Roger Palmer speaks quietly, but with the force of knowledge and logic on the subject of global warming/climate change.  Two expressions of his perspective are presented here: firstly a brief video and transcript, and secondly excerpts from his 2024 paper. Transcript in italics with my bolds and added images.  H/T Raymond Inauen

1. Trust Climate History, Not Hysteria

I’m Roger Palmer, a retired engineer living in Victoria, British Columbia. Today I want to talk about climate change hysteria. The popular press is overflowing with sensational but scary headlines: the hottest day on record, sea levels are rising, climate catastrophe. It’s never been like this before, climate change is an existential threat, we are declaring a climate emergency, it’s man’s fault.

These hysterical messages are reinforced at disruptions organized by career demonstrators and professional protesters. Politicians are falling over themselves to agree with these claims and position themselves as the only viable saviors of mankind who are able to stop the climate from changing. You can’t get elected if you are perceived as being soft on climate change.

The authors of all this spurious noise unfortunately do not have a good understanding of science or the historical paleoclimatic record. These people are so arrogant and self-centered that they believe that man can control the solar system and somehow cancel the naturally occurring climate cycles, so that the earth’s climate stays just the way they want it.

Let’s start the discussion by outlining a difference between weather and climate. When a person speaks about weather they are referring to how the atmosphere is behaving over the short term hours or days and usually over a small area. The term climate refers to the statistics of weather over a defined large region over a long period of time, decades or more. the atmospheric characteristics being described include temperature, winds, moisture, clouds and precipitation.

But it is the temperature that most people seem to focus on. In the 1970s the concern was about global cooling, but it has now shifted to global warming. An example of a weather statement is: “It will be cooler and windy in downtown Ottawa tomorrow.” An example of a climate statement is: “North America will be warmer over the next two decades.”

Reliable equipment for measuring temperature has been available since the early 1800s, but unfortunately the number and placement of temperature recording stations has changed considerably over time. So it is often difficult to get a complete and consistent record for a specific area temperature history. The period preceding the 19th century must be inferred by analyzing ice cores, tree growth rings, sediments and corals. Ice cores typically from Greenland, Antarctica or the Arctic are the most commonly used proxies. And it is possible to infer temperatures from thousands or millions of years ago. It is also possible to use ice cores to estimate the historical composition of the atmosphere.

Although surface temperature is what humans actually feel on a day-to-day basis, that data can be contaminated by urban heat islands. So it is sometimes more meaningful to talk about the temperature of the troposphere, which is the lowest layer of the earth’s atmosphere about 20 kilometers thick and is where all the weather takes place; the clouds, precipitation, storms, winds etc.  Temperatures in the troposphere can be directly measured by balloon-borne radiosondes or inferred from satellite radiometry.

Geological records show that the earth’s average temperature has varied cyclically for many millions of years. Sometimes it has been much hotter than today and sometimes much cooler. This graph estimates variations in temperature during the last 500 million years. The earth is approximately four and a half billion years old; predecessors of man have been on earth for about two and a half million years; and modern homo sapiens have been around for about two hundred thousand years.

Here is what the earth’s temperature has been doing over the past five hundred thousand years and here is the temperature record for more recent times; the last 11, 000 years otherwise known as the Holocene era.

The earth would be a much cooler place if it did not have an atmosphere. The atmosphere contains a number of gases that warm the earth by what is called the greenhouse effect. Which is when solar radiation from the sun can easily pass through the gases to the earth, but outgoing infrared radiation from the earth’s surface is partially blocked from radiating off into space by these same gases. Further details of this mechanism are given in the references.

There are several different greenhouse gases but everyone seems to focus on just one of them: carbon dioxide known as CO2. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sometimes thought to be the driver of the earth’s temperature, but the geological record shows that there has been no correlation.

The absolutely dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor. The earth’s glaciers and ice caps have grown and shrunk cyclically over time. The earth recently exited the Little Ice Age and is currently warming just as in previous cycles. There is definitely a new ice age coming, but none of us will live to experience it. We are currently in an interglacial, which is a period between ice ages.

