considering, rather than automatically assuming that putting more CO2 into the atmosphere is bad because that is not a scientific statement.