The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not magically appear on the scene as self-proclaimed defenders of the faith. They have had a slow and ironic, nearly 30 year metamorphosis from an agenda-based research center to the full socialist glory that they are today at the UN.

The idea of anthropogenic climate change has been around a long time. It has been bantered about for well over a century by anti-industrial types who have used it as an argument against everything from steam power to nuclear power. And before that, these same types screamed that humans would die if they traveled at speeds over 30 MPH (an argument used against the railroad, based on the fear that the air would be sucked out of ones lungs, causing suffocation).

Eventually, the arcane notion that Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) was the primary constituent to atmospheric warming, caught the attention of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Following her party's win in the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) General Election of 1979, she began to advocate this relatively obscure theory about CO₂, along with the idea that fossil-fuel {coal} burning power plants should be replaced by cleaner sources of power, in order to promote her pro-nuclear power platform (go figure). This, in historical context, was based upon what many believe to have been her desire to limit the political power of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), who had played a significant role in the defeat of her Conservative Party in the 1974 election. Margaret Thatcher's degree in Chemistry gave her the verisimilitude of credibility on this topic.

Once in office, Prime Minister Thatcher instigated the creation of the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. This, agenda-based center was formed to advance the theory that anthropogenic sources were the primary cause of potential global warming. This center ultimately became the operating agency for the IPCC’s Scientific Working Group I.

Funny how that worked out!!!

The Argument that Earth is Warming (in a nutshell)

Overall, Earth's mean surface temperature, as reported in the 2001 IPCC report, has seen an increase of roughly 0.6 degrees Centigrade over the past 100+ years. This trend can be seen in the first pane of Figure 1 below (which is taken directly from the IPCC report). The majority of this increase in temperature, formally expressed by the United Nations as 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Centigrade, occurred before 1940 AD, which is the generally accepted date when anthropogenic atmospheric CO₂ levels started any noticeable increase. The data presented in this first pane provides information from surface temperature stations (red bars), as well as the annual average (the black trend line fitted through the data points in a moving average fashion). The gray bars (and this is important to note) indicate the 95-percent confidence limits on the data (i.e., a measure of how reliable the data is according to the authors of the IPCC report).

FIGURE 1: Measured/Predicted Temperature Global Temperature Variations

Source: UN IPCC, 2001, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 388-389.

 

Here's the problem...

The black global temperature line in the first pane (which is the basis of the entire global temperature increase argument) is only as good as the bounds of the gray tick-marks (which can have errors as large as, or larger than, the data point being represented).

Although the error trend is most pronounced in the pre-1920 years, it is not very good in more modern times either. If you follow the black trend line with respect to the red bars, you can see in the 1980's and 1990's it misses the mark more often than not, and actually shows a trend of heating when the global data shows a cooling year. Overall, we could just attribute this to the nature of the averaging mechanism. However, what we cannot ignore is the documented fact that the UN, politicians, power-seekers, the agenda driven, and the news have beaten the collective masses over the head for the past 10+ years that the 1990's were the hottest the planet has even seen. In fact, the IPCC's own data indicates the contrary (even with the obvious bias in the presentation).

What bias you ask? Isn't this the actual data? No, not quite. There has been some 'artistic license' taken with the presentation, in the forms of statistical bias and scientific bias. Stay tuned, for the hand is quicker than the eye with these UN guys.

1. Statistical bias in the presented data: At first glance we see what looks like some type of temperature anomaly (the y-axis) versus the year from 1860 to the present. Read the label for the y-axis data carefully. What does it say? It says it is the departure in temperature from the averaged 1961 to 1990 values. Now look back at that black line for the period in question. See the gaps where the black line misses the red bar? That error in prediction is averaged into the entire graph thus propagating the error across the entire data set. Why did they pick the years of 1961 to 1990 to average instead of the whole data record? Because it makes the data look more ominous than it is in reality, and actually ends up squaring any error in the measurements. A baseline can be set anywhere to make the data show either strong positive or negative trends. In fact, you can force a statistical correlation for any unrelated set of events, and if you're clever, you can make the correlation look really good. See, you can make a liar out of mathematics.
    
2. Scientific bias in the presented data: This one doesn't immediately jump out at you, since you have to do a fair amount of poking around the IPCC report to discover it. Namely, the IPCC is not being entirely honest and forthright in the actual recorded values. Data that makes up the chart shown in the first pane of Figure 1 is from thermometer measurements — except for planetary locations, which did not fit the desired trend. In this case, the IPCC substituted computer enhanced satellite data. So does this mean that satellite data can be trusted over thermometers in some areas but not others? 
   
   Nonsense. This is just one of many examples of the IPCC rewriting the data to suit the final desired outcome {agenda}.
   
