Human carbon dioxide emissions have been blamed for the one degree of measured warming over the last 150 years. Some people will lead us to believe that humans are blamed for this increase because global temperatures simply cannot rise naturally. They will try to make us think that global temperatures are constant or that there is a “perfect” temperature and that we have upset the natural balance of Earth because of our carbon dioxide emissions. For those people who know better, it’s going to take a much more detailed explanation to convince us how our contribution of carbon dioxide can forever alter our climate. That will involve empirical evidence that the advocates of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) simply don’t have and cannot produce.

The biggest flaw with their argument is the fact that they are relying on logical fallacies to explain the measured warming trend over the last century and a half. The original AGW advocates used a post hoc, or “questionable cause” argument when attributing warmer temperatures to increases of carbon dioxide:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen over the past 150 years and temperatures have risen slightly over the same period. Therefore, carbon dioxide must be causing the warming.

That was the initial fallacy. This argument was never corrected and is now used as an “appeal to belief” and an argumentum ad populum (appeal to popularity) in addition to the original:

Most people believe the claim that carbon dioxide has always been linked with increasing temperatures and is in fact the cause of the warming. Therefore, the claim must be true.

That is one of the fallacies used today, in conjunction with the argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) fallacy which is most often used to argue the AGW position:

The world’s top scientists agree that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming. Therefore, it must be true.

This last claim is not only a fallacious argument, but it contains a factual error. All of the world’s “top scientists” do not agree with the AGW hypothesis. And again, this argument is in turn supported by ad hominem fallacies directed towards anyone who disagrees with popular belief. The entire line of argumentation supporting anthropogenic global warming, and especially concerning carbon dioxide, is based on one logical fallacy after another. However, there is a simple solution for the advocates to correct all of these illogical arguments: Provide some empirical evidence for the claims.

The problem is that most of the empirical evidence is coming from the opponents of the AGW hypothesis.

Polish scientist, Zbigniew Jaworowski, presented a fascinating (and pretty much unknown) article on ice cores and the incorrect portrayal of their accuracy when measuring amounts of carbon dioxide. Jaworowski is a multidisciplinary scientist with a long history of studying glacial samples from around the world (including with the United Nations Scientific Committee) and believes that most AGW advocates are using “fudged data” and have a general ignorance when it comes to understanding the “physical processes of glacial ice formation.” He also makes it clear that the ice core data collected has never been proven to demonstrate that the measurements of gas contained within them accurately represent past atmospheric composition. From the time the gases are “trapped” in the ice or snow until the time these ice cores are analyzed, they are subject to many different natural and human processes that contaminate the sample and consequently have a damaging effect on scientific accuracy.

Jaworowski’s paper starts with the fact that G.S. Callendar formulated his hypothesis with a biased sample of carbon dioxide readings, something that is supported by the research of German scientist, Ernst-Georg Beck. Both acknowledge that the accepted historical measurements of carbon dioxide may in fact be inaccurate – mostly due to bias, not faulty readings. In Beck’s paper, 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods, he composed a graph of over 90,000 accurate chemical measurements taken since 1812 by multiple scientists, including Nobel Prize winners. The results were quite intriguing – carbon dioxide levels, like temperature, are not stable from year to year or decade to decade. In fact, Beck found that atmospheric carbon dioxide exceeded 380 ppm at least three times during the period in which these measurements were taken – including a peak well over 400 ppm in 1942.

More surprisingly though, both Beck’s and Jaworowski’s papers show how carbon dioxide measurements and readings have been intentionally manipulated by scientists who have accepted only results that confirm their predictions or assumptions, instead of analyzing the data and adjusting their hypotheses accordingly. These are the results that have been used to support the AGW hypothesis in recent decades.

But evidence even more rudimentary than current ice core analysis has been known for quite some time. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has far exceeded current levels in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. In fact, current carbon dioxide levels are practically at all-time lows. Our planet is essentially carbon dioxide-starved and has been for several million years. During the Jurassic Period, roughly 200 million years ago, carbon dioxide exceeded 2,000 ppm. During the Cambrian Period, more than 500 million years ago, atmospheric concentrations reached well over 6,000 ppm. Both of these periods supported life on this planet – and not once did Earth enter into a “runaway greenhouse” scenario.

Despite these facts, the AGW advocates continue to warn us that we are on the verge of a global “tipping point” from which we may never return. Yet our current carbon dioxide readings, if accurate, are still below 400 ppm. However, skeptics cannot discuss the historical record when it comes to the advocates’ claims because that record is apparently irrelevant in today’s world – as if past climate processes became inconsequential once a specific year was reached. That year has quite obviously and preposterously been identified as 1850.

Even more absurd than claiming that carbon dioxide will cause an inevitable and irreversible climate shift is the notion that carbon dioxide is in fact pollution. The frightening part of this is that on April 2, 2007, in the case Massachusetts v. EPA, the United States Supreme Court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled that carbon dioxide qualifies as a “pollutant” according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) definition. The problem exists with the definition of “pollutant” and the Court’s reading of it. The EPA identifies a “pollutant” as:

“…any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive…substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.”

In the written opinion, the Court’s broad interpretation (as Justice Scalia rightly points out in his dissent) essentially accepts a “pollutant” as “everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence.”

But there’s also another problem – the EPA does not define “air pollution” in the Clean Air Act. So, without a definition, the Supreme Court must have undoubtedly assumed a textbook definition of “air pollution,” which would be “that which makes the air impure or unclean.” The Court has determined that carbon dioxide – a naturally present gas in our atmosphere – makes the air impure and unclean. This absolutely defies any notion of common sense. Carbon dioxide is one of the key elements for life on this planet. Without it, we would not exist.

Considering the lack of any catastrophic effects on plant or animal life, it would appear that carbon dioxide has not made the air impure or unclean. If we are to worry about the quantity of this natural gas in our atmosphere, we must be reminded that current levels are still below 400 ppm. That means carbon dioxide still makes up less than 0.4% of our atmosphere. In order to be toxic for human life, it must exceed quantities above 4 - 5% of the air we breathe, or about ten times our current levels (rising to over 4,000 ppm). Compared to the rise over the last century, it would take more than 3,500 years to reach quantities toxic for humans. Surely we will have "alternative" energies long before that time.

What we have seen thus far in the debate about global warming is little more than fanciful claims of human influence in a system so complex we have yet to understand many of its processes. In the case of carbon dioxide, some of these claims are completely fabricated or just downright ridiculous. Illogical arguments are made, research is deliberately or unwittingly biased, historical evidence is ignored, and the air around us is believed to be naturally polluted – which would mean humans can’t do anything about it.

But this is just the beginning of the carbon dioxide discussion. We have yet to get into its properties or its interaction with other elements in the atmosphere. We also have not discussed its relationship with Earth’s oceans and the effects that warming and cooling of these oceans can have on the carbon cycle. This is just the tip of the iceberg – the iceberg that allegedly won’t exist after another 20, 50, or 100 years…whatever the new prediction is this week.

Other articles in the Climate Change Stupidity series:

An Overview of the Global Warming Hypothesis

An Overview of the Global Warming Hypothesis (Part Two)

Great Ball of Fire

The Earth Also Shines

The Carbon Dioxide Scapegoat

Water in the Atmosphere

**For more articles by this author, click here.