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The CO2 Warming Theory Is the Century's Biggest Lie, Book Claims

original Science

I recently read a book with a remarkably provocative title.

The “CO2 Is the Culprit” Theory of Global Warming Is the Great Lie of the Century

The book is a collection of contributions from several researchers, each writing from their own perspective, rather than a single coherent argument, so what follows is a paraphrased summary put together partly for my own understanding. I’m not an expert in this field, so I have no intention of adjudicating between the two camps. Doing so would rather spoil the point.

I want to focus purely on laying out the authors’ intentions in a somewhat digested form. The authors, incidentally, are researchers at several universities and national research institutes, including Tokyo Institute of Technology. That said, some biased views do appear here and there. But that follows the tone of the original work, and I will neither amplify nor soften it here.

[CO2 and warming are “correlated”]

I won’t deny that, from a macro perspective, there is a correlation between rising CO2 and warming. That’s a fact.

However, there are several points of doubt. For example:

And so on. In other words: there may be some degree of correlation, but the claim that it is the primary cause of warming — the claim that reducing CO2 would solve everything — can’t help but feel contrived.

[The influence of clouds]

Where does the Earth’s surface heat mainly come from? The sun. How much of that solar heat gets absorbed can be expressed by a coefficient called “albedo.” The ocean, for example, reflects most sunlight, so its albedo is 0.9. Soil is low, but deserts are surprisingly high. Clouds are what dynamically change the albedo value. And aerosols (particulates in the air) govern how clouds form. When large amounts of aerosols are present, clouds form, sunlight fails to reach the surface, and cooling progresses (the same story as during the dinosaur extinction).

Some claim that the IPCC’s GCMs (General Circulation Models) underestimate the Earth’s overall albedo, and as a result CO2’s contribution ends up looking larger than it should.

Increased water vapor has a greater greenhouse effect than increased CO2. That is a fact. And precisely because this is known, models have been built that link CO2 to warming using the logic that a small temperature rise from increased CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which raises the temperature further, which increases water vapor further, and so on. But the process of water vapor formation in the atmosphere — cloud formation, in other words — is still very difficult to predict, and reliable data is lacking. And yet public opinion has somehow already settled on a conclusion.

[Back and forth between warm and cold. Public opinion swinging back and forth too]

Looking back at the history of public opinion: around 1900, a researcher named Ångström discovered that CO2’s infrared absorption is indeed significant at high altitude, but that near the surface the effect of water vapor is so overwhelming that CO2 has almost no effect. This once put an end to the “anthropogenic CO2” theory. But later, when unusual weather occurred in the 1930s, a researcher named Callendar (an energy scholar, an outsider to meteorology) revived the CO2 global warming theory. Because it happened to coincide with unusual weather, it won public support in one stroke. However, contrary to his prediction, a cold period arrived in Callendar’s later years, and he reportedly died in disappointment.

Around 1960–70, there was talk of an approaching ice age. This flipped to warming theory in the 80s. A busy story indeed.

Around 1977, the world entered another warming cycle, and the CO2 theory was once again spoken of persuasively. But that too abruptly gave way to cooling again after 2006. Amid successive heavy snowfalls and severe cold, IPCC-aligned scholars struggled considerably to shape public opinion.

The cooling after 1990 was due to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. In 1993, Japan suffered a rice shortage. A cool summer led to a 26% drop in harvest. The country got by importing Thai rice.

Around 2012, research was published showing that changes in sea surface temperature can largely be explained by ocean currents. Ocean currents, in turn, can be explained by Earth’s rotation, its orbit, and other gravitational effects (CO2 doesn’t enter into it). There is also a hypothesis that warming melts Greenland’s ice, sending a huge volume of freshwater into the sea and halting the global ocean circulation (the premise behind The Day After Tomorrow), but it is not considered a dominant factor.

Ocean temperatures around Japan fluctuate constantly due to El Niño and La Niña. CO2’s contribution is negligible by comparison.

Looking back further: temperatures began falling 65 million years ago, and the Earth entered an ice age 2 million years ago. Ice ages alternate with relatively warm interglacial periods (on roughly a 100,000-year cycle). The current interglacial period began 12,000 years ago, and the Jomon period 6,000 years ago was the warmest point. At that time, sea levels rose, and what is now the Tokyo area is thought to have been underwater.

