Reply to climate change denier Gregg D Thompson

If you are unfamiliar with Gregg D Thompson’s claims about C02 being insignificant in the
science of global warming, please check the appendix.

If you know anything about the science, you will recognise that the questionnaire he came up
with is not science. It’s of the many pseudo-scientific claims to show that the strong,
overwhelming, indisputable science evidence is totally invalid. Climate change deniers
depend on 10- second pseudo-scientific sound bites that serve to muddy the waters and
confuse lay people who are not climate scientists. If you look around on the web you will see
all of their talking points, one by one, torn down to shreds with real science. Here for
example, a very short form of the contrarian arguments vs the science:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

In any case, there is a scientific consensus that climate change is real, caused by human
activity, and dangerous. End of debate. Asking unqualified lay people to make uninformed
judgements and give their opinion on heavily researched, technical scientific data is not going
to change that.

Green house gases are heating up our already warm planet earth which is now at the end of an
interglacial period (Holocene). Ice ages were around 6 degrees cooler than at present. In the
previous interglacial period temperatures were 1 degree higher than today with sea levels 5-6
m above current levels. The difference between low C02 levels which are present at glacial
cycles and high C02 level in interglacial periods is only 100ppm. This means only a small
change in C02 can have a big impact on global temperatures.
The current increase to 386 ppm from 280 ppm causes a radiative forcing of 1.66 W/m^2,
and 1.34 W/m^2 from increases in other gases, totaling 3.00 W/m^2. The current
concentration of greenhouse gases already have a heating power equaling that of a
concentration of (386−280)×3.00/1.66 + 280 = 472 ppm C02-eq (carbon dioxide equivalent).
Therefore, the current concentrations are high enough for over a 2 degrees Celsius
temperature rise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere

James Hansen summarizes: "The Earth's temperature, with rapid global warming over the
past 30 years, is now passing through the peak level of the Holocene, a period of relatively
stable climate that has existed for more than 10,000 years. Further warming of more than 1ºC
will make the Earth warmer than it has been in a million years. “Business-as-usual”
scenarios, with fossil fuel CO2 emissions continuing to increase ~2%/year as in the past
decade, yield additional warming of 2 or 3°C this century and imply changes that constitute
practically a different planet."

The questions posed and answered by the climate change deniers are made to hide the
relevant scientific facts, while making it appear as if the science is neglecting something
important. They assume that a layperson has a better overview than the scientists who have
specialised in paleo-climate, geology, and biology, who have obtained degrees and have who
have spent decades in the field, doing research, keeping up to date with peer reviewed
journals, and creating climate models with super computers.

How low have the climate change deniers stooped? Lets take a look at their misleading
questions.

Question 1. What percentage of the atmosphere do you think is CO2?

Anyone asking for C02 in % is not a scientist and is trying to confuse people by using units
that are not commonly used. If someone tried to convince you that you were fat, by quoting
your weight in micro grams, you would immediately know they are trying to pull the wool
over your eyes. For example, I could try to scare you with big numbers by saying that you
weigh 80,000,000,000 micrograms, but really it translates to 80 kg. If you don't understand
kilograms or micrograms, you may be very alarmed. The climate deniers do the reverse.

It is common practice to measure C02 in parts per million. As of Dec 2010:

390 ppm = 390 parts per million which in percent looks much smaller = 0.039 %

Rising at approx 2ppm per year.

In this case, asking for C02 in percent is trying to make the number look minuscule by
changing the units from parts per million to a percentage. It is a psychological trick rather
than scientific evidence that is being applied here to mislead people into thinking it is a small
amount of little significance.

One of the most interesting facts is that a difference of 100ppm of C02 is all that is needed to
change the state of the earth from an interglacial period to a glacial period. In the long run
every ppm of C02 matters in terms of the equilibrium temperature the earth will reach.