As shown by the earlier graphs the earth’s climate is not being driven by changes in the co2 level. Indeed changes in the atmospheric CO2 concentration are probably a result of changes in the earth’s temperature as oceans and land masses release stored CO2 resulting from long-term temperature changes. As the glaciers and ice caps cyclically build and recede, there are corresponding changes in the sea level. The sea level has cyclically varied from today’s levels by as much as plus or minus 200 meters. And these fluctuations are expected to continue for thousands of years to come.

So what is causing these long-term cyclical changes in the earth’s average temperature? A recently posted youtube series entitled Paleoclimatology parts one through three gives an in-depth analysis of the factors at work. Here is a summary of just some of the main factors:

♦  Continental drifts as result of plate tectonics has caused very long-term climate changes as the ocean’s heat carrying currents have been forced to take different paths;

♦  Milankovitch cycles due to changes in the earth’s tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity and cyclical changes in the solar system’s orbital alignments have demonstrably produced corresponding changes in the earth’s climate over both the long term and the short term;

♦  Cyclical changes in the sun’s total output radiated power. cyclical changes in the sun’s output spectral distribution especially the ultraviolet component

♦  Variations in the earth’s magnetic field resulting in changes in the magnitude and position of the earth’s magnetosphere which shields us from incoming cosmic particles and the solar wind

♦  Variations in upper level bacteria which serve as nucleation sites for clouds and precipitation

♦  Changes in the earth’s average cloud cover as a result of changes in many of the factors just mentioned

♦  Changes in the earth’s upper atmospheric wind currents that are used to distribute heat energy throughout the pallet of the planet

Note that carbon dioxide concentration is not a significant cause of these natural cyclical changes. CO2 has some effect on long-term climate changes but it is not the dominant determinant of global temperature. Then why are the agitators and politicians so obsessed with this and why are they arbitrarily blaming man-made CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels as threatening disruptions to their climate nirvana?

Perhaps there’s a hidden agenda. Current proposals to decarbonize the earth by eliminating fossil fuels will have a minor effect on climate, but will cause extraordinary economic harm. Maybe the true goal of the protesters is to destroy capitalism in the western world.

CO2 is a clear odorless gas. Atmospheric CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and were sometimes much lower. CO2 is not a pollutant–it is essential to life. If the atmospheric CO2 concentration were to drop below 150 parts per million, the earth’s vegetation would not be able to survive and the earth would become a barren wasteland.  There have been proposals to use large-scale geoengineering to alter the earth’s climate, such as by surrounding the earth with orbiting reflective particles or mirrors. But such schemes are fraught with political as well as technical dangers.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change known as the IPCC is often identified as the final authority when it comes to questions about the earth’s climate.  However the IPCC does not conduct research; it merely reviews papers in the field. And the IPCC should not be considered as unbiased. Because when they were created by the United Nations they were specifically charged to investigate how mankind is causing the earth’s climate to change.

In other words the conclusion had already been reached that man was to blame before any investigations were performed. The IPCC is a political animal; nothing is published before it has been approved by the representatives of all the participating countries to make sure that it aligns with their governments’ objectives and policies. IPCC has published numerous forecasts of ever increasing global temperatures being driven by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But these are based on incomplete and inaccurate computer models and they have all drastically overestimated the forthcoming temperature rise.

These computer models ignore or inadequately account for many factors, including clouds and solar variations. It is claimed that 97 % of scientists agree that man-made emissions of CO2 are having significant negative effects on the earth’s climate. However consensus is not a valid way to conduct scientific research. Group think is a major problem in this field. Remember Galileo was able to prove that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around. But public opinion and the church forced him to recant his findings. Consensus overruled scientific evidence just like it appears to be doing today.

The earth is getting warmer and it will continue to do so until the temperature trend reverses sometime in the future and we head into the next ice age. Mankind needs to recognize that we are an observer of naturally occurring climate cycles. There is very little that we can do to stop, change or influence these cycles. The best thing that man can do is learn to adapt to these natural cycles. Stop wasting our money and damaging our economy on futile and inefficient schemes to reduce man’s CO2 emissions, appearing to be trying to thwart what are perfectly natural cyclical changes of the earth’s climate.