   ...and speaking of rewriting... The IPCC has performed major rewriting of their scientific assessment three times. They stopped analyzing warming trends in 2001 for at least one really convenient reason. Look again at the far right end of the chart in the first pane. From the 1999 and 2000 data, the trend is one of cooling (yet CO₂ is indeed increasing over that period). If we were to add more data (from NOAA's own web site for that matter), that trend continues to the current day. In fact, the global temperature of the plant has been cooling after 1998 (as evidenced by data in the graph and also by the measurement of solar output). If the periodicity shown in the first pane continues, we should not expect to see an up-trend in the data until roughly 2015. The IPCC is very quiet on this point. But wait, they just released a fourth iteration of the report in 2007. It seems like the concept of scientific accuracy at the UN is clearly a moving target. Let the back-peddling begin...

To further make their point, the IPCC points to data from ice core records and tree rings to demonstrate surface temperature variations over the past millennia. This data is shown as the second pane in Figure 1 above. In a fashion similar to the previous pane, this one shows the same red bars (known temperature station data from the past 140 years as seen in the first pane). The data from the weather stations is compressed since we are now looking at 1,000 years of time on the x-axis instead of 140. Notice how the post-1998 down trend appears gone, and at a glance the curve would appear to be steadily increasing. This is the infamous ‘hockey-stick’ graph highly touted by Al Gore as conclusive proof of anthropogenic global warming — a graph from which the UN has been very much distancing itself over the past couple of years.

Now look at the blue bars, which are reconstructed temperature data based upon ice cores and other natural evidence, as well as the black curve, which is the 50-year moving average for the data. Three things become clear. First of all, the ice core and the tree ring data are all over the place — it is less than well defined. So much so that the IPCC doesn't even bother to continue the black trend line beyond about 1970 even though they have additional data points from the first pane of the graph. Inclusion of all the current data up to 2008 would show that the hockey stick is indeed broken at the end.

Secondly, does 1,000 years of chronology really speak to the trend of the data? There is an old saying in climatology which says, "The ocean has a long memory." Since the oceans on Earth store an incredible amount of energy in the form of heat, there is substantial credibility to this statement. It has been postulated that some climatological events can take upwards of 800 to 1,000 years to show a change due to the slow and stable processes in play.

There are multiple sources on the internet of ice core temperature data going far further back than the mere 1,000 years shown in IPCC report. A slightly larger, but still geologically insignificant, 12,000 years will do just fine to make the argument. What you will find is nothing short of astonishing (as can be seen illustrated in Figure 2 below). Note, the x-axis is in thousands of years before present (BP), so '0' is 2004 A.D. and '12' is roughly 10,000 B.C.

FIGURES 2a and -b: A Slightly Better Picture of Past Global Temperature Variations

Source: United States Department of Commerce, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

 

As can be seen, the IPCC is only showing a cropped image of an even larger trend going back several thousand years. A trend showing that not only has it been incredibly colder in the past than it is today (i.e., the many ice ages), it has also been a heck of a lot hotter as well. The IPCC's 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Centigrade increase in temperature is peanuts compared to the non-anthropogenic swings of the past. Small unexplainable shifts upward have routinely occurred throughout recorded history (such as the Medieval Warming Period from 800 AD to 1300 AD), as well as much larger ones (such as the Holocene climatic optimum) which took place roughly 6,000 years ago and produced global mean temperatures up to two (2) to four (4) degrees Centigrade higher than today, and sea level increases between 15 and 20 feet greater than they are today.

Finally, the most glaring problem with the data has to do with the margin of error. In both panes of Figure 1, the gray marks indicate the 95-percent confidence intervals of the data. As an engineer looking at this raw data it would make me laugh out loud if it weren't such a serious topic. This data is what many professors I have known would deem as statistically meaningless. It embarrassingly shows for ALL of the record, the deviation from the mean generally is several times greater than the measured point in question. This is equivalent to making a mass measurement in a lab of an object, and then stating that it is 1 gram with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 or 3 grams. It would be time to throw away your lab scale and buy a new one.

So what does this all mean?

Well, this graph is the IPCC's key argument that the planet is warming. I would hope at this point that it is clearly obvious that the IPCC's data does not paint the whole picture. From a signal-processing standpoint, the IPCC is showing us the equivalent of electrical noise superimposed atop a much larger long-term temperature signal and desperately trying to demonstrate significance. I've seen this tactic pulled by some baccalaureate and graduate students, but I never thought I would see such widespread hocus pocus on a global level.

We now need to tie this perceived warming to humans. Part deux of the IPCC's report.

