Making Cars Net Zero Now

Many people worry about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. They should. Elevated atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which  are normal in office buildings, school rooms, hospital operating rooms, and the White House Oval Office impair cognitive performance. An increase in ambient carbon dioxide concentration can only further impair the mental capacity of the office-bound functionaries who run the world.

Furthermore, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration raises plant productivity. That's great if you're a farmer, but not so great if you worry about population growth, which is mainly occurring in places where population is food limited -- resulting, naturally, in well intentioned efforts to increase food production even more, which tends to result in people still going hungry but in greater numbers. 

Then there's climate change anxiety. Does anyone know for sure what a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which we are on course to achieve, will do to the climate and, as a result, to us. Well, there are lots of people to warn of the consequences, but the reality is that we don't know: we're just playing with fire.

What then to do. Easy, just suck it up -- the carbon dioxide, that is. How? Atmospheric carbon dioxide capture and sequestration is already being implemented on a substantial scale. But it costs. So a carbon tax applied in full to direct-air carbon dioxide capture (DAC) provides the solution. 

Current estimates of cost are in the region of US$0.70 per kilogram of carbon dioxide. So just apply a tax of around $1.50 per litre to gasoline and the equivalent to other sources of carbon dioxide and invest the proceeds in massive DAC plants. That will make using a car more expensive -- on average about an additional US$0.30 per kilometer -- but IT'S NOT PROHIBITIVE. And as a plus, folks will drive less, though remaining free to drive as much as they want -- at a price. 

Canada and 40 other national or sub-national jurisdictions already have a carbon price. What remains to be done is to apply the tax revenue to direct air carbon dioxide capture and sequestration.

As for those expensive, overweight electric cars that you can't fast-charge if you're out in the boonies, forget 'em.

Other carbon-emission-free options for the future include vehicles powered by an internal combustion engine burning either ammonia, yielding nitrogen and water vapor, or methanol synthesized by hydrogenation of carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere.

Huge percentage of EV owners want to go back to normal cars

Carbon Emissions? Don't Worry, Be Happy

With yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 14 tons per person, Canadians lead the world in driving climate change. Yearly carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the average Canadian family of four, if frozen solid, would yield a cube of dry ice ten feet on a side, and weighing 56 tons.

But then there are the forest fires, which, to date, have added more than 50 tons of carbon dioxide emissions for every Canadian citizen and are still burning. At a rough estimate, therefore, we can say that Canadian carbon emissions in the current year will total something like 250 tons for a family of four.

How does that translate to national terms? There are 38.25 million Canadians occupying a country of approximately 10 million square kilometers, which means there is approximately one quarter of a square kilometer, or 250 thousand square meters, per person. The atmosphere weighs about 10 tons per square meter, so for for every Canadian resident there are 2.5 million tons of air located over the Canadian land mass. Thus the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year as the result of human activity and forest fires raises the carbon dioxide content of the air over the Canadian landmass by one part in fifty thousand, or 20 parts per million. Continued at that rate for twenty years, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would double in 20 years.

This trend is counteracted in part by natural processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These include both biotic and abiotic processes that result in the deposition of atmospheric carbon dioxide in both dead plant and animal matter accumulating in swamps and peatlands, in limestone rocks and in some disgusting ooze at the bottom of the oceans. Mostly, however, thanks to the global atmospheric circulation, carbon dioxide generated in Canada simply blows away, to be shared by all humanity.

As a long term solution, sharing our pollution with the world is clearly problematic, which fact drives development of technology for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping it into exhaused natural gas fields or other suitable repositories. In particular, we have in Canada Carbon Engineering, a government and charity funded company building a plant that will use renewable energy in the direct capture and sequestration of one hundred million tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year. 

So once Carbon Engineering's plant is in operation, we'll just need 19 more the same size to handle Canada's total emissions. Which sounds crazy but need not be, depending on where the cost of large scale direct air carbon capture bottoms out. If, as some estimate, the cost could fall to as little as $15 - 20 per ton (15 to 20 cents per kg), then financing recapture of atmospheric carbon emissions becomes entirely bearable. It would mean, for example, a carbon capture charge of around 50 cents a litre for gasoline. So yes, don't don't worry, be happy. 

Rev'd Nov 24, 2023

Related:

Natural CO2 Emissions Nearly Six Times Higher Than Man-Made Sources

American “Scientist” Engaged in Evil Plot to End Life on Earth

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: What Humans Have Added, Won't Just Go Away

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration — will it kill us all?