Here is one example of why "390 ppm C02" is not a minuscule amount in a short video:
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/12/22/how-can-390-parts-per-million-possibly-matter-heres-
how/

Here are other climate denial myths debunked on youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=029130BFDC78FA33

Question 2. Have you ever seen the percentage given in any media?

No, not as a percentage. It is always provided in ppm. This is the appropriate scientific unit of
measurement that is recognised the world over. Once again asking for the % of C02 actually
demonstrates that the person who wrote this questionnaire does not read any scientific papers
on climate change or atmospheric composition and is not an expert. Nobody who spends even
one day researching C02 would think to ask the concentration in % instead of ppm. Asking
the question in this way however is subtly trying to hammer in an insignificant fact that has
no scientific validity. Whether C02 is provided in % or ppm is the same thing if you
understand the units, and the context of the number. By showing C02 concentration in %,
which is never used in scientific journals, one uses the psychological illusion that a small
fraction means it is meaningless.

Nature has countless examples where units are measured in parts per million or even parts per
billion. This includes poisons, toxins, eg arsenic, perchlorate, gases, insulin in blood and even
paint and ink. Why would you ask for this in %, unless you were trying to distort the science
so you can mislead a non-scientific audience to believe it can't matter at that concentration?

Gregg D Thompson, do some research on the Keeling Curve which has consistently and
accurately recorded the concentration of atmospheric C02 in ppm since 1958 from Mt Loa in
Hawaii, and is confirmed by many other stations around the world.  Have you heard about the
famous Ice Core Data from Vostok, Siberia? Considering how afraid you are about talking
about the science, it doesn't surprise me that you don't mention it.  The main significance of
the data lies in the high correlation between GHG concentrations and temperature variations
over 420,000 years and through four glacial cycles. Now, if you look at it and don't notice the
correlation, then just admit that you don't believe believe South America and Africa weren't
once joined together approx 200 Mya . You might as well get it off your chest that you don't
believe in plate tectonics and continental drift because continents moving at a rate of 1-10 cm
per year could never amount to kilometres. Never in a million years! Why don't those silly
scientists measure continental drift in terms of % of speed of light? I wonder why.

Question 3. What percentage of the CO2 is man-made?

Once again we have the same psychological trick using a small % figure to fool the
uneducated public, who cannot recall a percentage figure ever being used to describe C02
concentrations. Instead of clarifying the number and putting it into context, the audience is
made to believe that the scientists are stupid for not making this figure widely known. This is
a trick and used to make people worried about the integrity of the science, when in fact the
person asking the question is being misleading and deceitful.

CO2 is inevitably created by burning fuels like e.g. oil, natural gas, diesel, organic-diesel,
petrol, organic-petrol, ethanol. More than 30 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) is
released into the atmosphere annually by human activities, mainly through the burning of
fossil fuels.

The emissions of CO2 have been dramatically increased within the last 50 years and are still
increasing by almost 2ppm each year. Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180
and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years

From its preindustrial level of about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) around the year
1800, atmospheric carbon dioxide rose to 315 ppmv in 1958 and to about 358 ppmv in 1994.

All the signs are that this CO2 rise is human-made. To roughly calculate the % of C02 that
humans have contributed since the pre-industrial revolution:

(390 - 280) / 280 = 39.29%

The effects of H. sapiens on the terrestrial climate, defined as the Anthropocene from the
beginning of the industrial age about 1750 (Steffen et al., 2007), involves emission of over
370 billion ton carbon and the rise of CO2 from 280 to 389 ppm, leading to a rise of mean
global temperature by c.0.8° C since 1750AD (IPCC 2007-AR4), plus about 0.5° C currently
masked by sulfur aerosols, yielding a climate sensitivity value of >3.4° C, not accounting for
the full effects of current albedo loss due to melting cryosphere. Incipient effects of the
Anthropocene may have commenced with the rise of early civilizations, extensive
agricultural cultivation and livestock husbandry, indicated by the rise of methane by about
100 ppb from c.7000 years-ago and CO2 by 20 ppm from c.5000 years-ago (IPCC-2007-AR4
Report, Figure SPM.1; Ruddiman, 2003, 2007; Kutzbach et al., 2010).