Greenhouse Gasses and Global Warming Potential

Greenhouse gases are defined as those naturally occurring and anthropogenic chemical compounds within the atmosphere that absorb and reflect infrared radiation emitted by Earth's surface. The basic mechanisms involved, as cited by global warming advocates, can be summarized as follows:

1. Solar radiation heats the planet primarily through ultraviolet and higher energy transmission.
    
2. The rock {Earth} gets warm and is offset by temperature levels in the oceans (which act as a global thermostat).
    
3. The warm rock emits black-body radiation in the lower infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
    
4. Most of the infrared radiation escapes the planet in accordance with the First Law of Thermodynamics.
    
5. A small portion of the energy is captured through molecular motion changes within the atmospheric greenhouse gases.
    
6. This captured energy then re-radiates back toward the rock (and space for that matter) producing a secondary heating effect.

Naturally occurring greenhouse gases include the aforementioned carbon dioxide (CO₂), water vapor (H₂O), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and ozone (O₃). In addition, several classes of halogenated {manmade} substances that contain fluorine, chlorine, or bromine also demonstrate a ‘greenhouse’ gas potential. Examples of these pollutants are halocarbons, perfluorocarbons (PFC’s), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), etc.

Examples of the more prevalent gases are detailed below:

1. Carbon dioxide (CO₂): CO₂ is a naturally occurring gas, and is part of the carbon cycle, whereby carbon is cycled between the atmosphere, ocean, terrestrial life, and mineral reserves. The predominant source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is from the combustion of fossil fuels and hydrocarbons. Without CO₂, all life on Earth would cease to exist. Carbon Dioxide is the reference gas against which all other greenhouse gases are compared. 
   
   A numerical metric known as the ‘Global Warming Potential’ (or GWP) is a measure of how much a given mass of greenhouse gas is estimated to contribute to global warming relative to Carbon Dioxide (whose GWP is defined as 1.0). This is the essence of the UN's approach to Global Warming. Thus, CO₂ has a GWP of 1.0 and makes up approximately 3.6 percent of the global warming gases in the atmosphere today.
    
2. Water Vapor (H₂O): Water is a chemical compound that is essential to all known forms of life and has been denoted as ‘the universal solvent’. Water vapor is the gaseous form of water comprising roughly 0.001% of all water on the planet. Without H₂O, all life on Earth would cease to exist. Although water vapor has the ability to capture roughly 10 times as much infrared energy as CO₂, its GWP was omitted from the IPCC’s report. In fact, the IPCC scientific panel states that about half of the projected global temperature increase from CO₂ is due to what is referred to as the water vapor feedback effect. In order to quantify the level of feedback due to water vapor, one needs to know the radiative efficiency of H₂O in vaporous form (i.e., the GWP). For some reason, nowhere in the IPCC report is this critical value presented. 
   
   Water vapor makes up approximately 95 percent of the global warming gases in the atmosphere today and is completely ignored by the United Nations IPCC panel and most proponent 'experts'. Their argument is something along the lines of, "...well it's always been there and there is nothing mankind can do about it...". It's a good thing aerospace engineers don't feel the same way about gravity when they calculate the orbital motion of a rocket!!!
    
3. Methane (CH₄): CH₄ is greenhouse gas with both natural and anthropogenic sources and is believed to be the primary atmospheric constituent during the early primordial Earth. Methane is naturally produced by the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter. Methane is also emitted during the production and distribution of natural gas and petroleum, and is released as a by-product of incomplete {low-temperature} fossil fuel combustion. It is estimated that a little more than half of the current methane emissions to the atmosphere are from anthropogenic sources. Methane has a GWP of 23 and constitutes approximately 0.36 percent of the global warming gases in the atmosphere today.
    
4. Nitrous Oxide (N₂O): Primarily, N₂O is naturally produced by bacterial action within the soil, and anthropogenically by high temperature combustion. The result is more-or-less the production of photochemical smog. Lesser sources, such as manufacturing, wastewater treatment, and biomass burning, also produce trace amounts of this substance. N₂O has a GWP of 296, and constitutes approximately 0.95 percent of the global warming gases in the atmosphere today.
    
5. Halocarbons (CFC’s) and Perfluorocarbons (PFC’s) are carbon compounds that contain fluorine, chlorine, bromine or iodine. Anthropogenic sources are the primary (if not sole) generator of these substances. These gases have GWP’s ranging from slightly over 100 to as high as 22,000. These gases constitute a mere 0.072 percent of the global warming gases in the atmosphere today.

A complete listing of known greenhouse gasses is shown below in Table 1.

 

TABLE 1: KNOWN GREENHOUSE GASSES AND THEIR GLOBAL WARMING POTENTIAL (GWP)

Source: Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC 2001.

 

The thought process employed by the IPCC, is that the more CO₂ and its equivalent CO_2e (which is equal to the weight of the gas in Table 1 multiplied by the GWP fudge factor), the greater the anthropogenic warming. The conversion of CO_2e to heat energy and ultimately temperature will be shown shortly.

