Popular Alarmism Science has printed an article with the disturbing picture of a cloud. The header is, “There’s more carbon in the atmosphere now than there was before the dawn of mankind.”
That, of course, is a straight out lie. Carbon is a solid in the forms diamond, graphite and graphene, none of which float around in the atmosphere. There might be a bit of soot from a fire but that settles fairly quickly.
The footer to the cloud picture states, “Humans are saturating the atmosphere with CO2.” This is another straight out lie.
For those who are visually oriented, this diagram breaks it all down into easy to understand segments: (I snipped this a few years back and it does not allow for the variability of water vapour in the atmosphere.)
- Take the entire atmosphere and represent it as 50 blocks
- Take one of those blocks of the atmosphere and that is the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The diagram indicates 2% but a more typical figure is 1%
- Divide that smaller block into 100 blocks.
- Four of those blocks (4%) represent the CO2 portion of the greenhouse gases.
- Total CO2 is, thus, 4% of 1% of the atmosphere or 0.04% of the entire atmosphere. Current ‘record’ measurement is 415 parts per million which is the same as 0.0415%.
- Of that CO2, the amount caused by human activity is just 3.4%.
- So the CO2 that humans are ‘saturating‘ the atmosphere with is 3.4% of 4% of 1% or 0.00135%. (Otherwise known, in scientific terms, as diddly squat) *
The article then starts on the scare proper:
Quote.We’re officially living on a planet with an atmosphere no previous human being has ever experienced. You’ll probably be able to say the same thing tomorrow.End quote.
Carbon dioxide levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii reached 415 parts per million on Friday. Not only is that the highest number the observatory has recorded since it first started analyzing atmospheric greenhouse gases in 1958, but it’s more than 100 ppm higher than any point in some 800,000 years of data scientists have on global CO2 concentrations.
This means levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now nearly 40 percent higher than ever in human history. And because the measurement directly correlates with things like global temperature and ocean acidification, this record concentration is further proof that humans are changing the environment at an unprecedented rate.
More and more outright lies. There is absolutely no correlation between the rising CO2 levels and global temperature, as global temperatures did not get the memo and are currently not cooperating by rising at the required rate.
There is absolutely no science to back the statement that humans are changing the environment at an unprecedented rate. There is actually no scientific proof that humans are changing the environment at all.
* Here is another way to visualise the amount of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. Imagine we could walk along 1 kilometre of atmosphere.
- The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
- The next 210 metres are Oxygen. (980 metres of the 1 kilometre)
- The next 10 metres are water vapour. (10 metres left)
- 9 metres are argon. (Just 1 more metre)
- A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.
- The last 41 centimetres of the kilometre – that’s carbon dioxide.
- 97% of that is produced by nature.
- Of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
- Of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in 0.18 of a millimetre, NZ puts in 0.007 of a millimetre.
- Less than the thickness of a hair in both cases, out of a kilometre.
Or, for the final illustration: To the nearest whole seat, only one yellow Aussie jersey with the rest of Eden Park clad in black. Not really an Aussie ‘saturation’ is it?