Even among the experts, opinions differ. The climate models, which attempt to predict the evolution of a chaotic atmospheric system, will likely always be controversial, but they indicate possible outcomes such as rises in sea level that would inundate the world's most heavily populated regions, a prediction that should give one pause for thought.

Plus, there are two other important and certain outcomes.

One is that as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rises it progressively impairs human mental function, as demonstrated by recent research by what one must assume are highly competent researchers at Harvard University and one of America's National Laboratories.

The other is that rising atmospheric concentration plays Hell with the biosphere, with effects that include mass species extinctions and, paradoxically, a huge increase in human population as carbon dioxide stimulates agricultural crop yields.

These facts seem now to have been generally accepted, even by major oil companies, with the result that the world is now headed for a broad-ranging set of government mandated actions to slow human-caused carbon dioxide emissions with the aim of achieving zero net emissions by 2050.

Problem is, we will still be left with a hugely elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, which will still be working its effects on the world, speeding the melting of glaciers, ice sheets and frozen soils, disrupting ecosystems and still, therefore, causing havoc.

How to respond?

One might simply hope that, in the course time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would gradually decline to where it was before the industrial revolution and the fossil fuel age. That, however, is a hope sadly to be disappointed. If there were any natural mechanism for lowering the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the concentration prior to the industrial revolution would already have hit zero, all photosynthetic organisms would have died out, as would the entire animal world, dependent as it is, directly or indirectly, on photosynthetic organisms.

But, in fact, prior to the industrial revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were flat at around 270 part per million for hundreds of thousands of years. Yes, prior to the industrial revolution there would have been some sequestration of carbon dioxide, mainly by geological processes. But sequestration was evidently balanced by natural carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere resulting chiefly from volcanic eruptions. So if carbon dioxide concentrations are be reduced to something like the pre-industrial value it will be necessary for humanity to do something.

What to do?

The only answer, apparently, is CCS: carbon capture and storage.

How to capture and store carbon dioxide is a question subject to many lines of research and pilot-scale testing. Here I will consider only whether this approach to lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is economically viable:

First, how much carbon dioxide are we talking about?

Well here's the math:

The surface area of the world is ca 500 million square kilometers, or five trillion square meters.

The mass of the atmosphere is just over ten metric tons per square meter, or around 500 trillion metric tons in total. Of that, the amount of carbon dioxide that, since pre-industrial times, will have been added to the atmosphere by 2050 is:

500 trillion * (600 – 270)/1,000,000 * 1.84/1.24 = 2.45 trillion tons.

That's quite a lot, but there are methods known today for sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide that are estimated to cost less than $100 per ton. Assuming that further research and development reduces that cost by something like a factor of ten, the cost of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to the pre-industrial value will be around twenty-five trillion dollars, or about one quarter of the World's yearly GDP.

So, yes, adjusting the World's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to normal, though costly, will be feasible, though depending on technical developments, it may take a few years.

RELATED:
CanSpeccy: 
Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Michael Moore/Jeff Gibbs: Planet of the Humans

This video has three themes:

(1) the logic underlying bioenergy is the grotesque self-contradiction that burning down the world's forests and converting the Amazon forest to sugar plantations to support the ethanol-as-motor-fuel industry will save the planet.

(2) alt-energy schemes are for the most part scams run by rich humbugs such as Al Gore and the Koch brothers intent on adding billions to their already enormous wealth.

(3) solar and wind power depend on a vast range of mining and fossil-fuel-dependent industrial processes and achieve little if anything in terms of energy return on energy invested.

A reviewer at Gizmodo contends that Point 3 is an outdated view based on the state of technology a decade ago. That may be so, but it remains to be seen whether wind and solar have the potential to displace fossil fuels on a global scale. There is, however, no question that large scale investment in bioenergy is a total insanity and a monstrous crime against humanity and all other life on Earth.

Overall, an important story, well presented, with a fine musical accompaniment.

Global Warming: No Need to Panic Yet?

US Temperature anomaly 2004 to 2019. Source: U.S. Natioanal Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration, National Temperature Index.

The temperature anomaly is the difference between the temperature at a particular time relative to the long-term mean temperature. So currently, and for the last fifteen years, the average temperature recorded across the continental United States has shown essentially zero deviation from the long-term mean temperature. Which is not to say, however, that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is a good thing. On the contrary, as comments linked below indicate, it is potentially a very bad thing.

