From MasterResource

By David R. Legates

Science does show us that more carbon dioxide leads to a little bit of warming and that both that little warming and the fertilizing effect of the carbon dioxide are likely to be beneficial. Carbon dioxide will not, however, become an existential threat to the planet. (below)

“Mister Legates, I am a big fan of the Cornwall Alliance. However, you, sir, are merely a stooge for the climate alarmist Left, which has an obvious agenda to destroy our economy with its NetZero and its ban on natural gas appliances and its electric vehicle mandates. Anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of science would clearly know that ….”

Okay, so, nobody really sent that first paragraph to me. But the gist accurately combines views that various people have said.

Background

Over the years, even before I joined the Cornwall Alliance, I received numerous complaints from people sending me emails—who, I believe, are well-meaning—that take issue with my position on carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, as a pollutant, and as the single most existential threat to the planet as a whole.

First, let me state for the record, that I do not believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are existential threats to the planet. Nor are they reasonable threats of any kind.

Second, let me also state for the record that I do not believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant. In fact, if all life on Earth ceased to exist, our atmosphere would lose all its oxygen content, and the proportion of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would increase above ninety-five percent.

So what?

Well, according to most reputable scientists, there is no life on Mars or Venus, and the atmospheres of our two closest planets are largely carbon dioxide—that of Mars, about 96 percent carbon dioxide, 2 percent argon, and 2 percent nitrogen, and that of Venus about 96.5 percent carbon dioxide and only 3.5 percent nitrogen. Thus, technically speaking, oxygen in our atmosphere is a pollutant created by life on Earth, most notably by plant life. (No, I don’t seriously think oxygen is a pollutant. You’ve heard of irony, right?)

An Apparent Controversy

Here is something I recently wrote for—well, I won’t tell you where it comes from, to protect the organization. The question was posed to me, “Is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas?” My response was (trigger alert for some): Yes, certainly. And this is a good thing, because without gases like carbon dioxide creating a greenhouse effect, life on planet Earth wouldn’t exist. Earth’s surface is warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere—by about 54 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 degrees Celsius. Without it, most of us would freeze to death!

I received a response, and let me say that I have received numerous comments like this over the years, so I am not singling out this one person, but this response was, in essence:

Thanks for your efforts at <Name of Organization Redacted>, but CO2 does nothing to cause warming of the atmosphere. The climate alarmist “greenhouse effect” does not exist and the whole anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming story is a lie from the beginning.

Now, I don’t disagree with everything said here. I believe the concept of anthropogenic warming as an existential threat to the planet was a lie from the moment the first person attached the phrase “existential threat” to anthropogenic warming. But I take issue with the argument that carbon dioxide does not warm the atmosphere and that the so-called “greenhouse effect” does not exist.

Yes, I acknowledge that the greenhouse effect is a misnomer. A greenhouse warms primarily because of the lack of a transfer of latent and sensible heat. In particular, the glass in the greenhouse prevents convection and transport of water vapor—processes that are very important in the surface energy balance—from moving energy away from the greenhouse.

However, the people who have written to me about this issue do not refer to the greenhouse effect as a misnomer; rather, they mean that no gas, including carbon dioxide, can ever warm the atmosphere.

These critics provide reasons why they feel I am placating climate alarmists by admitting the greenhouse effect exists. So, let me briefly discuss some of their reasons and indicate why I think they are misinformed about physics or about what I believe.

Many of the complaints note that “carbon dioxide is a colorless, tasteless and harmless gas that facilitates photosynthesis so we can live on this planet.” Well, I wholeheartedly agree.

Others complain that I should realize hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, wildfires, and other weather-related events are not increasing as a result of increasing carbon dioxide. Yes, I have said that many times as well.

So, what IS their argument against the greenhouse effect?

Four Groups

I tend put people into four camps, and I am sure you can name adherents to each group.

There are the climate alarmists, for whom carbon dioxide is an evil gas that will adversely affect our climate and whose production must be stopped at all costs. For them, no solution is too draconian, and both geoengineering and carbon sequestration are requisite actions.

