Saturday, March 10, 2012

12 Facts about Global Climate Change that You Won't Read in the Popular Press

What will it take for the media to let go of their biases and begin doing their job, reporting the truth?

1. Temperatures have been cooling since 2002, even as carbon dioxide has continued to rise.

2. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas and by itself will produce little warming. Also, as CO2 increases, the incremental warming is less, as the effect is logarithmic so the more CO2, the less warming it produces.

3. CO2 has been totally uncorrelated with temperature over the last decade, and significantly negative since 2002.

4. CO2 is not a pollutant, but a naturally occurring gas. Together with chlorophyll and sunlight, it is an essential ingredient in photosynthesis and is, accordingly, plant food.

5. Reconstruction of paleoclimatological CO2 concentrations demonstrates that carbon dioxide concentration today is near its lowest level since the Cambrian Era some 550 million years ago, when there was almost 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today without causing a “runaway greenhouse effect.”

6. Temperature changes lead, not lag, CO2 changes on all time scales. The oceans may play a key role, emitting carbon dioxide when they warm as carbonated beverages lose fizz as they warm and absorbing it as they cool.