Related: 
Zero Hedge: Creator Of Global-Warming's Infamous "Hockey Stick" Chart Loses 'Climate-Science' Lawsuit
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

About Carbon Dioxide: We Got One Thing Right

A while ago we wrote several posts about the ongoing rise in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. We said nothing about the impact this human-caused change in the chemical composition of the atmosphere might have on climate, as most people seem already to have a more definite opinion on that question than most of the rather small number of people somewhat familiar with the facts. But we did say, what is much less widely discussed or even recognized as a public policy issue, that rising carbon dioxide concentration would have a large impact on the biosphere, for the following reason:

... plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by diffusion. Assimilating atmospheric carbon dioxide by diffusion entails a challenge because, if there is a path for the carbon dioxide to diffuse from the atmosphere to the plant cell, there must, unavoidably, be a path for the loss of water by vapor diffusion from the plant cell to the atmosphere. This means that plants exchange water, which is usually in limiting supply, for carbon. Moreover, the rate of exchange depends directly on the concentration gradients of the two gases between plant cell and atmosphere. Therefore, if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rises, the amount of carbon fixed by plants in exchange for the water available also rises.

This effect is greatest where plant growth is most severely restricted by drought. Much of Southern Africa, and particularly the Sahel, a broad belt of mixed shrubs and grasses to the South of the Sahara desert, is a severely water-limited habitat. By promoting carbon assimilation and hence plant growth in such water-limited habitats, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration can have a big impact on ecosystem structure. That is because:

... some plants respond more vigorously to rising carbon dioxide concentration than others. Particularly responsive are woody species of arid habitats such as the Australian outback, the Sahel to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert, and the South American Savanna. This means that rising carbon dioxide concentration is changing the species composition of plant communities and thereby changing the composition of the animal communities that depend on the plants for food and shelter. The extent and significance of these changes has thus far, received barely any attention, but they will become increasingly obvious as the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration continues its accelerating rise.

And has it ever become increasingly obvious. Or so it has been reported by scientists from the UK's Herriot Watt University. Put shortly, what they claim to have found is that almost 8,000 sub-tropical African plant species from an estimated total of about 23,000 species could become extinct within the next few decades.

Wow. Maybe we should be taking the CO2 thing more seriously.

Posts From the Past: Carbon, Climate, and Hot Air

2019:

Global Warming: No Need to Panic Yet?

2018:

Saving the World Through Sloth, Ineptitude, Hornswoggling, and the Carbon Tax

The Phony "Scientific" American Magazine, Attacks the Phony Science Guy, in Defense of a Phony Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

2017:

Why the All-Electric Family Car Is Something the Average Family Will Likely Never Own

2016:

The Trouble With Climate Science

2015:

MIT Meteorology Prof, Science Magazine and the Pope Concur: The Reality of Human Caused Climate Change Is an Article of Religious Faith

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

Climate Science RIP

Stop Climate Change: Shoot the Rich

How Justin Trudeau Could Save the World from Yet Another Futile, Failed, UN Climate Conference, But Won't 

(Actually, he did, sort of, by introducing a carbon tax, but without eliminating all the other schemes and bureaucratic controls, or providing for a countervailing duty on products from countries without a carbon tax. So it won't work.)

2013:

Extreme Weather? Don't Worry. It's Normal

A Carbon Tax: The Intelligent Way to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions

2012:

Nulius in verba: On the word of no one

Per ardua ad astra: Why not?

2011

How stupid people win debates

The State of Climate Science: Have We Passed Peak Civilization?

Saving the World Through Sloth, Ineptitude, Hornswoggling, and the Carbon Tax

Many people fear that human activity is changing the climate in ways that will prove catastrophic. Others hold that fear to be overblown or entirely mistaken. Some even claim that because of the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the world is becoming a better, more productive place. For example, because of fertilization by carbon dioxide, crop yields are rising, while because of the gentle carbon dioxide-induced warming of the planet, crop lands are extending Northward, while rainfall is increasing in the dry lands to the South of the Sahara. As a result, starvation in the poorest parts of the world is being held at bay.

The disagreement about climate change has long been intense, and positions have become deeply entrenched. The scientific debate has become rancorous. Scientists have been accused of data manipulation and fraud. Scientists have sued one another for libel. And a leading scientist recently quit the climate science field because of its "craziness."