http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange109.html

Human-made global climate forcings now prevail over natural forcings. Warming 'in the
pipeline', mostly attributable to slow feedbacks, is now about 2°C (see Fig. 2). No additional
forcing is required to raise global temperature to at least the level of the Pliocene, 2-3 million
years ago, a degree of warming that would surely yield 'dangerous' climate impacts.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/350ppm_CO2_the_Target.php

Paleo-climate data tells us what we can expect in the long term given certain ppm readings:

The current CO2 concentration of 389 ppm is within the range indicated for the early to mid-
Pliocene (4.2--3.0 Ma) (365-415 ppm CO2; 2.4 -- 4° C and sea level 25±12 meters above pre-
industrial (Pagani et al., 2010), and also the range of the mid-Miocene climate optimum (16
Ma; 350-430 ppm CO2; 3-6° C; sea level 25-40 meter) (Tripati et al. 2009; Kurschner et al.
2008; Royer, 2008). The superposition of these warm periods above periods characterized
with CO2 levels of about 300 ppm invites comparison with current rise above Holocene
conditions.
These observations imply current climate change is at a lag stage tracking toward conditions
induced by mean global temperature of c.3.0-4.0° C, which in the Pliocene resulted in
melting of large parts of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets and sea level rise of
25+/-12 meters (Haywood and Williams, 2005). The trend results in migration of climate
zones toward the poles, weakening of the polar vortex, weakening of cross-latitude cold
ocean currents and weakening of the La Nina phases of the ENSO cycle, by analogy to mid-
Pliocene (>2.8 Ma) conditions. Depending on the rate of future carbon emission, the
possibility that conditions similar to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55
million years-ago may be reached can not be discounted. At that stage the release of c.2000
GtC as methane (Zachos et al., 2008), less than the current fossil fuel reserves (c.6000 billion
ton carbon), resulted in >5° C temperature rise and in extinction of species. Factors relevant
to this scenario include feedbacks from the carbon cycle and ice/warm water interactions,
reduction of the ocean's CO2 absorption capacity, the scale of deforestation and release of
methane from permafrost, bogs and shallow sediments.

http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange109.html

By continuing to ask for fractions of fractions, the details of what is known about C02 and its
relationship with global temperature and sea level rise is completely ignored, although the
science is quite precise and well established. But this is too much information for Gregg D
Thompson who is only interested in little sound bites which seem credible to a lay person
who has done no serious research into the science. The only people he can fool are those who
have no understanding of climate science.

Question 4. What percentage of the man-made CO2 does Australia produce?

Again, no scientific argument is actually mounted here, in fact the person asking these
questions has nothing to say about the science, but likes to use inadequate percentages to fool
people. Lets look at the numbers in a more appropriate way.

The world produced 48 gigatons of C02 in 2009. Australia contributes 20.58 tonnes of C02
per person x 21 million population = 0.43 gigatons C02 = approx 1% of world C02
production. This seems small, but if we calculate C02 on a per capita basis Australians
actually have the highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per person of all industrialised
nations; and more than double the average for industrialised countries. How inconvienent.The
person asking the question doesn't want you to think of the numbers in that way. He prefers
to mislead with fractions of fractions of fractions hoping that people will doubt the science. I
wonder if anyone has won a court case pleading that, sure, they robbed a bank of 10 million
dollars in an armed robbery, but as a fraction of the total world GDP it is a minuscule
amount. 10 million / 58 trillion = 0.000017% It can't matter, and we can totally overlook the
millions which were stolen! According to the logic of Gregg D Thompson, the robber should
receive a get out of jail free card! This is exactly the same type of logic the coal industry uses
- "if we don't sell the coal someone else will". So, if I don't commit murder, someone else
will, therefore I should commit murder. Try that one at court and see how far you come.