This theory and the associated GWP's might seem appealing. It's simple and looks good on paper (kind of). The difficulty is that many of the findings within the IPCC report are based upon elaborate computer modeling using selective input assumptions, and apparently ignoring pertinent fundamentals of thermodynamics and heat transfer. Moreover, many of the predictions by the IPCC have never been empirically validated. The UN’s concept of a simple relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global mean temperature has never been proven either in a laboratory, or through the use of field experimentation, since the global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during periods where atmospheric carbon dioxide has been steadily increasing.

CO₂, Temperature, and the Law of Causality

During Al Gore's docudrama-rant, "An Inconvenient Truth", numerous references are made to a chart of CO₂ and temperature versus time. If you haven't seen it, it's that REALLY BIG chart with the disproportionate axis, behind Nobel Laureate Gore, as the 'proof' that CO₂ is the culprit. As CO₂ goes up, Al reasons, the temperature climbs. The chart is based on data from longer-term temperature records (this is a good thing), and representative CO₂ measurements from trapped pockets within ice samples (still a good thing, if done correctly). The problem is, the physical mechanism described by Gore in his movie, in which higher levels of CO₂ drive temperature increases, does not exist in nature.

CO₂ can only absorb and release energy at certain black-body frequencies, and this exchange of energy comes at a great loss. In fact, temperature always precedes a change in atmospheric CO₂, since the governing processes for this are founded in the roots of physical laws. One can even show that all greenhouse gasses follow this pattern. For CO₂ to transfer heat in the manner described by the global warming alarmists, it would indeed need to have some unusual properties, but we still have Al and his REALLY BIG graph — hmmmm.

There is a balancing act between atmospheric CO₂ and reserves stashed away within the planet — a type of thermal-gas regulator, as it were. The oceans contain this planet's greatest reserve of CO₂. If the temperature goes up, more CO₂ is released from solution (i.e., CO₂ dissolved in the oceans goes into the air). The colder the temperature, the more CO₂ goes back into solution.

But can this hypothesis be tested?

Sure... Take a bottle of soda and a CO₂ meter. Measure the CO₂ released from an open bottle at room temperature. Then place the bottle in very hot water and measure the level again. The amount of CO₂ released is higher for the hotter temperature bottle, and always will be. Physical laws including thermodynamics and ideal gas laws govern this process. This is why room temperature soda will go flat faster than a chilled one.

Now what about Al's way of doing it?

Suppose we had a really accurate thermometer (a good U.S. made one), and took the temperature of our soda both before and after we pumped the bottle full of CO₂ (and for the purists out there, we did this process VERY slowly so that it was adiabatic and isentropic). What would we find? Not very much. Even though we could control entropy (a measure of chaos in a system) in applying the CO₂, the ambient temperature would only vary in accordance with the ideal gas law. No unusual heating properties of CO₂ would be noted. An incremental increase in the carbonation of the soda would not precipitate any changes not predicted by Charles' Law (i.e. volume versus temperature relationship) or Boyle's Law (i.e. volume versus pressure relationship). Thus, a heavily carbonated soda will not tend to warm faster than a flat one.

Al Gore's theory of CO₂ and atmospheric heating has a reversibility problem, which is tantamount to a broken dish leaping off the floor and landing back on the counter top completely reassembled (a statistically possible notion, but not very realistic). Who knows, with some future research on his part, he might be able to add perpetual motion to the things he's invented.

Knowing this, maybe Al was confused and got the correlation backwards.

Well, it just so happens that this is another area that the IPCC is staying very quiet on. Since the release of the third IPCC working document and the critical acclaim of "An Inconvenient Truth", the scientific literature has been flooded with research showing that atmospheric CO₂ lags temperature. It lags by anywhere from 200 to 1,000 years. In fact, upon closer examination of Al's REALLY BIG graph in his movie/rant/propaganda piece, we can see that Al indeed reversed the cause and effect.

This fact is even supported by recent (2007) Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) temperature measurements made from NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellite platforms of the lower troposphere. These readings indicate a cooling of the planet despite an incremental increase in CO₂ levels. In fact, the same satellites have shown a steady decrease in temperature within the tropopause of 0.314 degrees Centigrade per decade since 1979. The UN’s increase of 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Centigrade has completely disappeared!

I guess no one told the satellites about Al's movie — huh?

The 'Science' Behind Global Warming

Let's put aside the realization that the IPCC's report is seriously flawed and has been iterated through four major revisions adjusting the science as the agenda proponents desired. Also, let us ignore the fact that most of the several thousand 'scientists' who signed the IPCC report agreeing with its findings did so in absentia, or under duress, or were never scientists at all and were instead United Nations staff members.

Ignore also the clandestine rewriting of scientific contributions by credible authors, and the documented fact that some scientific panel members actually litigated the UN to get their names taken off the document. Ignoring all this controversy, what does the IPCC report really say when it comes right down to CO_2e and global warming? The scientific conclusions are actually quite simple-minded and found buried here-and-there within the thousands of pages of policy review, globalization reform discussion, and general complaints about industrialization and industrialized nations.