Learn to live with these changes. Mankind has to adapt. Have a nice day and enjoy the warmth while we have it. Here are links to references providing more details on many of these points

2. Net Zero is Both Suicidal and Ecocidal

Source: Roger Palmer publication  Understanding Climate Change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Net Zero

As mentioned above, many governments have decided to pursue the goal of becoming “Net Zero” by 2050 (or possibly later). This means that they want all CO2 emitted by man’s activities either to be eliminated or somehow compensated for by 2050 in the belief that this will slow the current rise in global temperatures, and limit the rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

As discussed in previous sections, CO2 concentration is not the primary driver of global temperature, and indeed, rising CO2 levels might actually be a result of warming due to entirely natural factors. Despite the dubious scientific justification, politicians and special-interest groups have embraced the “Net Zero” battle cry, and are falling over themselves with announcements, proclamations, and protests as they attempt to destroy the world’s economy.

The concept of Net Zero is that any continuing emissions of CO2 need to be “offset” by actions to remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. These “offsets” could be the planting of trees that absorb CO2, or they could involve operating actual equipment that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and then sequesters it in a safe storage facility (this is called CCS, which stands for Carbon Capture and Sequestration). A marketplace has now developed whereby “carbon credits” are bought and sold, and some rather flimsy schemes have been created.

As an example of how ludicrous this churning process is, consider the example of the DRAX power plant that is located in the U.K. This power plant was built in 1974, and burned coal to generate electricity (in a conventional steam turbine system). Starting in 2013, this power plant was converted to burn compressed wood pellets. The pellets are manufactured in Canada, and shipped to the UK from the port of Prince Rupert, BC. The pellets were originally supposed to use scrap wood left over from existing logging operations, but demand eventually required that trees be specifically grown to feed the process. It was claimed that the entire process (growing trees, converting the wood to pellets, transporting them between continents, and then burning them in a thermal power plant) was “sustainable”, because new trees were planted to replace those that were cut down!

Direct Carbon Capture(DCC)

There are several companies developing technology and equipment for actually extracting (“capturing”) CO2 from the air. The CO2 is then stored (“sequestered”) either as a gas, or converted to some other form. The justification for doing this is that governments and agencies mistakenly believe that CO2 emissions from human activities is causing the world to warm, and that not only must these emissions stop, but some of the CO2 must be removed in order to lower the concentration in the atmosphere, thereby supposedly preventing future temperature rises.

The processes used for DCC are complex, and require large amounts of energy to operate. It is claimed that the energy will come from “sustainable” sources (hydro, solar, wind, nuclear), so the whole process will help a country reach the goal of “net zero”. Funding for these projects effectively comes from selling “carbon credits”, because governments have inadvisably placed a dollar value on CO2.  If these proposed projects go ahead, the scale and costs involved will be enormous. And remember, lowering the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by 1 ppm will only potentially reduce the temperature by between 9 and 15 thousandths of a degree C!

Energy and Transortation

As part of the charge toward the Holy Grail of “Net Zero”, the entire transportation infrastructure is being forced to dispense with the burning of fossil fuels. Governments apply so-called “Carbon Taxes” on the sale of hydrocarbon fuels, and the tax rates are methodically being increased as time goes by, in an effort to get users to switch to another type of energy.

Oil has been a major energy source for over two centuries. It has a high energy density (ie: a small and light weight amount of the substance has the potential to create a large amount of energy). A few decades ago, there was worldwide concern that we were running out of these fuels and only had a limited supply, but new exploration/extraction techniques, combined with more efficient energy use have allayed those concerns.

Fossil fuels are converted to energy by the process of combustion. Almost 40% of the material’s potential energy is extracted in modern gasoline or diesel engines, and almost 55% in modern combined-cycle gas-fired power plants. The remaining energy is turned into waste heat. In building heating applications, the fossil fuel is burned to directly create heat: this process can have efficiencies of over 95%. All of these combustion processes generate CO2, and this is the main focus of politicians, scientists, and environmentalists, despite evidence (as outlined earlier) that climate change is not being primarily driven by increases in CO2 concentration.