Maplecroft finds Australia's heavy reliance on coal makes for an average output of 20.58
tonnes of C02 per person per year, compared to 19.78 tonnes in the USA. China, which
recently overtook the US as the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter overall, has a per
capita average of about 4.5 tonnes per person. In the medium and long term, a world-wide
average emission of maximum 2 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person per year must be
targeted. This amount is nowadays considered to be the maximum allowed quantity for a
sustainable living on earth!! If we REALLY want to fix the climate and bring it back to
normal C02 levels, basically we have to live at the standard of living of someone living in
India.

If we don't, we can expect 1-2m sea level rise by 2100 and trillions of dollars of damage and
millions of lives lost in floods and droughts. If the world, including Australia, continues with
business as usual, we should expect 10,000 boats from India arriving on Australian shores
fleeing from floods which will be worse due to global warming.

If in future decades it turns out that we are legally obligated to pay for climate change
compensation claims proportional to our emissions, then 1% of $1.1 trillion (according to
climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) = $10 billion dollars. To be even fairer we should pay for the cumulative emissions
we have contributed to in relation to the total cumulative emissions. It would be fairer
because a lot of developing countries are only beginning to scratch the standards of living and
level of emissions that we have become accustomed to. We have been polluting the
atmosphere for centuries, whereas many countries have only just begun to increase their
emissions in the last decade or two.

Question 5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Lets not talk semantics. It is more informative to define anthropogenic inputs of carbon
dioxide as a climate forcing, as was done in the 2005 National Research Council Report.

The fact is C02 is the biggest control knob of temperature in earth's history.

Watch this interesting climate-geological video from Richard B Alley of Penn State
University

http://eveningperson.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/a23a/

"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were
sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than
they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no
permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," "Carbon
dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last
20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for
driving climate change throughout Earth's history"

If you want to call it a pollutant or not its really just semantics.

Arguing that C02 can't matter to the earth's climate because it is barely visible, is like saying
that the physics behind engineering is invalid because static forces cannot be seen. You
cannot get much more unscientific than that. If Gregg D Thompson has any qualifications in
science they should be immediately revoked for this complete ignorance and disdain for
scientific reasoning.

This whole questionnaire reeks of propaganda. You would never ask hundreds of lay people
to diagnose a medical condition, and then make fun of the medical profession because
ordinary people have different ideas about how medicine works than actual doctors.

The PDF, in two paragraphs contradicts itself. First it says polls show believers in man-made
global warming are in the minority, but then goes on to say popular beliefs are not fact.
However the details under those headings are cherry picked stories to support the denial
agenda. You can't have it both ways.

Global warming does not care about people's level of understanding, all that matters is the
concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the rotation of the earth in space, and
the fluctuation of solar output (which is minimal). The earth does not care if humans call C02
a pollutant or not or if polls show that people don't care that much about global warming. The
evidence is clear, and the science tells us that it matters.

Question 6. Have you ever seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?

Once again, another non-scientific question is being asked. Does Gregg D Thompson not
believe in evolution because he has never actually seen one species evolve into another? 
Gregg D Thompson might as well be asking have you ever "seen" bacteria with your naked
eye? No? There you go, the germ theory of disease is invalid too. All those clever scientists
can't be right. Nearly 150 years of science supporting germ theory and evolution suddenly
means nothing because lay people cannot "see" these things? Similarly Gregg D Thompson
believes that because many laypeople do not observe and keep track of climatic trends over
centuries or millennia, that somehow this means there is no evidence for global warming due
to C02.

Co2 may not easily be seen, but climate science has calculated the radiative forcings of
various gases, and Co2 overwhelmingly has the largest impact on earth's temperature. The
forcing is measured in w/m^2 and is approximately +1.5 w/m^2 for C02.