The Cretaceous period, from 145 million to 65 million years ago, was dramatically hotter, with no ice at either the North or South Pole.

There was a Little Ice Age during the Edo period. Little Ice Ages come paired with famine and war: the fall of the Southern Song, the fall of the Ming, the French Revolution, Japan’s Sengoku period. Unusual weather occurs before a Little Ice Age. It actually fits better to view the present as a harbinger of a coming Little Ice Age.

[The IPCC’s forced logic]

During the 2014 cold wave, an IPCC-aligned scholar explained it by saying that CO2-driven warming had melted Arctic ice, and that the cold westerly winds that should circle around the Arctic meandered southward into the US as a result. Another IPCC-aligned scholar criticized this, saying no one else advocates the theory he’s proposing. Apparently, if you run weather simulations several times with slightly varied conditions, you can get cases where the westerlies meander. It’s simply within the range of natural phenomena. The jet stream circling the mid-latitudes separates warm air from cold air. Moscow, for example, falls on the cold side, in Arctic air. If the westerlies meander and pass north of Moscow, Moscow ends up on the warm side, and a sudden warming occurs (just for that year). It’s the westerlies’ capriciousness. The scholar who raised this criticism nevertheless added that the heavy snow, at least, was because warming had increased water vapor.

Dr. Manabe, known as the father of CO2 warming theory. The IPCC’s prediction models are an extension of the one-dimensional model he built. But that one-dimensional model rests on the somewhat forced assumption of a “constant lapse rate” (that the temperature drop per unit of altitude is constant), and extending this as-is into three dimensions has drawn criticism. Even Hansen, a leading figure who advocates for CO2 warming, has raised sharp criticism on this point.

There are also questions about whether the climate models can even function properly, given that they ignore changes in solar energy, simplify ocean currents, and ignore biochemical changes. The “thermohaline circulation,” for instance, is a major carrier of heat, and climate can’t properly be discussed while ignoring its effects. In fact, current models fail to correctly explain things that actually happened in the past.

The famous “hockey stick curve” presented in the IPCC’s 2001 report is false. Looking at temperature change from the year 1000 to 2000, it appears to shoot up alarmingly around the year 2000. This is claimed to link to the rise in CO2, but if you actually zoom into the graph, the rise begins around 1900, and the only explanation offered is the unsatisfying claim that the period after 1900 was natural variation, and after 1950 it was anthropogenic.

There’s also a troublesome issue: two-thirds of the papers in IPCC reports are policy-discussion papers that don’t even require peer review, and it’s hard to say they’re all grounded in solid scientific findings. It’s a mixed bag (not that everything in it is wrong).

Planetary boundaries (Earth’s limits). Johan Rockström of the IPCC, who underpins the SDGs, claims that if CO2 exceeds 400 ppm, a runaway greenhouse effect will occur and the Earth will eventually become like Venus, but no clear numerical basis has been presented for this. Even among researchers who think along similar lines, opinions differ on where exactly the boundary lies. So it’s strange that the figure “400 ppm” has taken on a life of its own. Those who strongly insist that we are already at the CO2 limit base their position on this Rockström theory.

The Lysenko affair. Soviet authorities backed Trofim Lysenko, a 20th-century biologist who denied genetics and Mendel’s laws, and suppressed and executed scholars who criticized him — that is, who supported genetics and Mendel’s laws. This is said to have set Soviet genetic science back by 40 years. There is concern that something similar is now happening in the field of meteorology.

Reducing petroleum consumption does have value. Technology to capture CO2 may become necessary in the future, but not now. SOx, on the other hand, aids cooling, so it should absolutely be reduced (if cooling occurs, mass die-offs of living organisms would follow).

Shale gas. Fossil fuels, being the accumulated remains of organic matter, are lighter by density and have historically been extracted from deposits relatively close to the surface within underground folds. Advances in drilling technology have made it possible to extract even smaller deposits located in the narrow gaps between folds (shale layers). That’s shale gas. Taking this into account, fossil fuels are said to be able to last another 200 years.

[Questions about measurement]

The IPCC uses data from NOAA observation stations, most of which are ranked Rank 4 out of 5 (second from the bottom) in quality. If you gather data only from Rank 1 stations, incidentally, the conclusion is that temperatures haven’t risen much since 1930.