Essentially the IPCC argument boils down to a simple statement of power conversion and absorption, to describe temperature variations, while negating all other cause-and-effect attributes (such as water vapor, solar radiation effects, solar intensity and output effects, orbital nutation and precession, variations in cloud cover, etc). In doing this, the IPCC sought to describe the physics of the problem in an a-priori fashion, whereby CO₂, its precursors, and equivalents could be the only driving factor. This is tantamount to ignoring your Newtonian reference frame when working in classical mechanics, or neglecting Heisenberg effects or the limitations imposed by the speed of light when working in the quantum world.

Unfortunately computers do not care about such trivial things as whether or not their programs are obeying the laws of physics. Although they {computers} themselves are bound by such quantum necessities, 'reality' within the virtual realm of a computer program can be something quite different. If you tell a computer to ignore gravity, then gravity is gone. Make the speed of light twice the accepted value - no problem. Ignore water vapor feedback and solar intensity shifts (like the IPCC's models do) - no big deal! Neglect negative feedback on the climate system and actually impose an artificial positive feedback (whereby things get hotter over time, and not cooler as is observed in nature) — that's OK too...

The difficulty here is that with these improper assumptions you wind up with a severely skewed view of the universe. The fact that it was modeled this way in a computer, however, does not make it correct.

The same thing applies to the current 'science' of global warming. Sure, we could ignore most of the salient features of the problem and focus on a predetermined agenda (i.e., CO_2e), but it still would not make it correct. A small tweak of CO_2e in a computer model with a very, very small positive feedback and you've got some great color plots showing doom-and-gloom on a global scale suitable for any cable news network. Moreover, in the computer CO₂ does not have to compete with its big brother, water vapor.

The same effect is in play with the IPCC's findings. The IPCC shows that carbon dioxide contributes approximately 32 watts per square-meter (W/m²) of long-wave radiative forcing to Earth's climate system under a clear-sky condition, out of a total of 125 watts per square-meter for all atmospheric gasses under the same conditions. Other greenhouse gasses contribute this level times their associated GWP. The IPCC ignores water vapor (H₂O = 75 W/m²), as well as any negative feedback effects associated with water, only focusing on CO₂ and the cadre of greenhouse gasses shown in Table 1. The problem with ignoring such things as a semi-invariant, like H₂O, whose atmospheric mass quantity is 2.34 times greater than CO₂ and 9.375 times greater than all other greenhouse gasses combined should be obvious. Clearly, the computer model is a little off balance.

Undaunted by such things, the IPCC charged bravely ahead determined to show a manmade impact. After a lot (and I mean a lot) of hand waving and juxtapositioning, the IPCC boils down the change in radiative forcing due to a change in CO_2e as being defined as,

 

where,

     ΔF is the change in the radiative forcing (in W/m²), 
     α is the atmospheric forcing coefficient = 5.35, 
     C is the baseline plus anthropogenic-contributed CO₂ and CO_2e concentrations (in ppmv), and, 
     C₀ is the baseline CO₂ concentration (commonly taken as 380 ppmv as of the writing of this article).

There are other derivations provided in the IPCC report, but this is the one that people most often cite. The result of the above equation is to generate an artificial increase in radiation forcing due to greenhouse gasses. This increase would presumably be above the total radiative forcing due to the Sun alone (i.e., roughly of 342 W/m² as of 1997) and the aforementioned natural atmospheric gas conglomeration of 125 W/m². If you assume that this forcing is continuous and ongoing (i.e., a positive feedback condition), then your model will show a steady increase in temperature due entirely to CO_2e.

So, now that we have this magic IPCC increase in radiative forcing, what do we do with it? Well it just so happens that if you go into a lab, you can, under very tightly controlled conditions, subject an air sample to a specified amount of long-wave radiation and measure the increase in temperature. The IPCC report relies heavily on a global air temperature sensitivity factor to convert radiation (in W/m²) to temperature increase (in degrees-centigrade or °C). How this could actually be measured is another topic of debate, but for the time being let us work with the IPCC and assume that they possess this mystical value.

Surface air temperature sensitivity factors cited by the IPCC have a global average of approximately 0.1 °C/W/m², although this value is up to interpretation and has been shown by many other researchers to be highly dependent on location (i.e., for a highly reflective desert the value might be closer to 0.15 or 0.2, for a cool swamp it could be as low as 0.05). For the purposes of argument, we will take the IPCC's value of 0.1 °C/W/m² as representative of industrialized nations portrayed on the nightly news as 'evil doers'.

A simple modification to our equation above would yield,

where,

     ΔT is the change in surface temperature (in °C), and, 
     ΔCO_2e is the change in equivalent CO₂ due to some type of anthropogenic event.