Wind turbines and solar cells have received most of the publicity in recent years as large arrays of these devices have been installed around the world. The biggest problem is the intermittent nature of their output. To compensate for this, excess generating capacity has to be installed, and very large energy storage devices (batteries, pumped water, etc) have to be included to ensure a reliable source of supply. If electricity is produced by techniques (such as hydro, solar, wind, or nuclear) that do not emit any greenhouse gases, there is strong political motivation to convert existing consumers of fossil fuels to use electricity as their energy source. Transportation has been a major user of fossil fuels, and the sector is highly visible to the public, so there is considerable pressure to electrify it.

Fossil fuels are an ideal way to power mobile devices (especially road vehicles, aircraft, and ships): the energy density (KW-h per Kg) is very high, and it is easy to quickly refuel as required. There has been much development in electrical technology for road vehicles, but the major problem has been the availability of electrical energy storage devices (primarily batteries) that are small and light enough to fit into the vehicle, and that have sufficient capacity to provide decent range between charges. The energy density (KW-h per Kg) of modern Li-ion batteries is about 2% that of gasoline or diesel fuel. Some electric cars have met with market success, but battery technology needs to develop a major increase in battery energy density before they are considered viable for mainstream applications, and then the problem will be one of installing enough charging infrastructure to allow for unimpeded travel without the drivers suffering from “range anxiety”.

Ships, highway trucks and airliners pose their own problems, and are unlikely to be weaned off of fossil  fuels for some time to come. These applications need energy storage devices that have much higher density (both by volume and by weight) than batteries – the use of hydrogen (produced by electrolysis of water) and fuel cells is being vigorously pursued. Hydrogen can also be burned directly in modified jet engines or even reciprocating engines, but hydrogen has storage issues that need to be addressed.

Hydrogen’s energy density (KW-h per Kg) is quite high, but it occupies a large volume, so must be stored at very high pressures if storage tanks are to be kept to a reasonable size. Hydrogen can also be stored in a liquid form, but the extremely low cryogenic temperatures required (-253°C) present significant
challenges.

If it were possible to convert all power generation, heating, and transportation applications to non fossil fuel technology, it would be possible to reduce the total amount of man-made CO2 emissions by over 50%, but this would have a negligible effect on global temperature. It would of course still be required to extract oil and natural gas from the ground for the manufacture of synthetic materials, plastics, asphalt, lubricants, and pharmaceuticals.

Summary and Conclusions

The material reviewed so far in this paper confirms that there are a large number of factors that affect the earth’s climate. Many of these are poorly understood by man, and there are some factors that probably haven’t even been discovered yet. A number of conclusions can be taken away from the information presented so far in this document:

a) Climate change is a naturally-occurring, cyclic phenomena, and it has been going on for millions of years.
b) Climate change is primarily driven by changes in the energy of the sun that impinges on the earth. The dominant factors driving this are variations in the sun (total output power, spectral distribution, sunspot cycles) Milankovitch Cycles, variations in ocean currents (ENSO, PDO, and AMO). Other factors include the effect of varying cosmic particle influx and high altitude bacteria, causing changes in cloud cover.
c) The primary greenhouse gas is water vapour. The effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperature change is much less. Because of the non-linear effect of CO2 concentration, increases beyond the current level will have a decreasing effect on the earth’s climate.
d) Man-made CO2 does have a minor effect on global temperature changes, but it is not the dominant factor. A reduction of man-made CO2 emissions would have a negligible effect on global temperature.
e) Man’s understanding of the various climate-influencing factors is very limited.
f) Climate models are not effective at forecasting future long-term global temperatures.
g) There is very little that mankind can do to affect global temperature change. It does not make sense to introduce regulations that will have a negative impact on Western economies in a pointless attempt to change the natural rate of global climate change.
h) Mankind will have to learn to adapt to future climate changes. If mankind is still around in a few thousand years, they will then have to adapt to global cooling and glaciations!

Any legislative efforts to limit man-made carbon dioxide emissions at the local, regional, provincial, or federal levels may be well-intended, but are ultimately futile, and potentially dangerous. These efforts will harm the economy, waste resources, and not significantly affect the naturally-occurring cyclic climatic changes.