Sea level rise isn’t easy to measure. Wind and atmospheric pressure alone can cause fluctuations of around 1,000 centimeters almost instantly. Ocean currents and eddies affect it easily too. There isn’t sufficient explanation of how a legitimate value is even being measured.

Global average temperatures from before satellite observation began in the 1980s also carry many doubts, yet they are treated as established fact. Arbitrary corrections can be applied to them.

[CO2 and food crises]

Warming helps prevent food shortages. In the 1990s, the IPCC began making statements linking food crises to warming. But experimental results actually show the opposite. If the temperature rise is around 2 degrees, yields actually increase. CO2 is welcomed too. But since researchers would lose funding if this got out, these results were quietly published in academic journals. So, to make a food crisis narrative work, warming has to be linked to desertification instead. But regions with zero rainfall are actually limited to begin with, and while rising temperatures do increase evaporation from land surfaces, two-thirds of the Earth is ocean, so the effect is minor.

Global crop yields per unit area, to begin with, keep rising. This is purely a matter of technological progress. Places like Australia see large swings up and down. This is because, rather than relying on technology, they continue farming crudely over vast tracts of land, making them more vulnerable to weather.

With warming, Russia might become a great breadbasket region. In Japan, rice couldn’t once be grown in Hokkaido, but now it can.

Meanwhile, global population is roughly flat in developed countries. It is projected to rise dramatically in Africa but settle back to roughly today’s level a hundred years from now. The food crisis may be temporary, in which case overproduction, rather than a food crisis, may be what awaits.

[Things that actually won’t happen even if warming occurs]

Some of what is commonly understood as “this is what happens as warming progresses” is simply wrong.

Polar bears will not go extinct. If they could die from the level of warming happening now, they would already have gone extinct during the medieval warm period. Brown bears and polar bears, to begin with, are biologically the same species — it’s like the difference between white people and black people. Would white people go extinct if they moved to Southeast Asia? Polar bears are actually increasing, and this is causing various problems (attacking humans, raiding food supplies, etc.).

Coral bleaching has nothing to do with warming. Coral catches plankton on its own, but that’s not enough nutrition, so it keeps algae living inside its own body. This is what gives coral its color. As coastal development progresses, agriculture develops and nutrients get spread on the land. These flow into the sea via rivers. As a result, nutrients become abundant, and the symbiosis between coral and algae ends. Bleaching, in other words, is a phenomenon that occurs precisely in the lucky situation, for coral, of abundant nutrients. Warming has nothing whatsoever to do with it. If warming caused coral bleaching, it would start with corals in the tropics right along the equator.

The methane released even if Arctic ice melts is negligible. Even if Arctic ice melts and methane hydrate leaks out, not much methane gas is actually produced, because methane-oxidizing bacteria consume it as food.

The rise in the temperature we actually feel is due to the urban heat island effect from asphalt. Buildings have gone up along the Tokyo Bay coastline too, so we can no longer count on the cooling effect of the sea. Better to live in the suburbs. That said, the summer temperature rise is under 1 degree, while the winter rise is over 3 degrees. You could even say things have gotten relatively more comfortable to live in.

[SDGs]

The Yellow Vest movement in France. “The elites talk about the end of the world (environmental issues), but our problem is whether we get paid at the end of the month.” In a UN awareness survey on the SDGs, the environment ranked last.

The basic driver of environmental issues is population growth. 100 billion people are projected — actually, 10 billion — for 2050, but it’s projected that once we get past that, the population will turn to decline.

The contradiction in the SDGs. Of the 17 goals, about half are pie-in-the-sky and unachievable, and it feels like a scheme in which the rest are tied to climate.

Hunger. Warming should be welcomed for solving food problems. But apparently we’re supposed to reduce the CO2 that’s said to be its “primary cause.”

[The dangers of clean energy]

Clean energy sounds good, but it doesn’t account for the fossil fuels used in building facilities and developing components. And energy efficiency remains poor. As a result, the energy obtained from 1,000 solar panels isn’t even enough to reliably manufacture 2 more solar panels.

Eco-products, in the end, are the product of large amounts of fossil fuel used somewhere along the way. It’s a trick of impressions — making others use fossil fuels while keeping your own hands looking clean.