We now have all the tools available to calculate the increase in temperature as a function of time for any prescribed level of CO_2e. This is the essence of the science behind the IPCC's findings and the starting point for the interpretation by the populace. Before we explore some of the peculiar ways we, as taxpayers, are being saddled by global warming, let us have a little fun with the IPCC's equation.

A Friendly Little Experiment...

Suppose, that we want to find out just how much hotter the State of California gets due to increasing levels of CO₂...

Why California? Well, besides being the newly formed cradle of global warming insanity, the area within the State of California is approximately 163,696 sq mi, which ranks it third in total landmass per state within the United States, and larger than most European countries. If California were its own country, it would be ranked 35^th in terms of population and 10^th in terms of GDP. Plus, we have very accurate emissions data for California, courtesy of the bureaucrats in Sacramento.

To do this, we need to model the state as a thermodynamically closed system, subject only to increasing CO_2e concentrations in order to determine the net change in radiative forcing and ultimately temperature. Water vapor will be completely ignored from the analysis (as is done in the IPCC report), although the reader is cautioned that this approach, as with the IPCC approach, provides a false indication of the warming effects of the remaining greenhouse gases.

Our little experiment would be consistent and in accordance with the First Law of Thermodynamics since we are effectively placing the entire state in a bubble, as it were, and not allowing any extraneous forms of heat to transfer across this boundary, nor are we allowing any mass transfer except for ever-increasing levels of CO_2e.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that for any system, the sum of the heat ‘h’ contained within, or received by, the system, plus the work ‘w’ that the system is capable of producing, is equal to the total internal energy ‘E’ of the system. Simply expressed, the First Law says that a thermodynamic system can store energy in two different forms, heat and/or work, and that this internal energy is conserved.

Now, what types of emissions should we use for our simple analysis?

Since the Governor's office has repeatedly stated that automobile emissions are the biggest greenhouse gas culprits, let us take this declared worst offender and determine its effects. Lucky for us, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates on-road motor vehicle emissions using a series of computer models called the Motor Vehicle Emission Inventory (MVEI) models. If you have ever had your car smogged in California, now you know where the data goes.

For our little analysis we are going to use the EMFAC 2007 Model v2.3 of the MVEI, as this is the most current database. Our scenario will consist of statewide daily emissions of CO₂ and NO_x, which are the principal greenhouse gas byproducts from automobile combustion. The CO₂ we can utilize directly from the EMFAC model. The NO_x emissions are stoichiometrically composed of roughly 30-percent by weight nitrous oxide (N₂O, a greenhouse gas) and 70-percent by weight nitric oxide (NO, not a greenhouse gas). Incidentally, NO is a free-radical that immediately combines with ozone (O₃) to form nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), more commonly known as smog.

Running this model for a scenario year of 2009 we find that direct CO₂ emissions would be 551,310 tons per day. NO_x emissions would be 1,582.13 tons per day. You can click here to see the EMFAC printout from my model run.

We know that NO_x emissions are roughly 30-percent by weight nitrous oxide (N₂O), so we should expect that all California vehicles combined produce approximately 0.3 x 1,582.13 tons = 474.64 tons of N₂O per day. Since from Table 1, above, we see that the GWP for N₂O is 296, the CO_2e contribution would be 296 x 474.64 tons = 140,493.14 tons of CO_2e per day. We'll round this number to 140,493 tons of CO_2e per day.

So, our total equivalent CO_2e level is 551,310 tons per day of direct CO₂ and 140,493 tons of CO_2e per day due to NO_x emissions. This gives a final value of 551,310 + 140,493 = 691,803 tons of CO_2e per day. This equals 1,383,606,000 pounds of CO_2e per day. A very large number indeed.

Now we need to figure out the size of our 'bubble', the size of our thermodynamic system, in which we are going to mix all this CO_2e.

As previously stated, the area of the State of California is approximately 163,696 sq mi. This equates to 4.5635 x 10¹² square-feet (scientific notation for the number 4,563,500,000,000). An even bigger number. Since all CO₂ mixing occurs within the troposphere (the troposphere is the lowest portion of Earth's atmosphere and contains approximately 75% of all the atmospheric mass, along with almost all of its water vapor and greenhouse gasses), this would seem to be a reasonable ceiling to our system.

The average depth of the troposphere is approximately seven miles (≈ 37,000 feet). So, a thermodynamic system consisting of the California state boundaries and bounded by the tropopause would have the following volume,

A really big number !!!

Since one part-per-million-by-volume (ppmv) of CO₂ equals 1.12315x10^-7 pounds-per-cubic-foot at Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP), the daily increase in CO_2e concentration due to all vehicles within the State of California would be,

A not so big number...

