https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/co2_is_a_climate_red_herring.html
CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) such as methane have been suspected for more than a century of being potentially harmful atmospheric warming agents. The climate movement began more recently with the advent of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1989 and the release of Al Gore’s prize-winning film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. Climate alarm began as “man-made global warming” and, when cooling was observed even as CO2 levels continued to rise, morphed into “climate change.”
Those of us who can look behind the virtue-signaling mantra of climate change understand the theory that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning oil and gas are dangerously warming the planet. We can also appreciate the idea that marginal warming may be amplified by increased water vapor and clouds as a result of elevated CO2. A large number of computer models are built on the presumptions of this theory.
But are our CO2 inputs to the atmosphere a real threat to our magnificent planet? The evidence tells us no. Although we are in the midst of a broadly warming period following the end of the most recent ice age, satellite and weather balloon data suggest that the models (and theory) are off by quite a bit. The models project much more warming than observed in back casts. That is interesting but perhaps not definitive. There is also evidence that the atmosphere has slipped into a new cooling period that could lead to the next ice age.
A seminal review paper by Wijngaarden and Happer (here) illustrates a critical limitation of CO2 radiation transfer that makes it impossible for this trace molecule to cause runaway global temperature. The limitation is known as saturation. The key figure from the Wijngaarden-Happer paper diagrams the inhibiting effect of various greenhouse gases on infrared radiation to space. GHGs reduce Earth’s reradiation of incoming shortwave solar radiation to space as longwave heat radiation. Reduced reradiation of heat means air and surface warming.