A positive forcing tends to warm the system, while a negative forcing tends to cool it. We
need science because it helps to explain things that requires deep thinking. What we don't
need is unscientific emotional responses like - the earth has to be the centre of the solar
system, we can't have evolved from apes, tiny bacteria and viruses cannot possibly cause
disease, or tiny trace house gasses can't possibly change the energy balance of the planet.

The article also says that CO2 heats the air. It doesn't. It insulates the earth from the heat
leaving. This is so elementary that one wonders how a serious scientist could have
overlooked the physics you can find in a school book, and still call himself a scientist.
Satellite data reveals the earth is out of energy balance with space and that the Earth's energy
imbalance is large by standards of the planet's history. The imbalance is 0.85 watts per meter
squared. To understand the difference, think of a one-watt light bulb shining over an area of
one square meter. Although it doesn't seem like much, adding up the number of feet around
the world creates a big effect. To put this number into perspective, an imbalance of one-watt
per square meter, maintained for the past 10,000 years is enough to melt ice equivalent to one
kilometer (.6 mile) of sea level, if there were that much ice. Alternatively this can be
calculated as 0.85 watts / m^2 * 5.1×10^14 m^2 = 433.5 TW (terawatts) which is constant,
and is equivalent to an ongoing 4.3 × typical category 4 hurricane power release (~~ 1×10^14
W ). If you keep this up long enough, you will start seeing the damage, and we do.

The evidence is called global warming. Here are some of the key pieces of evidence that it is
happening now. Remember, water and ice does not have any political ideologies. It only
responds to the temperature.

Sea level rise: Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The
rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.
Global temperature rise: All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that
Earth has warmed since 1880.

Warming oceans: The oceans have ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit
since 1969.

Meltwater: Flowing meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet

Shrinking ice sheets: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data
from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250
cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while
Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice

Declining Arctic sea ice: Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly
over the last several decades.
Glacial retreat: Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in
the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/files/oerlemans_glacier_length.pdf

Extreme events: The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been
increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since
1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.

Ocean acidification: The carbon dioxide content of the Earth's oceans has been increasing
since 1750, and is currently increasing about 2 billion tons per year. This has increased ocean
acidity by about 30 percent.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7933589.stm

Indeed, he recent floods in Australia, at least in part, some scientists say between 10 and 15%
can be attributed to climate change:

"I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in
Queensland can be attributed to climate change," said Matthew England of the Climate
Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "The waters off
Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the
atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon," he told Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70B1XF20110112

Watch this story of Oil which shows how we are making the climate return to the Jurassic
climate.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

Anyway, if you have time, please download my Global Warming Facts document that I
created in 2007, and look at what SCIENCE is saying about man-made global warming.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17676370/Global-Warming-Facts

And no, the science didn't start with the IPCC. The science investigating global warming and
coming up with theories as to how it works is 187 years old! It's nearly the same age as the
science of evolution and the germ theory, and yet we still have so-called "experts" like Gregg
D Thompson deny the solid foundation of the science that says humans are producing
greenhouse gases which increases global warming. Scientists who have no credentials in one
area should not be called upon as experts for that field. Its very simple. We should listen to
the relevant scientists and accept that they understand more than we do. When we see blatant
lies, misrepresentation, un-scientific arguments, deceit, fake credentials, etc then we must
really ask who is behind this. We must ask why these people are taken seriously, and who has
put these unqualified people on a pedestal next to scientists who are actually qualified to say
something about the science. The people supporting the denialists should be ridiculed, as
should the climate denial "scientists". I beg you Gregg D Thompson, stop making a fool out
of yourself. Scientists and even lay people like myself can't stop slapping their heads in
frustration every time you open your mouth to try and discredit the science. Leave it to the
experts Gregg D Thompson. You have no credibility whatsoever, and your arguments are no
arguments at all. They are uneducated opinions at best, and downright lies and fraud at worst.
Gregg D Thompson you have proven that you are “making decisions emotively, not factually
about a complex science [you] know virtually nothing about.”