You see, the thing that most rampant environmentalists forget is that as you include more sources that generate CO_2e, you must also include the volume of where those sources reside (the whole conservation of mass thing). I have a vivid recollection of being on a conference call with local global warming 'expert' and pointing this out. The silence was deafening.

Now, going back to the IPCC's radiation equation, we can predict the increase in temperature due all the cars running in California as follows,

This would be the initial daily increase in temperature. The above heating expression is logarithmic even though the CO_2e concentration increase is linear in nature. Thus, for future days (or years for that matter), one must iterate the above computation.

It is also important to remember that what we have here is the increase in temperature within a closed system with a continuously increasing concentration of CO_2e (i.e., all positive feedback and all CO_2e confined within the boundaries of our California-sized box). Ignoring the fact that we would all meet our demise within this 'box' through suffocation, it is still illustrative that ALL the cars within the state would only affect the statewide temperature at an initial rate of 1.0262x10^-4 degrees Centigrade per day. Extending this thought process further, the annual concentration increase would be 365 times the daily rate or 365 x 0.0729 ppmv or 26.6085 ppmv per year. This can be shown to increase the annual temperature by 0.0362 degrees Centigrade or 0.0652 degrees Fahrenheit (remember, this is a logarithmic expression).

So, just for curiosity's sake, how long would it take to increase the temperature of our closed system by one degree? Iterating the previous equation, we see the results in Table 2 below. Not surprisingly, well have to keep the status-quo for almost 30 years to effect a one-degree Fahrenheit change and almost 80 years to increase the temperature by one-degree Centigrade (which is the unit of measure in the IPCC document). 

 

TABLE 2: TIME REQUIRED FOR AUTOMOTIVE GREENHOUSE GASSES TO INCREASE THE TEMPERATURE IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA BY ONE, TWO, AND THREE-DEGREES UNDER A CLOSED ADIABATIC MODEL

 Source: Investigative Science and Engineering, Inc. (ISE), 2008.
 

Again, recalling that this is a logarithmic expression, the time to increase a second degree would be 100 years if measured in Fahrenheit or 590 years in the Centigrade {IPCC} scale. Care to guess how long it would take to go up three degrees (which is the point where the mass media predicts we will be within 100 or so years, given our evil industrialized habits)? It is 310 years for Fahrenheit and 3,880 years for Centigrade.

A few points should be noted, namely,

1. A unit of Centigrade is much larger than the unit of Fahrenheit (It only takes 100 degrees Centigrade to boil water; it takes 212 degrees Fahrenheit to do the same thing).
    
2. Even using the IPCC's skewed view of climatology, and our 'closed bubble of death' model shown above, it will still take mere CO₂ and NO_x emissions almost 4,000 years to increase surface temperatures by the dreaded three degrees Centigrade. This same increase, and much greater ones, have routinely occurred naturally throughout the geologic history of this planet (refer back to Figure 2b above).
    
3. The atmospheric concentration for a one-degree Centigrade shift would have to be 2,128.68 ppmv regardless of the source generating the pollution. A two-degree shift would require 15,699.02 ppmv. A three degree increase, 103,240.98 ppmv.
    
4. The partial pressure of a gas is defined as the pressure exerted by a particular gaseous compound in a mixture as though it were acting alone. At the IPCC's baseline level of 380 ppmv, the partial pressure of atmospheric CO₂ (P_CO2) is 0.0314% of the total atmospheric pressure of 14.7 lb/in² or roughly 0.004616 lb/in².
    
5. To increase the temperature by one degree Centigrade, we would need to increase the partial pressure of CO₂ to 0.004616 x (2,128.68/380) = 0.0258 lb/in² P_CO2. To increase the temperature by two degrees we would need 0.004616 x (15,699.02/380) = 0.1907 lb/in² P_CO2. For three degrees this would be 0.004616 x (103,240.98/380) = 1.25 lb/in² P_CO2.
    
6. At 0.15 lb/in² P_CO2 you will start to feel sick and dizzy. At 0.46 lb/in² P_CO2 you are dizzy and on the verge of passing out. At roughly 1.0 to 1.05 lb/in² P_CO2 you will suffer irreversible health effects, and with long-term exposure, death. Anything over 3.8 lb/in² P_CO2 will cause death within two minutes.
    
7. Higher upward temperature shifts of the type we have examined here have routinely occurred within the recent geologic history of this planet, and have not caused large scale extinctions. In fact, quite the opposite has been documented. Clearly, CO₂ is not driving the proverbial climate train...

Something is clearly wrong with the IPCC's one-size-fits-all CO₂ solution. Even under a closed system being constantly pumped full of CO_2e with no attenuating effects, and allowing CO₂ to store as much heat as it wants, the temperature just doesn't increase all that fast. CO₂ levels would become toxic far in advance of any perceivable warming. The dirty little secret of current global warming hype that they neglect to tell you is that the increase in temperature comes with a much greater increase in the toxicity of CO₂ - toxic levels which have never been seen on this planet as long as any air-breathing animals have been around. The IPCC neglects this fine point since it does not work well with their theory.

