In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded and its many scientists mandated by the UN Environment Programme and World Meteorological Organization to "make policy relevant – as opposed to policy-prescriptive – assessments of the existing worldwide literature on the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of climate change. Its earlier reports helped to inspire governments to adopt and implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol." https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-frontmatter-1.pdf
The IPCC's wide remit included reports on the following aspects of climate change: The Physical Science Basis, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and Mitigation. Working Group 1 was tasked with reporting in the Assessment Reports on The Physical Science Basis and it is this which is briefly examined here.
Since 1988, the IPCC's Working Group 1 provided AR1 in 1990, a Supplementary Report in 1992, TAR Climate Change 2001 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/ and many other reports and refinements on advice to governments listed here: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ In 2007, the IPCC WG1 provided its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/wg1/ In 2013, WG1 produced a report for AR5 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ and again in 2021 for AR6
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/
Any enquiry into the IPCC's work on The Physical Science Basis will have to note the unremitting focus on 'greenhouse gasses', to the exclusion of research into the many other factors involved in climate change such as, for example, the sun, moon, oceans, volcanoes, cosmic rays, Earth's orbit, its position in our galaxy and the passage of geological time that has witnessed warm ages and ice ages. However, since the IPCC was set up "...to inspire governments to adopt and implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol..." such a single-minded focus is only to be expected. Consequently, the IPCC and, in particular its activist supporters, have cajoled and pressurized our political representatives to implement policies which reduce carbon dioxide emissions; to decarbonize.
In Britain, these policies were enshrined in the 2008 UK and 2009 Scottish Climate Change Acts and much subsequent legislation designed to enforce, via five-yearly Carbon Budgets for example, the UN Environment Programme's intention to decarbonize the world's industrial, transport, agricultural and domestic systems. Today, this process is called 'net zero.' Since our climate legislation has caused the closure and destruction of power stations, proliferation of wind turbines and solar panels and increased energy costs for businesses and households, it would be useful to examine carbon dioxide's actual impact on global atmospheric temperatures.
The 'saturation' point of carbon dioxide
IPCC computer models and reports tend to indicate an assumption that the more carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, the more the temperature will increase. This assumption is not only unproven; it is spurious. Many years before the industrial revolution's use of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide had already absorbed all the surface infrared radiation which it could. Lead Author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Stephen Schneider wrote correctly that 'with increased atmospheric content of CO2 – even by a factor of 10 – the "runaway greenhouse effect will not occur because the 15 micron CO2 band, which is the main source of absorption, 'saturates.'" He declared that the increase in the global temperature caused by carbon dioxide in the next 30 years "will be as small as 0.1K." See his publication: S.I. Rasool & Stephen Schneider, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.173.3992.138
It is regrettable that as Lead Author at the IPCC, Dr.Schneider seemed to have promoted his personal ideological outlook at the cost of his earlier research as a scientist, though he probably has not been the only person to do so.)
Specifically, it is the phenomenon of 'saturation' which severely limits the potency of CO2 molecules to have any noticeable impact on the Earth's atmospheric temperatures and, as the figure below shows, there is a
logarithmic decline of CO2 absorption of radiation. In this case, the first 20 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the most potent effect on temperature. After 280 parts per million parts of atmosphere, CO2 has absorbed virtually all the infrared radiation that it can. The graph illustrates the exponential decline of the warming effect of carbon dioxide.
Today, there are about 417 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. In comparison to the Ordovician period of severe glaciation, when carbon dioxide levels were between 10 and 22 times today's levels, 417 ppm is a tiny amount which, together with water vapour, prevents the Earth from freezing over! This phenomenon of saturation was discovered by Knut Angstrom in 1900 and repeatedly confirmed by scientists since.
Regrettably, once CO2 saturation was realized to be unworkable as the reason to promote decarbonization, the IPCC began to make 'the positive feedback loop' the reason. Thus, it is claimed, the more humans emit carbon dioxide, the more warming there is and the more water vapour is produced by evaporation. This increased water vapour then amplifies molecular heating from surface radiation and produces what the IPCC called in 2021 the 'tipping point.' While such alarming terms may be used by activists, the media and the IPCC, given what we know about the reality of carbon dioxide, it should not be used to influence energy policy.
For further detail see:
W.A. Van Wijngaarden & W. Happer, Dependence of Earth's Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03098
W.A. Van Wijngaarden & W. Happer, Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16465
Richard Lindzen, William Happer, CO2 Coalition https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Challenging-Net-Zero-with-Science-download.pdf Summarized at: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/27/challenging-net-zero-with-science-lindzen-happer-co2-coalition-paper-released/
C.B. Thorington, Thermodynamic Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Revisited https://www.adividedworld.com/scientific-issues/thermodynamic-effects-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-revisited/
Ole Humlum, Climate4you See lowest graphs for most recent atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide records and discussion https://www.climate4you.com/GreenhouseGasses.htm#Temperature%20records%20versus%20atmospheric%20CO2
Jeremy Nieboer, Climate – CO2 Nature's Gift pp.34 to 41; pub. The Bruges Group, 2022
Don J. Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science pp.165 and 167; pub. Elsevier Inc., 2016
As for the percentage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, in 2021, the US Energy Information Administration recorded this to be 35,341 million metric tons, say, 36,000,000,000 mt. - a tiny 0.00065%.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=79&t=11
To conclude, in their zeal to emphasize what they see as the 'challenge' to the climate posed by increasing atmospheric amounts of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, IPCC reports do not make it clear that carbon dioxide above about 280 parts per million of global atmosphere cannot absorb increasing amounts of infrared radiation. Thus, the IPCC, United Nations, environmentalists, renewable energy companies and too many politicians and members of the public are pushing a false narrative that we must decarbonize our energy use.
Thus, all UK 'climate' legislation must be repealed and the Climate Change Committee be disbanded. There is no need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or to pursue 'net zero', decarbonization's more media-friendly nickname.
Net Zero – The Truth Green in Tooth and Claw by Niall McCrae
