Carbon Dioxide facts global warming

by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D. *

Introduction

In the latest of my series of articles on global warming, I offered evidence that global warming appears to be occurring, but evidence seems to be growing that fluctuations in the electromagnetic field of the sun may be responsible for it.1 Here I would like to expand my arguments that carbon dioxide from man's activities is probably not the primary cause for global warming. Major weaknesses have developed in the logic that carbon dioxide causes global warming. In a second article to follow, I will describe a new theory of climate change based on the influence of the sun.

Arguments against Carbon Dioxide Driving Global Warming

In his presentation An Inconvenient Truth, 2 Al Gore argues that the correlation between earth's average global temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere irrefutably demonstrates that carbon dioxide drives global warming. He compares the temperature trend in the so-called "Hockey Stick Diagram" with the exponential increase in carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the past 50 years. A similar plot of temperature over the past 1, 000 years is shown in Figure 1. Such a diagram is given this name because the temperature plot looks like a long-handled hockey stick. This figure shows a superposition of average global temperature curves obtained by different research groups using different data and/or methodologies. For example, the red curve shows the results obtained by Moberg et al, 3 while the blue curve shows the results of Esper et al.4 The average temperature in the "handle" of the hockey stick over the period from about 1000 to 1850 A.D. remains relatively uniform, followed by a sudden rise in the "blade" since 1850, supposedly following the recent increase in carbon dioxide.

• Causes and effects of global warming
• Scientific facts on global warming
• Carbon emissions and global warming
• Reasons to stop global warming
• Ecological effects of Global warming