In the public domain, the debate has become highly politicized. Former US President, Barack Obama, has claimed that climate change "is a threat that may define the contours of this century more than any other" (Whatever exactly the contours of a century may be.). Former US Vice President Al Gore has likened denial of climate change to racism. NASA's former top climate scientist and Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has been arrested repeatedly as a participant in protests against pipeline development, tar sands development, and coal mining.

Global Warming Is Not a Hoax, It`s An Unproved, and Likely Unprovable, Hypothesis

Donald Trump is reported to have said that global warming is a hoax. In fact, the claim that the climate is being warmed due to human activity is not a hoax, but a hypothesis, and quite an old one.

Svante Ahrrenius, in 1896, was the first to quantify the contribution of carbon dioxide to Earth's temperature and to speculate on whether variations in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide have contributed to long-term variations in climate. In later publications he suggested that the combustion of coal would affect global temperature.

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has risen over the last 250 years by just over 40%, from 275 parts per million (ppm) by volume to almost 400 ppm, and is currently rising at the rate of 2.11 ppm per year, which if sustained means a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration within 70 years.

This change in the chemical composition of the atmosphere has at least three consequences of major concern:

First, by absorbing heat radiated by the Earth to outer space, the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere warms the planet, though by what amount is highly uncertain due to the complex interactions among climate variables. 

Second, by increasing the efficiency with which plants use water in photosynthesis, it has increased global primary production by, according to some estimates, as much as ten billion tons per year. But not all plants respond to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in the same way, so that some species will increase in range and habitat dominance, while others will be at a competitive disadvantage. The net result will be the loss of many species both of plants and of the animals that depend on those plants for food or shelter. 

Third, it appears from current research that rather small increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration may severely impair certain important human cognitive capacities.

The chief causes of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide are: 

Combustion of fossil fuel (65-85% of total change).

Conversion of old-growth forests to short-rotation plantations or bare land with the resultant atmospheric release of carbon fixed in both trees and forest soils (10-25% of total change). 

and the manufacture of cement, which involves the conversion of calcium carbonate to calcium oxide with the release of carbon dioxide (5% of total change).

Cooking with wood. Image source

As the Third World modernizes, scope for reducing worldwide cement usage looks slight to non-existent. There is, however, considerable scope for reducing forest destruction. Approximately half of the timber harvested worldwide is used for fuel wood, and that mainly for cooking over an open fire. Cooking over an open wood fire is highly inefficient. Converting two-thirds of the World's population from the use of fuel wood for cooking to the use of naturqal gas would massively reduce the associated carbon emissions, while also reducing the emission of climate-warming and health-damaging soot and volatile organic compounds. Substantial reduction in timber use as a structural material will be more difficult to achieve, although increasing substitution of oil-based plastics for wood is likely to occur.

Old growth stump versus spindly second growth forest, British
Columbia. Source

Large near-term reductions in carbon emissions can only come through reductions in the use of fossil fuel. Such reduction during a period of Third World modernization may be difficult to achieve, but is essential if a catastrophic poisoning of Earth's environment is to be avoided. For this, three developments are required. 

First, the upgrading of industrial processes to achieve higher energy-use efficiencies. Gas turbine electricity generators, for example, can have an energy-use-efficiency at least 50% higher than most existing coal-fired plants. 

Second, the redesign of the human environment, including residential architecture and transportation systems, to eliminate the massive expenditures of time, capital and energy necessitated  by the suburban/commuter life-style. 

Third, the redirection of consumption from energy intensive goods and services, such as airline travel, SUV's, and monster homes, to low-energy-content goods and services, including bicycles, and health, fitness, educational and religious services.

The efficient commuter. Image source

The challenge is to devise a way of driving the necessary changes in methods of production, life-styles and thinking. But central to any effective change in course will be to tax what we don't want, i.e., carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, and to avoid taxing all the low-carbon goods and services that we do want. This means a carbon tax is essential. All that is needed is for governments to adjust their budgets to raise revenue from carbon emissions while reducing taxes on income. This will automatically adjust consumption preferences and reduce overall carbon emissions.

Beside its direct effect on carbon emissions, the carbon tax has two other important features. 