Then there are the climate apologists, for whom carbon dioxide is an evil gas, but who feel there is little we can do about it because moving off fossil fuels will gut our economy and destroy our current way of life. They see geoengineering and carbon sequestration as necessary, but adaptation to the calamities brought by an overabundance of carbon dioxide is their primary course of action.

Then there are the climate realists, for whom carbon dioxide is a minor player in climate change and a warmer world will, in fact, be a better world. I put myself in that category.

For all three of those views, the greenhouse effect is real. The only difference is the last group—climate realists, my group—argue that carbon dioxide is not likely to create a runaway effect that destroys the planet.

Then, finally, there are those (searching for a name) for whom carbon dioxide plays no role whatsoever in Earth’s radiation balance. Eradicate carbon dioxide or flood the atmosphere with it—Earth’s temperature will remain unaffected.

These are the ones who usually take umbrage with my mere mention of the existence of a “greenhouse effect.” They believe we are the victims of a conspiracy to elevate carbon dioxide to evil gas status when, in fact, it has no effect whatsoever on Earth’s climate.

GHG Hoax?

According to them, the hoax apparently began back in 1845 when physicist James Prescott Joule, for whom the unit of energy is named, produced a false definition of energy that has since corrupted the field of physics. Other big-name physicists have been in on this hoax, most notably Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Gottfried Liebniz, Johann Bernoulli, Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, Lord Kelvin, and William Rankine, just to name a few.

Even Einstein was in on the conspiracy. Somehow, they all knew climate change would become a major scientific issue some 150 years later, so they made sure carbon dioxide’s being an evil gas was cooked into the immutable laws of physics. Humm….

Some of the arguments made to me have focused on specific aspects of physics. One person noted that when a photon of energy is absorbed by an object (or a gas), it has five femtoseconds, that is five times ten to the minus fifteenth power, to emit that energy. I have no idea from where that magic number arises. The argument is that no object, including a gas, can store energy (Reassure yourself of that next time you pick up a blazing-hot cast-iron skillet and forget the hot pad!), and thus the idea of carbon dioxide heating the atmosphere is a fraud. I am not sure how that person defines the temperature of an object, however.

Another person noted to me that the Ideal Gas Law proves that so-called greenhouse gases cannot warm the atmosphere. The Ideal Gas Law states that pressure times volume equals the number of molecules in the gas, times the ideal gas constant, times the temperature. Therefore, temperature is related only to a change in pressure and/or volume of the gas and thus, according to the argument, as long as the pressure and volume of the gas remain constant, no gas can change its temperature in any other way. The concentration of carbon dioxide is not needed in this equation, and therefore carbon dioxide has no influence. And we don’t need to know the concentration of carbon dioxide to calculate the adiabatic lapse rate, either.

Another person reasoned that if I believe the greenhouse effect keeps Earth warmer by about 30 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide concentrations have doubled since the Industrial Revolution, then air temperatures should have risen by 30 degrees Celsius since then, too—and they haven’t. So, see, the greenhouse effect MUST be a fraud! They miss two important facts: first, that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, and it doesn’t increase in lock step with carbon dioxide; and second, the impact of each added molecule of carbon dioxide has a diminishing effect with increasing concentrations.

Someone else argued that it is inappropriate to use math to represent the complexities of physics because too much is left out of mathematical equations. Besides, they argue, math is not science. I don’t know what to say about that except—good luck doing any scientific calculations.

Conclusion

As I said earlier, I believe most of these people are well-meaning. That is, they recognize that the Earth is not becoming a planet of horrors and that carbon dioxide is indeed the life-affirming gas that it is. But we have to be rooted in truth and hold fast to what is good. Science does show us that more carbon dioxide leads to a little bit of warming and that both that little warming and the fertilizing effect of the carbon dioxide are likely to be beneficial. Carbon dioxide will not, however, become an existential threat to the planet.

Of course, I have been called a “science denier” and labelled as someone who “denies the basics of climate” so many times it is becoming trite. At least it is refreshing to see that I am also being criticized for adhering to the physics.

Maybe someday I will be labelled derisively as a science lover. I can’t wait!

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David R. Legates, Ph,D. (Climatology), Director of Research and Education for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, is a retired Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware and the co-editor of Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism (Regnery, 2024).