First word

THIS is not a facetious query on my part, but a serious question about the ability of climate alarmists to prove their case against CO2, considering the many vile things they have accused it of inflicting on the planet.

In an editorial published this week (May 21), Issues and Insights (I&I) seriously raised the issue of criminalizing climate denial and putting carbon dioxide (CO2) on trial.

Oddly, after all the accusations and alarms, and loose talk about net zero, I&I says alarmism cannot prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

The editorial confirms my suspicion of travesty in all the talk about a climate emergency. It reads:

"Showing that there are no loons quite like global warming loons, Jim Dale, founder of the British Weather Services, recently 'demanded' that 'climate denial' should be 'criminalized.' According to news from the 'United Kingdom's News Channel,' Dale 'likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories, arguing they are too dangerous for public discourse.'"

As our favorite Looney Tunes character would say, "What a maroon."

Yet it makes us wonder: If carbon dioxide were put on trial, charged with overheating our only planet, would it be convicted?

Not if the trial were fair.

Let's examine the evidence. CO2 is a trace gas. As a portion of our atmosphere, it is now 425 parts per million (PPM) (or 0.0425 percent), as measured at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory. The rest of our atmosphere is made up primarily of nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.9 percent) and other gases (0.1 percent), which includes CO2.

Yes, CO2 concentrations have grown. In 1960, they were 317 PPM, in 1970 roughly 325 PPM. By October 1980, they had reached 336 PPM.

But let's go back further, about 500 million years ago. At that time, long before man's industrial age, CO2 hit 7,000 PPM, and "the planet was maybe as much as 10 degrees C (18 F) warmer than today," says Yale Environment 360. Yale admits that "might seem surprisingly cool for that level of greenhouse gas." But there are "so many factors at play, the link between CO2 and temperature isn't always easy to see."

Or maybe it's not even there.

Or maybe, as some researchers — and not just these two but also others — believe that increasing carbon levels follow higher temperatures, not the other way around, as the alarmists claim.

To illustrate just how minuscule today's carbon concentration is, imagine a 100,000-seat football stadium, say Bryant-Denny on the campus of the University of Alabama. Each seat is one part of the atmosphere. In that stadium, CO2 would take up 42.5 of those seats. And most of that is naturally occurring carbon. Only 13 or 14 represent man's CO2 contributions — maybe even fewer.

So how does such a small part of the atmosphere have such a cataclysmic impact? There is no evidence that it does. We have computer models that show warming along with rising CO2 levels, but those are only models, and they have been shown to be unreliable, predicting higher temperatures that never arrived.

Expert witness Kunihiko Takeda, a credentialed Japanese scholar and researcher, has told us that carbon dioxide was not present at the scene of the "crime."

"CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another ... Every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so ... global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver's seat and developing nations walking barefoot."

Our next witness, Delgado Domingos, an environmental scientist professor from Portugal, testifies that "creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is dangerous nonsense ... The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning."

Following up on that is Geoffrey G. Duffy, a chemical and materials engineering professor at the University of Auckland. He has said that "even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will."

Now we enter into evidence the declaration of more than 1,900 scientists and professionals, including a pair of Nobel winners, who say "enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial." They remind us that CO2 is plant food responsible for greening the Earth, and "additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass."

"It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide."

The group further points out for our court that "climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools," as "they blow up the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2."

These models are the prosecutors' best evidence. Which means their entire case against CO2 is theoretical. We need empirical proof, not speculation, for a guilty verdict, and when carbon dioxide is put to the test, we learn that it "does not cause warming."

That statement was made by James T. Moodey, who wrote the paper "Three Proofs Carbon Dioxide Causes No Warming in the Atmosphere — No Gas Causes Warming." He performed what he calls "a true scientific test because it observes actual measurements of the atmosphere," and found that "carbon dioxide does not cause warming."

Now some might point to the fact that more than 10,000 research papers were retracted last year — "smashing annual records" — and say his findings cannot be trusted. To that, he says "any high school class can repeat these observations over a school year."

The standard to convict in a criminal trial is that a defendant must be found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." It's obvious that there are many reasonable doubts as to CO2's culpability. Even if the case were in a civil court, where there needs to be merely "a preponderance of the evidence," CO2 would not be found liable — again, in a fair trial..."

***

Every now and then, some contributors publish in this paper their fervent testimonials on climate change and the climate emergency, almost as frequently as I report on my monitoring of the climate debate.

I publish this piece today with an eye to eliciting from these writers a serious reply to this piece from a major US publication.

yenobserver@gmail.com

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