Global Warming is Not Caused by Carbon Dioxide.

The cause of global warming is oceans heating, not greenhouse gases, as always occurs at the beginning of ice ages.

A few simple estimates prove the truth.

The real cause of global warming could be an increase in solar energy, as critics generally claim; but there is evidence that it is due to variations in heat from the earth's core. Ice ages are caused by oceans heating, which appears to result from increased heat from the earth's core. The primary evidence is the exact cycling of ice ages. Environmental factors would not be so precise. Below
 
 

 
Oceans are Warming

There are two points of evidence indicating that oceans are warming: One is that precipitation is increasing; and the other is that ice is melting over oceans more than over land.

The oceans have a heat capacity 1,000 times that of the atmosphere. This means the air cannot easily heat the oceans, but oceans can easily heat the air. The atmosphere would have to heat a lot, before it could heat the oceans a little; yet the opposite is occurring. The atmosphere is only said to have warmed 0.6°C in recent times.

Ice is obviously melting rapidly, but primarily over oceans. In localized areas, there is warming over land which is melting showpiece glaciers and northern tundra. But where it really matters, over Antarctica, ice is thickening. Over Greenland both thickening and melting of ice is occurring, but Greenland is small, and it's climate is influenced by an ocean current called the Gulf Stream.

The ultimate test of whether the oceans or atmosphere is heating more is precipitation, and it is increasing. If the atmosphere were heating more than the oceans, there would be less precipitation, because warmer air holds more moisture. If the oceans are heating more than the air, more precipitation occurs, because evaporation increases, while there is less change in the amount of moisture the air will hold.

Because of the increase in precipitation, ice is thickening over land at Antarctica and Greenland, as shown by satellites which use radar to measure thickness of ice. (Details and references are on Oceans Page).

Deep Ocean Heat Measured - (external)

Ice Ages

The present global warming is part of a natural ice age cycle. It's what always happens at the beginning of an ice age.

Ice ages cycle at precise 100 thousand year intervals. The next one is scheduled to begin now. The temperature reversal will begin between 100 and 200 years from now. The time can be determined from the amount of precipitation. Cold temperatures alone cannot create an ice age. There has to be more snow than can melt during the summer to create an accumulation of ice. There is not enough moisture in the air at this time to do that. But it's increasing. There should be enough precipitation in a century or two to produce more snow than can melt during the summers in low enough latitudes to reflect away enough solar energy to trigger an irreversible cool-down.

The amount of moisture in the air is increasing because oceans are warming. The warming of oceans is observable in the amount of ice melting at the poles. Measurement of long term trends show ocean temperatures to be peaking at a level where ice age reversals begin.

Such precise cycling of temperatures cannot be caused by environmental factors such as greenhouse gasses, because there would be too many variations. The variations would be like trying to use the clouds for a calendar. The cause of ice ages must be some force which overrides environmental influences. Two possible sources are cyclic variation in solar energy and motion of a hot spot in the earth's core. An underlying factor is that ice age cycles correlate with a variable in the earth's orbit.

Orbital influences could explain either variations in solar energy or motion of a hot spot in the earth's core. No one has been able to clearly identify a factor in the orbit of the earth which would increase solar intensity in a way which correlates with ice age cycles, not the least reason being that there is a huge amount of complexity in several variables in the orbit of the earth. There are additional problems in explaining ice age cycles in terms of solar intensity. There are many environmental factors which interact with solar energy creating variations in the result. But it's not impossible that solar variations could override all environmental complexities and create the ice age cycles as shown on the graph.

There is however a clearer impression that the oceans are being heated from within the earth's core. The main factor creating this impression, besides total immunity of the cycles to environmental influences, is that all other changes show clear evidence of following the ocean temperature increases rather than responding to some other influence. The most significant factor is that precipitation is increasing.

Areas where weather patterns indicate warming are all microclimates resulting from nearby oceans being warmer. The most obvious example of this is Greenland and parts of Europe, which are warmed by the Gulf Stream. North America is showing milder winters due to less ice around Alaska, where the winter air often comes from. But satellite measurements show little warming in evaluating total global conditions. Global warming is occurring, but it's not the frying pan situation that it is portrayed as.

Movement of a hot spot in the earth's core could correlate with changes in the earth's orbit. The central core of the earth could be pulled farther south due to gravitational effects, and this would heat the oceans more, since there is less land area in the southern hemisphere. For details on earth's orbit see external link at bottom of this page.

Why Carbon Dioxide is Not the Cause

A highly significant fact is that most of the heat trapped by the atmosphere is picked up through conduction and convection from the surface, not radiation. People are being led to assume that so-called greenhouse gasses produce a large effect and the only effect at heating the atmosphere, when in fact the effect is a miniscule fraction of a miniscule fraction of the atmospheric heat.

Humans cannot significantly influence the amount of CO2 in the air, because oceans regulate it to the most minute degree. Carbon dioxide is highly soluble in water, which means it establishes an equilibrium between the amount in the air and the amount in the oceans. Warmer oceans release more CO2, as do salty oceans. note

Therefore, the amount of CO2 in the air tracks with ocean temperatures. This is why CO2 levels follow temperatures during an ice age, not because CO2 creates the result. As a demonstration of this, measurements of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere show a slight increase when an El Nino is heating the Pacific Ocean, and the measurements normalize when the El Nino disappears.

This means that the presumed increase in CO2 in the atmosphere from 270 ppm (parts per million) to 380 ppm over the past 150 years was due to oceans heating and other factors, not human activity.

If oceans were not regulating, there would not be a definable amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Compare it to a warehouse containing a product. There doesn't have to be any relationship between the amount of product in the warehouse and the amount being manufactured. This means it is not correct logic to claim production or sequestering of CO2 will determine the amount in the atmosphere.

Considering the huge amount of CO2 in the oceans, if regulation were not occurring, there would be so much in the air that life would be impossible.

So where do propagandists get their numbers? The numbers are totally contrived.

If more CO2 were relevant, the "more" would also apply to water vapor. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas which is far more significant than carbon dioxide. There is about a hundred times as much of it in the air, depending upon humidity, and it has a broader absorption spectrum. So it swamps the significance of carbon dioxide. Since there is more moisture in the air due to warmer oceans, the "greenhouse" effect of water vapor should totally swamp the miniscule effects of CO2.

Then there is the implication that whatever oceans do, it is not fast enough to keep up with human activity. The yearly exchange rate for CO2 by oceans is said to be 16 times the amount humans produce. This means all of the CO2 humans produce in one year could be absorbed by the oceans in 23 days (while it has 365 days to do it).

Only satellites can measure atmospheric temperatures, because they average a large area, while thermometers only measure a few cubic inches of air. Satellite measurements show a lot of variation with little net increase, which is in part due to increased cloud cover which reflects away the suns energy.

In fact, particulate pollution (not CO2) is dimming the sun's energy by increasing the reflectivity of clouds and creating an atmospheric cooling effect equal to 1.5 watts per square meter on the earth's surface, which has been measured. Proponents of the greenhouse effect say that the cooling is over-ridden by CO2 which produces a heating effect of 2.8 watts per square meter; but they cannot measure that effect; they contrive it through computer models. Evidence that they are wrong is that the cooling effect is preventing an equatorial band of moisture from migrating north in the usual way. Nature says the air is cooling, not heating.

Some Data

"Total human CO2 emissions primarily from use of coal, oil, and natural gas and the production of cement are currently about 5.5 GT C per year (giga tons of carbon per year). A recent update says 8.6 GT, which probably includes the usual stretching.

To put these figures in perspective, it is estimated that the atmosphere contains 750 GT C; the surface ocean contains 1,000 GT C; vegetation, soils, and detritus contain 2,200 GT C; and the intermediate and deep oceans contain 38,000 GT C. Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 GT C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 60 GT C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 GT C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 100 GT C."

Reference:
   Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Notice that humans only add 1% as much CO2 to the atmosphere per year as already in it. If such a miniscule amount were as critical as propagandists claim, all life would have been destroyed long ago. Nature hasn't been sitting on a 1% knife edge for millions of years.

Global Warming Links
On This Web Site:
   Science Details
   Crunching the Numbers
   Absorption Spectra
   Oceans not Rising
   Future Ice Age
   Acid in the Oceans

External Links:
   Railroaded Science - By Richard Lindzen
   Al Gore is Wrong - By Richard Lindzen
   CO2 Absorption at 15 µM
   More Oceans Heating
   temperature graphs through ice ages
   Heat in Earth's Interior
   Interview of Fred Singer
   Fred Singer's Web Site
   Temperature Measurements
   CO2 Science Org
   A look at the Numbers
   High Levels of CO2
   El Nino and CO2
   Political Criticism. May 24, 2006
   Biofuels Destroy Environments
   Historical Summary
   Raw Data on CO2 in Air
   Extremes in Past
   Solar energy as Cause
   Tilt in Earth's Orbit
   Oceans Heating at Antarctica
   Deep Ocean Heat

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