The persistence of renewable energy subsidies. The effects of solar and wind power are overestimated, and their costs are underestimated. Harm to migratory birds and deforestation from biomass use are ignored as well.

Environmental destruction caused by natural energy. To generate energy equivalent to 1 cubic meter of fossil fuel, you’d need to build a dam that drops 40,000 cubic meters of water 100 meters. Wind power requires 5 times the land of hydropower, and solar 4 times.

The 2015 flooding of the Kinu River. A natural levee was being cut away to install a mega solar facility, and a new levee was being built outside it, still under construction, at the time.

Geothermal power’s energy efficiency is 1/50 that of heavy fuel oil. And this is still considered relatively decent.

The lie of securities firms. They recommend fuel cell stocks to clients while betting against them themselves.

Germany’s environmentalism. Historically, Germany has believed that humans should adapt to nature. But as a result of pushing to phase out nuclear power, thermal power generation increased, and Germany is now suffering the consequences.

[Agitation through misinformation]

The world is flooded with agitation that is either baseless or based on entirely wrong premises. Some examples:

A causal relationship between warming and extreme weather events like typhoons, heat waves, and wildfires has never been proven, and the connection is weak to begin with.

Tuvalu’s apparent sinking into the sea is due to land subsidence from unplanned groundwater pumping. The same thing happened in various parts of Japan after the war and became a problem there too.

The mass extinction of roughly 250 million years ago in the Paleozoic era. It’s known that the largest sea level regression in history occurred around that time. Even elementary school science tells us that regression happens when ice forms. It’s straightforward, in other words, to infer that it was an ice age. Yet some scholars hypothesize that it was actually a warm period at that time — in order to curry favor with the IPCC and secure research funding.

The Club of Rome. Around 1972, a field of study called “warning studies” was pursued. Numerous negative predictions were made, predictions that would ideally turn out wrong. Among them, only the population increase prediction turned out to be accurate. Of the warnings made 50 years ago, in other words, population growth was the only one that came true.

[CO2 and politics]

As a basic premise, a nation can control the tone of its researchers’ arguments. Whether one can secure external research funding affects career advancement. Publishing a paper also requires peer review. So controlling researchers’ public views is, surprisingly, not that hard.

Environmental issues as a diplomatic tool after nuclear weapons. The IPCC was established in 1990 as an analytical body to gather materials for creating a treaty at COP. Up until the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the IPCC actually didn’t argue very strongly for anthropogenic greenhouse effects. It’s not simply, in other words, that everything is the IPCC’s fault. Behind the scenes there was agreement among nations — the thinking that the next diplomatic tool would be the environment. The UN, too, saw environmental issues as an ideal vehicle for peaceful international cooperation and rode this wave.

From an energy-policy perspective, reducing CO2 makes sense, but there’s also a persistent rumor that, in the past, Thatcher pushed the “CO2 is the villain” narrative in order to shift away from coal, and that the IPCC was created as an institution for that purpose.

The circumstances of German reunification. In 1987, the Bundestag decided to tackle the issue of global warming. This was needed to signal to Britain and France that Germany would not expand its military (and would spend its money on other things instead), in order to smooth the path to reunification and EU accession.

The EU has in mind an idea for a carbon border tax (an additional tariff on countries that haven’t reduced CO2). This is sure to provoke backlash, but the EU needs to recoup the advance investments it has already made. The reason the Kyoto Protocol’s reduction targets were met, note, was the Lehman Shock. Put another way, this proves that emissions wouldn’t drop that quickly without a recession. Telling countries to cut CO2, in other words, is effectively like forcing them to cut their own national strength. On that point, it’s developing countries whose CO2 emissions will increase from here on. Developed countries, in fact, will barely change going forward. So does that mean developed nations intend to tell developing countries that have only just escaped extreme poverty: all you talk about is money, think about the planet, how dare you?

The environmental left. Their real enemy is the power structure in their own country. As mentioned above, if you’re going to blame fossil fuels, everyone thinks you should go after China and India first. Developed countries are already taking action, and it’s harsh to demand the same of developing countries right now. The most reasonable targets are the “former developing countries” that have already become sufficiently wealthy.

Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2019. China rose to become the largest emitter. There’s no reason for the developed countries that came before it to keep straining to cut emissions.

[Summary]

The IPCC’s lies:

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/10/362/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.