Finally, it is also curious to note that since the IPCC's equation is logarithmic, it is also asymptotic to a point and will trend to some final upper bound. That upper bound would be clearly defined when the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ is one million parts per million (i.e., 1:1), at which point the atmosphere would consist of pure CO₂. What does the IPCC equation report as the temperature at this point? It's 4.2136 degrees Centigrade (which is also 7.5844 degrees Fahrenheit). So much for some recent news claims that the temperature could increase by up to six degrees Centigrade due to global warming. Not on this planet buddy.

But there is a happy ending to our doom-and-gloom science experiment. If we were to adjust our model even slightly to include such real physical phenomenon as water vapor feedback (a mechanism that limits atmospheric CO₂) our numbers rapidly, and I mean rapidly, plummet toward zero. A simple adjustment of our model to assume a solubility of CO₂ in H₂O makes the time duration required to increase one degree Centigrade climb from 80 years to several centuries. The time required to increase three degrees Centigrade would be over 14,000 years with this simple adjustment in the model. Further, if we were to assume that the sun varies in intensity in our model, and teach our computer program that solar radiation is a {large} variable, that factor alone would dominate all others and literally hijack the solution. It should be evident that global warming models that rely on a hand full of independent variables are highly susceptible to large changes through even the smallest perturbation.

This is no coincidence; it is an artifact of mathematics and is the subject of an entire discipline called, 'Sensitivity Analysis'. Too bad the IPCC never tried applying this to their models. Indeed, the solution is not as simple as all atmospheric CO₂ or even the smaller subject of anthropogenic CO₂.

Concluding Thoughts...

Global warming has been blamed for every imaginable problem the world currently has or is expected to have. It has been blamed for a lack of water, too much water, hotter summers, global cooling, more hurricanes, less hurricanes, decreases in sea ice, recent increases in sea ice, etc. Al Gore says we only have ten years left (I guess he hasn't read this treatise yet).

Take a look at some of the things that the news and special interest groups have either blamed on, or attributed to, global warming:

 

 

Indeed, CO₂ must really have mystical powers. Is it any wonder that there is a growing consensus today of people who compare the belief in global warming to that of a religious notion, rather than a scientific one.

As I have stated earlier, this would all be somewhat entertaining if we, as taxpayers and consumers, were not being saddled by this global warming Schadenfreude. Wherever there is misery, or the perception of misery, there will always be someone out there ready to exploit irrational fears to make a buck or seek more control.

There is an old saying, "...follow the money!!!" ... and a great deal of money it is indeed. Countless billions of dollars have been spent either promoting or chasing the global warming pipe dream. The Bush administration and Congress have spent well over $20 billion backing every absurd quasi-causal theory out there, while rumors have it our Nobel Laureate, super-genius, ex-Veep Al Gore gets between $100K and $200K per speech on the topic, and has gleaned over $200 million in totality from global warming.

At this stage of the global warming game, considering the vast sums of hard-earned taxpayer money that have been flushed down the proverbial drain-pipe, I have a hard time taking any alarmist 'expert' seriously who has a financial benefit in promulgating the problem. I've watched many a person fall victim to 'fad-science' presented using a nice visual presentation — you see, we have become a society more concerned about how something is presented, and less concerned about what the presentation actually says. Most science experts and pundits currently out in the news spotlight would not know real science if it slapped them in the face.

... and how could they?

They either have a serious agenda, driven by avarice and/or a desire for social control, or have been so inundated by propaganda that their cognitive powers can no longer decipher scientific fact from fiction. In either case, whenever people fulminate about catastrophic global warming, you must always question their motivation. Are they after money (big research grants, more taxes, etc.)? Are they after more social control (through increased regulations, taxes, and penalties against business, or even outright Marxism)? Or, are they ill-informed victims of propaganda who just do not understand the real facts and science?

My personal experiences with global warming advocates has demonstrated that they unequivocally fall into the above categories...

The IPCC has morphed their findings so much that now, as of the recent release of the Fourth Working Group Report in November 2007, we find NOAA's own web site acting as chief apologist for previous UN findings by explaining to the reader that {their} knowledge of the subject of Paleoclimatology has improved greatly over the past 15 years since the release of the first IPCC report. My, what an expensive education it has been too! I suppose that by the time the Fifth Working Group Report becomes available, the findings will state that there really wasn't a warming problem after all — but, so long, and thanks for all the money!!!

When the dust settles, and science and rational thought again rein in the global warming monster, someone will classify global warming in its proper historical context — namely, the greatest con job ever committed in the history of mankind.