First, it will drive increases in carbon-use efficiency in the most cost effective way. Those who can reduce their emissions for less than the cost of the carbon tax will do so, whereas those who cannot reduce their emissions for less than the cost of the carbon tax will pay the tax and continue emitting, though at a reduced rate as the cost of what they sell is raised as a consequence of the carbon tax. Thus will be achieved a reduction in emissions at the lowest overall cost to the economy, with scope for increasing the reduction indefinitely by increases in the carbon tax rate. 

Second, the effective application of a carbon tax can be undertaken by any jurisdiction without consultation or agreement with any other jurisdiction. There is no need for international agreement. All that is needed is a countervailing import tax on goods or services from countries without a carbon tax of comparable severity to one's own. Such a provision not only protects the home industry from unfair foreign competition, but provides other countries with an incentive to introduce their own carbon tax.

Sadly, the beauty of the carbon tax mechanism, which we spelled out eighteen years ago, has yet to be recognized by any national government. It is encouraging, however, that the new government of Canada has promised a national carbon tax, although the value of such a measure will depend upon the details. There must be no exemptions for favored industries or regions and it must be accompanied by a countervailing import tax to protect Canadian jobs from unfair competition.

Related: 

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

There is no known physiological reason why doubling, tripling or raising by a factor of ten the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would significantly affect human physical or mental performance. Humans in submarines, aircraft, and office buildings survive and appear to function normally in atmospheres containing many times the present atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (1). Only at concentration above 10,000 parts per million do effects on performance become obvious, and suffocation due to carbon dioxide occurs only at concentrations many times higher still.

Ambient carbon dioxide concentration and cognitive capacity. Image source: Satish et al..

But two recent papers from top research labs show that, contrary to expectation, rather small increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration sharply impair some vitally important cognitive capacities.(2,3) In both studies, experimental subjects were tested on various types of cognitive tasks ranging from mundane busy work to the exercise of initiative, and strategic thinking. What they found was that over a range of carbon dioxide concentrations commonly occurring in air-conditioned school and office buildings, performance on tasks requiring higher cognitive functions were significantly or catastrophically reduced at the higher carbon dioxide concentrations, whereas performance on more mundane tasks was largely unaffected.

These papers, which deserve reading in their entirety by anyone with a serious interest in human intellectual performance in general or in their own performance or that of their subordinates or employees, remind one of the theory that Rome collapsed because of lead in the water due to the extensive use by the Romans of lead-pipe plumbing. Could it be that we in the West are Hell bent for collapse for a similarly mundane reason, in our case the cause being carbon dioxide in the air supply of the air-conditioned buildings in which most decision-makers and professionals now work?

The more one thinks about it the more Donald Trump's insistence that "We are led by very, very stupid people" seems credible. This sad state of affairs could simply be the result of a combination of the carbon dioxide dome over Washington DC, plus inadequate ventilation of the Oval Office and the Capitol.

(1) Vercruyssen, Max, et al. 2007. Effects of Carbon Dioxide Inhalation on Psychomotor and Mental Performance During Exercise and Recovery. Intl. J. Occup. Safety & Ergonomics. 13:15–27.

(2) Satish, Usha, et al. 2012. Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance. Env. Health Perspect. 120:1671–1677.

(3) Allen, Joseph G. et al. 2015. Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments. Environ. Health Perspect. Adv. Publication.

Related: 

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption

Some global warming "skeptics" dismiss the climatic effect of carbon dioxide by claiming that the gas exists in the atmosphere in such a negligible quantity that even several times that negligible quantity is still negligible. In terms of climate, this may even be true, but the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has a massive effect on the biosphere. Each year, worldwide plant dry biomass production totals around 170 billion tons, of which about half, or 85 billion tons, comprises carbon. All of that carbon is derived from atmospheric carbon dioxide at a rate that is closely dependent on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The reason for the dependence of photosynthetic production on the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is that plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by diffusion. Assimilating atmospheric carbon dioxide by diffusion entails a challenge because, if there is a path for the carbon dioxide to diffuse from the atmosphere to the plant cell, there must also be a path for water vapor to diffuse from the plant cell to the atmosphere. This means that plants exchange water, which is usually in limiting supply, for carbon. Moreover, the rate of exchange depends directly on the concentration gradients of the two gases between plant cell and atmosphere. Therefore, if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rises, the amount of carbon fixed by plants in exchange for the water available to them also rises. (When available water has been exhausted, plants close down the path for gaseous diffusion between photosynthetic tissue and atmosphere and both photosynthetic production and water loss ceases.)

Australia's outback greening up: a response to rising carbon 
dioxide concentration.