Steven Muschalik
Appendix
How Well Has The Media And Government Informed The Public About CO2 Levels In The
Air?

Ask yourself, your friends, family and work associates if they know the answers to the
following questions about Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Be sure to write your answers before
looking at the following pages.

Question 1. What percentage of the atmosphere do you think is CO2?

Question 2. Have you ever seen the percentage given in any media?

Question 3. What percentage of the CO2 is man-made?

Question 4. What percentage of the man-made CO2 does Australia produce?

Question 5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Question 6. Have you ever seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?

I have asked over 100 people these questions. Virtually everyone says they don’t know the
answers so ask them to tell you what their perception is by what they have learnt from the
media, the government and Green groups. Let them know there is no right or wrong answer
as you are just doing a survey as to what people have perceived the answers to be from these
sources.

The answers to these questions are fundamental to evaluating the global warming scare YET
almost no one knows the facts. However, without this knowledge we can’t make an informed
decision about whether Climate Change is natural or not.

On the following pages are respondent’s perceptions followed by the correct answers. The
bulk of the respondents (over 100 to date) are educated fairly well to very well. They
comprise business managers in a diversity of large and small companies, those in medical
profession, accounting, law, sales, engineering as well as scientists and trades people.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

Q1. What % of the air is CO2?

Respondent’s Answers: nearly all were 20% - 40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest
were 10%- 2%.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%.
As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another
from 0.036%- 0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to
changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a
volcanic emission etc)
Nitrogen is just over 78%, Oxygen is just under 21% and Argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a
minute trace gas at 0.038%. We all learnt the composition of the air in both primary and high
school but because most people don’t use science in their day to day living, they have
forgotten this. Also, the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so
they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as
complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive
statements rather than facts. For a detailed breakup of the atmosphere go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition

Q2. Have you seen a percentage for CO2 given in the media?

Respondent’s answers: All said ’No’.

Q3. What % of CO2 do humans produce?

Respondent’s answers ranged from as high as 100% with most estimating it to be between
75% to 25% and only four said they thought it was between 10% and 2 %.

The Correct Answer: Nature produces nearly all of it. Humans produce only 3%. As a
decimal it is a miniscule 0.001% of the air. All of mankind produces only one molecule of
CO2 in around every 90,000 air molecules! Yes, that’s all.

Q4. What % of man-made CO2 does Australia produce?

Respondent’s Answers ranged from 20% to 5%.

The Correct Answer is 1% of the 0.001% of man-made CO2. As a decimal it is an

insignificant 0.00001% of the air. That’s one, one-hundredth thousandth of the air. That is
what all the fuss is about! That’s one CO2 molecule from Australia in every 9,000,000
molecules of air. It has absolutely no affect at all.

We have been grossly misled to think there is tens of thousands of times as much CO2 as
there is!

Why has such important information been withheld from the public? If the public were aware
that man-made CO2 is so incredibly small there would be very little belief in a climate
disaster so the media would not be able to make a bonanza from years of high sales by selling
doomsday stories. Governments and Green groups would not be able to justify a carbon tax
that will greatly raise the cost of everything. Major international banks and the stock market
would not make massive profits out of carbon trading and many in the science community
would not be getting large research grants.

Q5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Respondent’s Answers: All thought it was a pollutant, at least to some degree.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is a harmless, trace gas. It is as necessary for life - just as oxygen
and nitrogen are. It is a natural gas that is clear, tasteless and odourless. It is in no way a
pollutant.
Calling CO2 a ‘pollutant’ leads many to wrongly think of it as black, grey or white smoke.
Because the media deceitfully show white or grey ‘smoke’ coming out of power station
cooling towers, most think this is CO2. It is not: it’s just steam (water vapour) condensing in
the air. CO2 is invisible: just breathe out and see. Look at it bubbling out of your soft drinks,
beer or sparkling wine. No one considers that a pollutant - because it’s not. CO2 in its frozen
state is commonly known as dry ice. It is used in camping eskys, in medical treatments and
science experiments. No one considers that a pollutant either. CO2 is emitted from all plants.
This ‘emission’ is not considered a pollutant even though this alone is 33 times more than
man produces! Huge quantities of CO2 are dissolved naturally in the ocean and released from
the warm surface. This is not considered a pollutant either.

The two large cooling towers are emitting only steam. A tiny amount of CO2 is trickling out
of the thin chimney at centre. It is only barely visible due to a small quantity of smoke
particles, most of which is filtered out nowadays. The media doesn’t like to show skinny CO2
chimneys emitting nothing visible because this is unimpressive and not the least bit emotive
so it doesn’t make for sensationalist journalism. So they typically choose to deceive the
public by showing cooling towers.

Q6. Have you seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?

Respondent’s Answers: Most did not know of any definite proof. Some said they thought the
melting of the Arctic and glaciers was possibly proof.

The Correct Answer: There is no proof at all. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate
Change (the IPCC) has never produced any proof. There are, however the following proofs
that it can’t cause a greenhouse effect.

• It is true that CO2 can absorb heat a little faster than nitrogen and oxygen but it becomes no
hotter because it cannot absorb anymore heat than there is available to the other gases. This is
against the laws of thermodynamics. All gases share their heat with the other gases. Gas
molecules fly around and are constantly colliding with other gas molecules so they
immediately lose any excess heat to other molecules during these collisions. That’s why the
air is all one temperature in any limited volume.

• Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would
make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With
CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed
explanation go to: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

The following facts show that even high levels of CO2 can make almost no impact on heating
the atmosphere.

1. Glasshouses with high levels of CO2 - hundreds of times higher than in the air to make
plants grow faster – heat up during the day to the same temperature as glasshouses with air in
them. This is also true for bottles of pure CO2 compared to ones with air.

2. The planets Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost entirely CO2 (97%) yet they
have no ‘runaway’ greenhouse heating effect. Their temperatures are stable.

3. The geological record over hundreds of millions of years has shown that CO2 has had no
affect whatsoever on climate. At times, CO2 was hundreds of times higher, yet there were ice
ages.
4. In recent times when Earth was considerably warmer during the Roman Warming and the
Medieval Warming, the higher temperatures then were totally natural because there was no
industrialization back then.

• Water vapour is 4% of the air and that‘s 100 times as much as CO2. Water vapour absorbs
33 times as much heat as CO2 making CO2’s contribution insignificant. But like CO2, water
vapour also gives this heat away to air molecules by contact (conduction) and radiation,
thereby making the surrounding air the same temperature.

• The Earth’s atmosphere is very thin so its heat is continually being lost to the absolute
coldness of outer space (-270 C). As there is no ‘ceiling’ to the atmosphere, surface heat
cannot be retained. The Sun renews warmth every day.

Over the last few years Earth has had much colder winters due to very few magnetic storms
on the Sun. These four increasingly colder winters have been particularly noticeable in the
northern hemisphere where most of the land is. Because of this, the Arctic has re-frozen and
glaciers that were receding are now surging due to the heavy snow falls. The Arctic showed
some melting around its edges from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s due to the very high level
of solar storm activity at that time. But as the Sun is now entering probably 2-4 decades of
low solar activity, this is expected to cause global cooling. For more detail, see the following
page.

The climate has always been naturally cyclic and variable due to numerous natural drivers of
which CO2 is not one. Over millions of years the climate has shown far greater changes in
the geological record than we have seen over the last 200 hundred years - and there was no
industrialization back then. The very minor variations we have witnessed over the last 100
years have all occurred several times even in that short period. Today’s changes in climate
are common and completely natural. There are now over 50 books that provide numerous
reasons why man-made global warming is false.

The Effect of the Sun on Earth’s climate

It has long been known that the Sun is by far the major driver of all weather on Earth because
it is the source of all heat and energy. There is absolutely no real-world evidence that the
temperature has continually risen as we were led to believe. The hottest records in the USA
and Greenland were in the 1930s due to a strong solar cycle. It became cooler from 1940 to
1970. This was due to a weak solar cycle. It has again become increasingly colder since 2006
due to another weak solar cycle. The Sun’s magnetic storm activity has now moved to an
extended minimum so the next 2-4 maximums are expected to be much weaker than the last
few have been. By 2011 the solar cycle should have risen half way back to its 11 year
maximum but it hasn’t! It’s only just started. The last time the Sun acted this way was during
the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1830 which produced 40 years of very cold winters with
subdued, wetter summers globally - just as we are expiring now. From 1450 -1750 a more
intense Maunder Minimum occurred which caused the Little Ice Age. The next 2-4 solar
cycles will very likely be low in solar activity causing noticeably cooler global temperatures
for a few decades.

For details see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/02/solar-cycle-24-update

and http://www.climatechangedenier.com.au/climate-change/another-dalton-minimum/
The effect of the current Solar Minimum is particularly obvious in the northern hemisphere
where increasingly colder winter temperatures have caused massive snow falls disrupting
transportation across Europe, Asia and the US.

Despite more than a decade of continual doomsday predictions of increasing temperatures

and never-ending drought globally, the opposite has happened. There have been lower
temperatures globally with greatly increased rain and snows over much of the planet since
2006. This has caused floods across most of Australia and most other counties, as seen on the
TV news. This ended the global 10 year drought conditions from the mid 90s to the mid
2000s. There has been no drop in CO2 to cause this: in fact, CO2 has risen. There is no
correlation between CO2 levels and climate. The reason CO2 levels have gone up a little is
most likely due to the surface of the oceans warming very slightly during the later half of the
century and therefore releasing a little CO2. (The oceans are currently cooling very slightly.)
Mankind’s contribution to CO2 is so small it’s not measurable.

Polls on Climate Change

Polls in western countries now show that believers in man-made global warming are now in
the minority with a sizable percentage of over 20% who “don’t know” if CO2 is causing any
change. The obvious change to a cooler, wetter climate combined with the revelations of
climate fraud shown by the Climategate emails has led to the change in public perception.
Polls asking people what is the most important threat to them out of a list of 20 issues, place
global warming at the bottom!

Popular beliefs are not fact

The bulk of the population of the western world believed that the 2000 Bug would destroy
much of our technology on New Year’s Eve 2000 yet not one disaster occurred anywhere.
We were told CFCs caused the Ozone ‘hole’ yet after billions of dollars were spent removing
CFCs over 30 years, the slight depletion of Ozone at the South Pole has not changed.
Scientists now think it is natural. Popular beliefs are often based on blind faith, ideology and
profit rather than proven scientific evidence. History is littered with popular consensuses that
were wrong.

A Carbon Tax

Taxing CO2 achieves nothing for the environment; in fact, it deprives real environmental
issues from receiving funds. A carbon tax will have a disastrous impact on lower and middle
income earners. Even if drastic measures were imposed equally on all countries around the
world to reduce the total human CO2 contribution by as much as 30%, this would reduce
total CO2 by an insignificant percentage. It would have no affect whatsoever on the climate
but it would totally destroy the economies of every country and dramatically lower
everyone’s living standards. Most people and politicians are making decisions emotively, not
factually about a complex science they know virtually nothing about.

Gregg D Thompson

Climate Researcher

Astronomer
Environmentalist

Author of two science books

Business Manager and Director of 3 companies

Author of science magazine articles

Designer and project manager of special effects attractions

Nature photographer

Has a great interest in most sciences

Loves creating innovation in art