27 Simple Bullet Points Prove Global Warming by the Sun, not CO2: By a Geologist for a Change

Dr Roger Higgs, Geoclastica Ltd, Technical Note on ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332245803_27_bullet_points_prove_global_warming_by_the_sun_not_CO2_by_a_GEOLOGIST_for_a_change

1) The IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the 100s of authors of its last major report (2013-14) & at most 1 in the next (2022; see my Tech. Note 2019-10). Thus IPCC focuses on only the last 150 years (since thermometer records began, c. 1850), yet Earth is 30 million (sic) times older, 4.5 billion years! Geologists know Earth has always warmed and cooled. Climate change is perfectly normal.

2) The IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in man-made or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by CO2. IPCC authors, mostly government & university researchers, are biased by strong vested interests in AGW (publications; continuance of salaries; research grants). Similarly, universities have sacriﬁced their impartiality by hosting institutes mandated to conﬁrm & act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.

3) The often-parroted ‘97% consensus among scientists that global warming is man’s fault’ (CO2 emissions) is untrue. It refers in fact to surveys of just a relatively small group of ‘climate scientists’ (a new type of generalist scientist, with strong incentives for bias; see Bullets 2 & 15), moreover only those who are ‘actively publishing’.

4) No educated person ‘denies’ modern global warming; it’s been measured (Bullet 11). ‘Global warming deniers’ is a deceitful term for man-made global warming doubters & deniers (most of Earth’s real scientists?).

5) CO2 is a ‘greenhouse gas’. But as CO2 rises, its theoretical heat-trapping ability sharply declines, already 67% ‘used up’ at 100 parts per million (ppm) CO2, 84% at 300ppm (NB 275ppm when industrial CO2 output began; Bullet 8), 87% at 400ppm (today 415ppm, or 0.04%) and >99% at 1000ppm. Moreover, Climate Sensitivity (CS), the warming due to doubling CO2, is guesswork. IPCC ‘estimates’ CS from climate models (circular reasoning) as probably between 1.5 & 4.5 (300% contrast!), but models are defective (Bullet 6). In reality CS might be very near zero, perhaps explaining why up to 7,000ppm in Phanerozoic time (Bullet 7) did not cause ‘runaway’ warming.

6) IPCC climate models are so full of assumptions as to be useless or (worse) misleading, e.g. forecast 1995-2015 warming was 2-3 times too high! Bullet 19 gives another drastic failure. Even Wiki (2019) admits: “Each model simulation has a different guess at processes that scientist don’t understand sufﬁciently well”. Models also dismiss the sun’s ﬂuctuations & omit the multi-decade delay between these & the resulting warming or cooling. This time-lag is due to ocean thermal inertia (mixing-time), grossly underestimated by IPCC (Bullets 15, 21).

7) For ~75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution ﬂourished, with CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown.

8) Through the last 12,000 years (our current ‘Holocene’ interglacial epoch), CO2 was a mere 250 to 290 ppm, near plant-starvation level (about 150ppm), until about 1850 when industrial CO2 emissions began, making CO2 climb steeply. CO2 today is still only 415ppm, or 0.01%, i.e. less than half of one-tenth of 1% of our atmosphere.

9) Until man began adding CO2 about 1850, warming (determined from ‘proxies’ like tree rings) since the 1700AD Little Ice Age nadir was accompanied by slowly rising CO2 (measured in ice cores). A simple explanation is the well-known release of CO2 by warming ocean water (decreasing its CO2-holding capacity).

10) Other evidence, besides Bullet 9, that rising CO2 is a consequence, not cause, of global warming is Humlum’s demonstration that changes in CO2 growth rate lag behind changes in warming rate (by about 1 year); and also …

11) Since the ~1850 start of man’s CO2 additions, thermometer-measured global warming (1.3 degrees C) was interrupted by frequent minor coolings of 1-3yrs (not all attributable to mega-volcano ‘winters’) & two substantial coolings (0.2 deg) of 30yrs (1878-1910, 1944-1976), plus the 1998-2013 ‘warming pause’ (Wiki). In contrast, CO2’s rise has accelerated, with only a brief pause (1887-97) & a mini-reversal (1940-45), both during the 30-yr coolings.

12) This unsteady ‘sawtooth’ Modern Warming resembles the sawtooth rise of the sun’s magnetic output from 1901 toward a rare solar ‘Grand Maximum’ (GM; peak 1991), unmatched since 300AD! See Bullet 21.

13) Warming reached a peak in Feb 2016. Since then, Earth has cooled >3 years. NB no mega-eruption since 1991.

14) The ‘Svensmark Theory’ says rising solar-magnetic output deﬂects cosmic rays, thus reducing cloudiness, allowing more of the sun’s warmth to heat the land and ocean instead of being reﬂected by clouds. In support, a NASA study of satellite data spanning 1979-2011 (‘Modern Warming’; Bullet 12) showed decreasing cloud cover.

15) Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research vocal climate scientist Dr Stefan Rahmstorf (Wiki) wrongly said in 2008: “there is no viable alternative … [to CO2 as driver of 1940-2005 warming, as] … different authors agree that solar activity did not signiﬁcantly increase”. Yet in 1999, physicist Dr Michael Lockwood FRS (Wiki) wrote in prestigious Nature journal: "the total magnetic ﬂux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964” & 2.3 since 1901 !

16) Lockwood showed averaged solar magnetic ﬂux increased 230% from 1901 to 1995, i.e. more than doubled ! The ﬁnal peak value was 5 times the starting minimum value ! Bullets 17 & 18 likewise back Svensmark’s theory.

17) After the ~300AD solar GM (Bullet 12), in 0.5cm/yr), all reaching higher than today, long before industrial CO2. 27) If we stop expanding fossil-fuel use, CO2 will soon stabilise at a new equilibrium (nearer optimum for plants).