Thus, an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration makes possible something like a proportional increase in plant biomass production. This effect has already been observed in the case of some crop species, and in both tropical and boreal forests. We know, for certain, therefore, that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is raising the carrying capacity of the planet for mankind and other animals by increasing yields of crops and the productivity of natural ecosystems.

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is also changing the structure of ecosystems, because it has been shown that some plants respond more vigorously to rising carbon dioxide concentration than others. Particularly responsive are woody species of arid habitats such as the Australian outback, the Sahel to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert, and the South American Savanna. This means that rising carbon dioxide concentration is changing the species composition of plant communities and thereby changing the composition of the animal communities that depend on the plants for food and shelter. The extent and significance of these changes has thus far, received barely any attention, but they will become increasingly obvious as the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration continues its accelerating rise.

Related: 

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

In 1750, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was around 275 parts per million (ppm) by volume or just over 400 ppm by mass. By 1850, the concentration had risen by about 10 ppm by volume, or 3%, as the result of the increasing use of coal in Europe, and particularly in Britain. By 1950, when industrialization and the associated use of fossil fuels had spread around the globe, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration reached 320 ppm by volume, an increase of about 12% in a century. Today, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is around 390 ppm by volume, an increase over the pre-industrial value of 41%. On present trends, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration will reach at least twice the pre-industrial concentration before the end of this century.

Image source: The Encyclopedia of Earth

As everyone knows, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — except that it isn't. There is no such thing as a greenhouse gas, and here's why. When the sun warms the ground, heat is transmitted to the air in contact with the ground, and that warmed air is then carried aloft by convection, often to a height of thousands of meters (that is why it is possible, by locating the up-draughts, for a sailplane pilot to keep his craft aloft for many hours on a sunny day). A greenhouse, allows solar radiation to heat the ground, and hence the air in the greenhouse, but it prevents the warm air from being convected away, hence, on a sunny day, the air inside a greenhouse is always warmer than the air outside. So-called greenhouse gases do not work this way.

But while there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide does affect the Earth's temperature by absorbing infra-red radiation, or heat. In particular, it absorbs some, a very small amount, of the heat that the Earth radiates to space. When global temperature is constant, the Earth radiates to outer space an amount of energy exactly equal to the amount it receives from the sun. If the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is raised, a tiny additional fraction of the heat emitted by the Earth in the direction of the sky is absorbed by the newly added carbon dioxide, thus warming the planet. As the Earth warms, it emits an increasing amount of heat to space until a new balance between incoming and outgoing radiation is reached.

In terms of climate, therefore, the significance of carbon dioxide is that it is a heat absorbing gas. But it is not a very powerful heat absorbing gas. Water vapor, for example, absorbs heat radiation about ten times as strongly as carbon dioxide and occurs in the atmosphere at a concentration about ten times that of carbon dioxide. Methane, or natural gas, is an even more powerful heat absorbant than carbon dioxide (one hundred times more powerful), and it leaks to the atmosphere in massive quantities from gas pipelines, oil drilling operations, and many natural sources.

So, yes, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will, all other things being equal, cause some climate warming. But all other things will never be equal. And many of the other things that are not equal are subject to human influence. Particles of black carbon or soot, for example, injected into the atmosphere by diesel powered vehicles, oil-burning ships, and forest fires, absorb heat and may be as significant as carbon dioxide in accounting for any human-caused climate change. But sulfur emitted to the atmosphere by the combustion of coal, for example, gives rise to white sulfate particles, which reflect sunlight and thus cool the planet. Sulfate particles also seed cloud formation, and clouds have a huge impact on global temperature in many and complex ways, some tending to raise global temperature, some having the opposite effect. There's also the impact of human activity on the surface features of the planet. Deforestation, for example, has a long-term cooling effect, because trees reflect less solar energy back to space than do bare ground or agricultural crops, but in the short run, deforestation may have a warming effect by causing the transfer of carbon from the biosphere to the atmosphere.

So, no, the science of climate change is not settled, and when Al Gore says it is he only demonstrates that, scientifically, he is a moron. Either that, or he sees the global warming scare a means to psych the semi-educated American and European populations to regard themselves as some kind of disease on the planet, with a moral obligation to commit racial suicide by having no children. That is what the elite desire and what they promote. What, after all, in this age of automation, is the use of the consuming masses: best be rid of them.

Related: 

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption